Prior to 1996, the wireless age was not coming online fast enough, primarily because communities had the authority to block the siting of cell towers. But the Federal Communications Act (1996) made it virtually impossible for communities to stop construction of cell towers -even if they pose threats to public health and the environment.
Since the decision to enter the age of wireless convenience was politically determined for us, we have forgotten well-documented safety and environmental concerns and, with a devil-may-care zeal that is lethally short-sighted, we have incorporated into our lives every wireless toy that comes on the market as quickly as it becomes available. We behave as if we are addicted to radiation. Our addiction to cell phones has led to harder "drugs" like wireless Internet. And now we are bathing in the radiation that our wireless enthusiasm has financed. The addicted, uninformed, corporately biased and politically-influenced may dismiss our scientifically-sound concerns about the apocalyptic hazards of wireless radiation. But we must not. Instead, we must sound the alarm.
Illa Garcia wore jewelry the first day she went back to work as a fire lookout for the state of California in the summer of 2002. The intense radiation from dozens of RF/microwave antennas surrounding the lookout heated the metals on her body enough to burn her skin. "I still have those scars," she says. "I never wore jewelry to work [to her job] after that."
Likely Mountain Lookout, on U.S. Forest Service land with a spectacular view of Mount Shasta, is one of thousands of RF/microwave "hot spots" across the nation. A newly-erected cellular communications tower was only 30 feet from the lookout. "One antenna on that tower was even with our heads," recalls Garcia. "We could hear high-pitched buzzing. There were also three state communications antennas mounted on the lookout, only 6 feet from where we walked. We climbed past them every day."
Motorola company manuals for management of communications sites confirm that high frequency radiation from these antennas is nasty stuff. Safety regulations mandate warning signs, EMF awareness training, protective gear, even transmitter deactivation for personnel working that close to antennas. Garcia and co-worker Mary Jasso were never warned about the hazards which, they say, demonstrates extreme malfeasance on the part of agencies and commercial companies responsible for their exposure.
By the end of fire season, Garcia and Jasso were so ill they were forced to retire and the lookout was closed to state personnel. Garcia, 52, is now severely disabled with fibromyalgia, auto-immune thyroiditis and acute nerve degeneration. Medical tests confirmed broken DNA strands in her blood and abnormal tissue death in her brain.
Dr. Gunner Heuser, a medical specialist in neurotoxicity, states that Garcia's disorders are a result of chronic electromagnetic field exposure in the microwave range and that "she has become totally disabled as a result." Dr. Heuser said, "In my experience patients develop multisystem complaints after EMF exposure just as they do after toxic chemical exposure."
Jasso, who worked the lookout for 11 seasons, is now disabled with brain and lung damage, partial left side paralysis, muscle tremors, bone pain and DNA damage. Jasso discovered that all lookouts who worked Likely Mountain since 1989 are disabled. At only 61 years of age, she has lost so much memory that she cannot remember back to when her first three children were born. She fears that communications radiation may be a major factor in the nation's phenomenal epidemics of dementia and autism.
Both women say they have been unjustly denied worker's comp and medical benefits. Their pleas for help to state and federal agencies have been
fruitless. Between them they have racked up over $150,000 in medical bills, although there is no effective treatment for radiation sickness.
Twenty-two other members of Garcia and Jasso's two families received Likely Mountain radiation exposure. All suffer serious and expensive illnesses,
including tumors, blood abnormalities, stomach problems, lung damage, bone pain, muscle spasms, extreme fatigue, tremors, numbness, impaired motor skills,
cataracts, memory loss, spine degeneration, sleep problems, low immunity to infection, hearing and vision problems, hair loss and allergies.
Jasso's husband, who often stayed at the lookout, has a rare soft tissue sarcoma known to be radiation related. Garcia's husband, who spent little
time at the lookout, has systemic cancer that started with sarcoma of the colon. Garcia's daughter Teresa was at the lookout for a total of two hours
during her first pregnancy. Her daughter was born with slight brain damage and immunity problems. "That baby was always sick," says Garcia. Teresa
spent only three days at the lookout during her second pregnancy. Her son was born with autism.
Garcia and Jasso also have a terminal condition known as "toxic encephalopathy," involving brain damage to frontal and temporal lobes. This was confirmed by SPECT brain scans. Twelve others in the two-family group who also had the scans were diagnosed with the affliction. "All of us with this condition have been told that we're dying," says Garcia. "Our mutated cells will reproduce new mutated cells until the body finally shuts down."
Nuclear Bombs on A Pole
Painful conditions endured by the families of Garcia and Jasso are identical to those suffered by Japanese victims of gamma wave radiation after nuclear
explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Five decades of studies confirm that non-ionizing communications radiation in the RF/microwave spectrum has the
same effect on human health as ionizing gamma wave radiation from nuclear reactions. Leading German radiation expert Dr. Heyo Eckel, an official of the
German Medical Association, stated, "The injuries that result from radioactive radiation are identical with the effects of electromagnetic radiation.
The damages are so similar that they are hard to differentiate."1
Understanding what happened at Likely Mountain is critical to understanding the public health threat posed by radiation in the United States. The families
of Garcia and Jasso, plus previous lookout workers and multitudes of tourists who visited Likely Mountain for camping and sightseeing, were beamed by the
same kind of high frequency radiation that blasts from tens of thousands of neighborhood cell towers and rooftop antennas erected across America for wireless
communications. The city of San Francisco, with an area of only seven square miles, has over 2,500 licensed cell phone antennas positioned at 530 locations
throughout the city. In practical terms, this city, like thousands of others, is being wave-nuked 24 hours a day.
