FDA Removes Web Content Saying Cellphones Are Harmless - HHS Launches Study

Without fanfare, the Food and Drug Administration has deleted multiple web pages asserting that cellphones are not dangerous. First reported by the Wall Street Journal, the move comes as the Department of Health and Human Services has begun a new investigation into potential health effects of cellphone radiation.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr has previously declared that cellphones are causing harms that are not yet fully acknowledged. "There's cellphone tumors. I'm representing hundreds of people who have cellphone tumors behind the ear. It's always on the ear that you favor with your cellphone...We have the science," Kennedy said in a 2023 appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience. "You should never put one next to your head... I put it on speakerphone or use earphones." 

Responding to a Journal inquiry about the change to the FDA website, HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said, “The FDA removed webpages with old conclusions about cellphone radiation while HHS undertakes a study on electromagnetic radiation and health research to identify gaps in knowledge, including on new technologies, to ensure safety and efficacy." 

One of the deleted pages included a passage declaring that “the weight of scientific evidence has not linked exposure to radio frequency energy from cellphone use with any health problems.” There may be more scrubbing of the site to come: The Journal notes that the FDA's site still has summaries of the deleted pages, but the links redirect to other generalized content about the agency's regulatory mission. 

Kennedy, who had a career as an environmental litigator, has long engaged on this issue. Kennedy represented people suing phone companies for allegedly causing brain tumors, and won a 2020 case that compelled the Federal Communications Commission to reassess its wireless-radiation regulations. He was also chairman of Children's Health Defense, which has been involved in litigation over 5G technology, and a case blaming an Idaho man's cardiac issues on a cellphone tower. He has also pointed to radiation as a prime suspect in the mystery of widespread chronic illnesses among America's children, “Our children are swimming around in a toxic soup, the Wi-Fi radiation is a lot worse than people think it is...yeah, from your cellphone,” Kennedy told Rogan in 2023.  

In 2025, Kennedy celebrated a large wave of cellphone restrictions that swept across the nation's schools. In addition to pointing to links between social media use and depression, Kennedy told Fox News that "[cellphones] produce electromagnetic radiation, which has been shown to do neurological damage to kids when it’s around them all day, and to cause cellular damage and even cancer.” 

Both the FDA and FCC have a hand in regulating cellphones, with the FDA providing scientific assessments to the FCC, which imposes caps on radio-frequency emissions. For now, the FCC website still has content declaring there's no evidence linking wireless electronics to cancer. 

The National Cancer Institute, a component of the National Institutes of Health, says, "evidence to date suggests that cellphone use does not cause brain or other kinds of cancer in humans." Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Elizabeth Platz told the Journal that cellphones don't emit the variety of radiation that is known to cause cancer. She also pointed to large studies failing to find any connection between cellphones and cancer.

However, scientific consensus about health has a long history of infamous fallibility. Confidently-wrong conclusions have caused incalculable harms, from creating a peanut-allergy epidemic to opening a Pandora's box of harms during the Covid-19 pandemic. Given that, we don't mind seeing RFK Jr's revamped HHS put a new set of skeptical eyes on the cellphone-radiation consensus.