SMALL EFFECT?
BIG QUESTION.
If an exposure affected a lot of people, even a small change in risk could matter. How much? Explore the assumptions that turn a health question into a cost question.
This calculator explores a hypothetical effect. It does not measure an EMF health risk or predict a future bill.
A safety limit.
A lifetime of questions.
Energy → heating → safety margin
At sufficiently high levels, absorbed RF energy can heat tissue. US exposure limits include margins intended to prevent established harmful effects.
FCC review of its limits (2019 PDF) ↗Exposure → time → health outcomes
Long-term studies ask different questions from a device compliance test. Their findings and limitations matter when judging whether an additional effect exists.
Explore findings in both directions →The calculator starts with an “if.” Research has to establish whether that “if” is justified.
10% higher than what?
If a population would otherwise have 10 cases in a year, a hypothetical 10% increase would mean 11 cases: one additional case.
The starting rate matters. The calculator combines that starting rate with the risk increase you choose. None of these choices establishes that an EMF effect exists.
Change the assumption.
Watch the scale change.
Choose a scenario, then follow the arithmetic. The slider range is an illustration, not a scientifically established range of RF risk.
Set your scenario
Relative risk 1.00. An assumed 10% increase means 1.10 times the baseline risk, not 10 extra cases per 100 people.
Includes malignant tumors beyond glioma.
This is your assumed exposure share, not a measured estimate.
Not a sourced survival estimate. Timing of deaths is not modeled.
Follow the arithmetic
Scenario total, without adjusting future values · not a treatment bill
No assumed effect means no modeled additional burden.
See what changes
the result.
The line changes with your other inputs. Its slope is arithmetic, not evidence that these effects occur.
Horizontal: assumed increase in risk. Vertical: valuation for one year’s added cases.
See the inputs, sources and formula
6.86 or 26.05
Annual age-adjusted incidence per 100,000 for malignant or all primary brain/CNS tumors, respectively, in the 2025 CBTRUS report covering 2018–2022.
CBTRUS report on PubMed ↗$13.1 million
HHS’s central value per statistical life for 2024 impacts, in 2023 dollars. This illustration fixes that historical value. It represents willingness to pay for risk reduction, not a treatment bill or compensation.
HHS 2024 guidance ↗You set the “if.”
The risk increase, exposure share, fatality share and duration are assumptions. The population size is an illustrative 335 million, not a current census count.
Valuation = added cases × assumed fatality share × $13.1 million.
Period total = valuation × years.
The observed age-adjusted incidence is borrowed as a hypothetical unexposed baseline. It is not a measured unexposed rate, and multiplying it by a population does not produce a valid forecast of actual US cases. Rates, population and assumptions stay fixed. The model does not represent age structure, latency, changing exposure, competing risks or discounting. Excluded non-fatal costs do not make the result a proven lower bound.
A dollar figure captures
only part of the question.
Caregiving & family time
Who takes time out to care for someone?
Income & productivity
What happens when someone cannot work?
Comfort & independence
What changes even when an illness is not fatal?
These are dimensions a fuller health-economic study could investigate. This calculator does not measure them or attribute them to EMF exposure.
Better evidence.
More useful decisions.
Define the sources, intensity and duration being compared.
Use follow-up appropriate to the health outcome and its timing.
Report estimates, uncertainty and findings of no association.
Only then connect credible health effects to costs and benefits.
It cannot answer the health question.
Several large studies have found no association for particular mobile-phone exposures and tumor outcomes. Other studies raise questions. Read the exposure definitions, findings and limitations before choosing an assumption.
Read the evidence →