Analysis A study of 913 pregnant women in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, found those exposed to high levels of magnetic field (MF) non-ionizing radiation had a 2.72x higher risk of miscarriage than those exposed to low MF levels.

The Kaiser Permanente study, “Exposure to Magnetic Field Non-Ionizing Radiation and the Risk of Miscarriage: A Prospective Cohort Study,” was published this month in the journal Scientific Reports.

The authors, Kaiser researchers De-Kun Li, Hong Chen, Jeannette R. Ferber, Roxana Odouli, and Charles Quesenberry, say their findings add to the evidence that “MF non-ionizing radiation could have adverse biological impacts on human health.”

“In this study, we found an almost three-fold increased risk of miscarriage if a pregnant woman was exposed to higher MF levels compared to women with lower MF exposure,” the study says. “The association was independent of any specific MF exposure sources or locations, thus removing the concern that other factors connected to the sources of the exposure might account for the observed associations.”

Study participants were classified in four MF exposure groups – <2.5mG; 2.5–3.6mG; 3.7–6.2mG; and ≥6.3mG – based on 24 hours of measurements with an EMDEX Lite meter as a representation of daily exposure. The researchers did not find the miscarriage risk increased with doses above 2.5mG, leading them to theorize that 2.5mG represents a threshold level for health effects.

"The controversy over health effects from electromagnetic fields is, to a large extent, a product of earlier studies that did not find many associations between EMF and health risk,"

As Li observed, there is no scientific consensus that MF exposure harms human health. According to the National Cancer Institute, "[A]lthough many studies have examined the potential health effects of non-ionizing radiation from radar, microwave ovens, cell phones, and other sources, there is currently no consistent evidence that non-ionizing radiation increases cancer risk."

Cell Phones and Cancer Risk
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet