# ANSES 2018 — collective expert review of electromagnetic hypersensitivity

> France's health agency reviewed the literature plus hearings with clinicians, researchers and affected people: no solid experimental evidence of a causal link, and an explicit recommendation that the suffering be treated as real and clinically managed.

- Canonical URL: https://emfbase.com/studies/anses-2018-electromagnetic-hypersensitivity
- Collection: Research record
- Record id: `studies:anses-2018-ehs`
- Status: verified
- Last verified: 2026-08-12
- JSON: https://emfbase.com/api/studies/anses-2018-electromagnetic-hypersensitivity

## Key values

- **Authors:** Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire de l'alimentation, de l'environnement et du travail (ANSES)
- **Year:** 2018
- **Design:** systematic review
- **Exposure studied:** Self-declared sensitivity to electromagnetic fields across sources, in France
- **Place in the evidence base:** contested
- **Primary document:** https://www.anses.fr/fr/system/files/AP2011SA0150Ra.pdf

## Finding

In the current state of knowledge there is no solid experimental evidence establishing a causal link between EMF exposure and the symptoms described by people declaring themselves EHS. ANSES simultaneously states that their suffering and pain correspond to a lived reality that leads them to adapt their daily lives, recommends appropriate clinical care and training for health professionals, and calls for further research whose experimental conditions reflect how affected people actually live.

## What it cannot establish

An evidence review, not new experimental work; it inherits the limitations of the provocation literature it assesses. It makes no finding about any exposure threshold and does not support treating the precautionary EMF values published by clinical associations as health-based limits.

## Related records

- [ANSES (Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire, France)](https://emfbase.com/organizations/anses): The French health and environment agency, which devoted a dedicated collective expert review to electromagnetic hypersensitivity: its 2018 report found no solid experimental evidence of a causal link while calling the reported suffering real and recommending clinical care and further research.
- [Rubin et al. 2010 — updated systematic review of EHS provocation studies](https://emfbase.com/studies/rubin-2010-provocation-review): 46 blind or double-blind provocation experiments with 1175 self-reported sensitive volunteers: no robust evidence that field exposure triggered their symptoms, and support for a nocebo mechanism instead.
- [What should I do if I think I'm electrosensitive?](https://emfbase.com/questions/what-should-i-do-if-i-think-im-electrosensitive): Have the symptoms evaluated clinically, measure before you buy anything, and remove cheap exposures first. Don't treat precautionary guideline values as health-based limits or shield before measuring.

## Sources

- `anses-2018-ehs` Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire de l'alimentation, de l'environnement et du travail (ANSES), France (2018). *Avis et rapport d'expertise collective — Hypersensibilité électromagnétique ou intolérance environnementale idiopathique attribuée aux champs électromagnétiques (mars 2018)*. https://www.anses.fr/fr/system/files/AP2011SA0150Ra.pdf — government, link checked 2026-08-12
- `anses-2018-ehs-summary` ANSES, France (2018). *Hypersensibilité aux ondes électromagnétiques : amplifier l'effort de recherche et adapter la prise en charge des personnes concernées*. https://anses.fr/fr/content/hypersensibilit%C3%A9-aux-ondes-%C3%A9lectromagn%C3%A9tiques-amplifier-l%E2%80%99effort-de-recherche-et-adapter-la — government, link checked 2026-08-12

Data licence: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Dataset version 2026.08.1. Retrieved from EMFBase, https://emfbase.com.

This record is reference data, not medical or legal advice. Regulatory limits, scientific guidelines and precautionary values are labelled separately and answer different questions.