Article publication date
20 March 2026
ARPANSA review date
August 2026
Summary
This review discusses the potential impact on pregnancy outcomes of radiofrequency electromagnetic field (RF-EMF) exposure from mobile phone use during pregnancy. The authors report conducting a literature review of studies published between 2015 and 2024, including human epidemiological, animal, in vitro and review articles. The results of the literature search were not presented. Similarly, although the authors stated that study quality was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale and SYRCLE Risk of Bias tool, the outcomes of these assessments were not reported. The authors discuss approximately 22 studies and conclude that the evidence remains limited and inconclusive. However, they further stated that precautionary measures to reduce mobile phone exposure during pregnancy may be warranted.
Link to article
Impact of mobile phone use during pregnancy on fetal development and birth defects: a review
Published in
Annals of Clinical and Analytical Medicine
ARPANSA commentary
This is a poor narrative review of the evidence into RF-EMF and pregnancy outcomes. Although the authors mention that a systematic search and study quality assessment were conducted, the results of these are not presented. Further, the authors only assessed papers published after 2015, unless papers were highly cited (mentioned in other papers) and there is no justification for the selection of this timeframe nor defined criteria for high citation. Despite the wide inclusion criteria, only 22 studies are cited and discussed in the article. Repeating just one search term on one search engine already returns far more articles that meet the review’s inclusion criteria than are acknowledged in the paper. Also, there are studies cited in an inconsistent referencing format that do not appear in the reference list at all which means it is not possible to evaluate the source of the information the review uses to form its conclusions.
The review places substantial weight on a disparate mixture of animal and in vitro studies while giving limited consideration to the consistency and quality of the human epidemiological evidence. The articles that are cited, are done so in support of statements that are unrelated to the content of the cited article. For example, an article on ionising radiation exposure (Mainprize et al., 2023) is cited in relation to congenital abnormalities and maternal mobile phone use despite mobile phone use never being mentioned by Mainprize et al.
The evidence on the effects of RF-EMF exposure on pregnancy outcomes has recently been evaluated in World Health Organization-supported systematic reviews and meta-analyses, including one assessing adverse pregnancy outcomes in human epidemiological studies (Johnson et al., 2024) and a second assessing experimental animal study (Cordelli et al., 2023). These reviews applied state-of-the-art systematic review methods to evaluate whether maternal RF-EMF exposure is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes. The review of human studies concluded that, in both the general and occupational populations, the available evidence generally does not support an association between RF-EMF exposure and adverse pregnancy outcomes; however, the evidence is very uncertain due to variability in the results and methodological limitations. Similarly, the animal systematic review did not identify consistent evidence that RF-EMF exposure adversely affects pregnancy outcomes. It is difficult to understand why one of these reviews was cited in the article but not the other.
The scientific evidence is in line with the public health messaging of ARPANSA that exposure to RF-EMF below the limits in the ARPANSA RF Standard (RPS-S1) does not impact people’s health.
