Health effects of WiFi radiation: a review based on systematicquality evaluation

Although WiFi contributes little to totalradiofrequency electromagnetic field (RF-EMF) exposure in our everyday environ-ment, concern has raised whether this spe-cific type of modulated RF-EMF causeshealth problems. The aim of this review isto evaluate all types of studies that investi-gated biological and health effects of WiFiexposure and fulfilled basic quality criteria.Eligible for inclusion were epidemiological,human experimental,in vivoandin vitrostudies using realistic WiFi exposure set-tings. We conducted a systematic literaturesearch for all papers published betweenJanuary 1997 and August 2020 followed by a quality review addressing blinding and dosimetry inexperimental studies and various types of biases in epidemiological studies. All studies fulfilling thequality criteria were descriptively summarized in terms of observation or absence of associations.From 1385 articles identified by the literature search, 23 fulfilled basic quality criteria: 6 epidemio-logical papers, 6 human experimental articles, 9in vivoarticles, and 2in vitroarticles. Whereasinvivoandin vitrostudies applied exposure levels up to 4 W/kg, human studies dealt with exposurelevels several orders of magnitude below the ICNIRP guidelines, which are typical for WiFi exposuresituations in the everyday environment. Numerous outcomes ranging from biological markers tosymptoms were mostly found not to be associated with WiFi exposure. Sporadic findings were notconsistent in terms of outcomes or exposure-response associations. This review based on a system-atic literature search and quality evaluation does not suggest detrimental health effects from WiFiexposure below regulatory limits.