From October 13 to 16, 2025, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) hosted the WP 9 Risk Assessment Workshop. The workshop was held at the IARC premises in Lyon, France and involved all SEAWave partners.
In accordance with the objectives of the project, the Risk Assessment covers both 5G-FR1 and 5G-FR2, and is conducted based on
- a full review of the scientific literature that was available when the project started,
- the continuous review of the scientific evidence from projects on the subject matters during the project lifetime conducted outside of the SEAWave project, and
- the overall results of the SEAWave project.
The discussions focused on scientific evidence on exposure, in vivo experiments, human data (epidemiology) and data on biological mechanisms. These were combined with the results from the specific experiments conducted within the SEAWave project since 2022, in which human volunteers, rodents, and cell cultures were exposed to maximized FR2 signals at 27.5 GHz.
Initially, the lines of evidence on the findings were evaluated separately as to whether they provide strong, limited or inadequate evidence of skin (co-)carcinogenicity. These findings were subsequently linked to the exposure information in the overall risk assessment.
The results will be published as FR1 and FR2 reports to the European Commission (EC) and as risk assessment summaries in the peer-reviewed literature. The EC reports will be in layman language and therefore include all scientific statements with justifications, but in a more narrative language avoiding technical terms as much as possible.
We would like to thank our IARC colleagues for hosting this successful workshop, and all the SEAWave partners for their valuable contributions!
SEAWave Workshop participants outside IARC premises.