Response to the letter from Di Ciaula et al

Abstract

Re: Di Ciaula et al. Exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields and risk of cancer: epidemiology is not enough! We thank the authors for their comments and the opportunity to clarify the points raised related to our systematic review. The conclusion of our systematic review are based on the best available human evidence at the time of the review, with moderate certainty, near field RF-EMF exposure to the head from mobile phone use likely does not increase the risk of glioma, meningioma, acoustic neuroma, pituitary tumours, and salivary gland tumours in adults, or of paediatric brain tumours. We are aware that absence of evidence does not definitively equate to evidence of absence; however, we can only review and meta-analyse the available data and evidence, which pre dominantly came from case-control studies which by design have some limitations with retrospective exposure assessment when exploring causal relationships (hence, moderate certainty) and we acknowledge this in the Discussion (see 5.2. Limitations in the evidence).