Reddit reviews Radiobiology for the Radiologist

Yeah, my dude -- I feel where you're coming from.

There are actually some therapies that use hyperthermia RF sources to heat up and destroy tissue, but for stuff like radiation therapy acts in a really cool way.

For radiation therapy, a major way to kill cells is by destroying their DNA. DNA is wrapped in a double helix, and if you destroy one strand of it, the cell has a good way to repair. But if both strands are destroyed, then depending on where you are in the cell cycle, the cell may not know how to properly fix the DNA and you can get mutations. Theoretically at the cell checkpoint before it divides, the cell that is mutated will be detected, and it won't be able to pass the checkpoint and will effectively die.

Now, granted, sometimes these mutations do go through. And if the DNA is mutated in the wrong way, then you can develop cancer.

As radiation passes through the cell it deposits an average energy per unit length (or, kinda weirdly, an average length per unit energy). This energy depends on the type of radiation. When this average energy is deposited at approximately twice per width of DNA strand, it deposits energy at the right spots to create a double strand break. The type of radiation that's most effective here is alpha particles. But gamma rays (and even moreso at lower energy gamma rays) are a little less effective.

I personally don't think RF is dangerous from a biological standpoint . But it'll be interesting to see if there are any effects down the road, considering cell phones haven't been around for long enough to track stochastic effects and cancer.

For anyone interested: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation-exposure/cellular-phones.html

Also, this page on radiobiology might be a fun start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiobiology

Personally I used this book https://www.amazon.com/Radiobiology-Radiologist-Eric-J-Hall/dp/1608311937
It's aimed more at physicists than biologists, so I found it enlightening.