Exposure to Non-Ionizing Radiation and Childhood Cancer: A Meta-Analysis

Background: a slight increase in the childhood cancer trend has been observed for the past few decades. non-ionizing radiation is one of the environmental factors linked to childhood cancers. this review is conducted to assess the association between non-ionizing radiation and childhood cancer based on all original studies to date.methods: a systematic search was conducted on the titles and abstracts pertaining to non-ionizing radiation and childhood cancers using the pubmed, scopus, sage and sciencedirect databases from inception up to november 2018. quality of each article was appraised using the newcastle-ottawa scale, meta-analysis was performed with review manager, and fixed effects were used to estimate the pooled or of the selected studies.results: a total of 15 articles met all the selection criteria. twelve articles were included in the meta-analysis. pooled risk estimates of the 12 studies, obtained via fixed effects model, showed that children exposed to 0.2 μt or more of emf non-ionizing radiation run 1.33 times higher risks of contracting childhood cancer compared to those with less than 0.2 μt exposure (95% ci: 1.10, 1.60). the studies were statistically homogeneous (chi-squared p=0.71, i2=0%), and there was no evidence of publication bias.conclusion: it cannot be concluded that children exposed to non-ionizing radiation have higher risks of childhood cancer compared to those who were not exposed as claimed by the previous reviews. however, concerns about non-ionizing radiation exposure and childhood cancer should not be neglected.