Mobile phones and the illusory pursuit of safety

At present it is difficult to make a logical case for more stringent limits on exposure to pulsed microwave radiation. Robust limits are based on either a direct quantitative link between cause and effect (eg, thermal heating) or on a proven causative mechanism supported by dose-effect relations, as found with ionising radiation. Neither is available for these postulated very-low-intensity effects; the process of ionisation and free-radical formation that is known to be the basis of cancer induction with, say, X rays, does not occur with electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range.