The identical damage resulting from both radioactive gamma waves and high frequency microwaves is a pathological condition in which the nuclei of irradiated
human cells splinter into fragments called micronuclei. Micronuclei are a definitive pre-cursor of cancer. During the 1986 nuclear reactor disaster at
Chernobyl in Russia, the ionizing radiation released was equivalent to 400 atomic bombs, with an estimated ultimate human toll of 10,000 deaths. Exposed
Russians quickly developed blood cell micronuclei, leaving them at high risk for cancer.
What They Wouldn't Tell Us
RF/microwaves from cell phones and cell tower transmitters also cause micronuclei damage in blood cells. This was reported a decade ago by Drs. Henry Lai and
Narendrah Singh, biomedical researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Singh is famous for refining comet assay techniques used to identify
DNA damage. Lai and Singh demonstrated in numerous animal studies that mobile phone radiation quickly causes DNA single and double strand breaks at levels
well below the current federal "safe" exposure standards.2
The telecommunications industry knows this thanks to its own six-year, wireless technology research (WTR) study program mandated by Congress and completed in 1999. Gathering a team of over 200 doctors, scientists and experts in the field, WTR research showed that human blood exposed to cell phone radiation had a 300-percent increase in genetic damage in the form of micronuclei.3 Dr. George Carlo, a public health expert who coordinated the WTR studies, confirms that exposure to communications radiation from wireless technology is "potentially the biggest health insult" this nation has ever seen. Dr. Carlo believes RF/microwave radiation is a greater threat than cigarette smoking and asbestos.
In 2000, European communications giant T-Mobile commissioned the German ECOLOG Institute to review all available scientific evidence in regard to health risks for wireless telecommunications. ECOLOG found over 220 peer-reviewed, published papers documenting the cancer-initiating and cancer-promoting effects of the high frequency radiation employed by wireless technology.4 Many corroborating studies have been published since.
By 2004, 12 research groups from seven European countries cooperating in the REFLEX study project confirmed that microwaves from wireless communications
devices cause significant single and double strand DNA breaks in both human and animal cells under laboratory conditions.5 In 2005, a Chinese medical study
confirmed statistically significant DNA damage from pulsed microwaves at cell phone levels.6 That same year, University of Chicago researchers described how
pulsed communications microwaves alter gene expression in human cells at non-thermal exposure levels.7
Because gamma waves and RF/microwave radiation are identically carcinogenic and genotoxic to the cellular roots of life, the safe dose of either kind of
radiation is zero. No study has proven that any level of exposure from cell-damaging radiation is safe for humans. Dr. Carlo confirms that cell damage is not
dose dependant because any exposure level can trigger damage response by cell mechanisms.8
Officials at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health closely reviewed the damning results of WTR studies, which also revealed microwave damage to the blood brain barrier, but have chosen to downplay, obfuscate and even deny the irrepressible science of the day. Raking in $billions from selling spectrum licenses, the feds have allowed the telecom industry to unleash demonstrably dangerous technology which induces millions of people to become brain-intimate with improperly tested wireless devices9 and which saturates the nation with carcinogenic waves to service those devices. Dr. Carlo says that even the American Cancer Society is in bed with the communications industry, which infuses the Society with substantial contributions.10
Two Ways To Die
Medical science illustrates that there are two ways to die from radiation poisoning: Fast burn and slow burn. Nuclear flash-burned Japanese had parts of
their flesh melt off before they died in agony within hours or days. People have also quickly died after walking through powerful radar beams, which can
microwave-cook internal organs within seconds of exposure.
Slow-burn radiation mechanisms are cumulative, progressive, ongoing and continual. Thousands of Japanese nuke bomb victims died painfully years after exposure. The slow burn process of RF/microwave exposure is manifested by cancer clusters commonly found in communities irradiated by cell tower transmitters. Recent Swedish epidemiological studies confirm that, after 2,000 hours of cellular phone exposure, or a latency period of about 10 years, brain cancer risk rises by 240 percent.11
Communications antennas blast the human habitat with many different electromagnetic frequencies simultaneously. Human DNA hears this energetic cacophony loud and clear, reacting like the human ear would to high volume country music, R&B plus rock and roll screaming from the same speaker simultaneously. Irradiated cells struggle to protect themselves against this destructive dissonance by hardening their membranes. They cease to receive nourishment, stop releasing toxins, die prematurely and spill micronuclei fragments into a sort of "tumor bank account."
Nuking The Crew
The constant roaming pain is intense for 32-year-old Kenneth Hurtado of Southern California. He's been to hell and back, starting with a seven-pound
tumor on a kidney, diagnosed in 2002. The cancer spread to his brain. His first brain tumor was removed by craniotomy, the second by the cyber knife. In
2005, cancer nodes were found in his lungs. By 2006, the cancer had metastasized to his legs. This year he is battling three excruciating tumors on his
spinal cord. Hurtado hates his seizures. His last one came on while he was driving. "It's like the devil taking over your body," he says.
Now unable to work, Hurtado says he was relatively healthy in 1998 when he began a career as an installer for a large international corporation manufacturing electronics equipment for wireless providers. At the base of cell towers there is an equipment "hut" where installers assemble the radios, amplifiers and filters which generate man-made microwave frequencies and route them up to transmitter antennas through huge cables. Mounted on sector supports aptly named alpha, beta and gamma, the antennas send and receive these carcinogenic radio waves and their pulsed data packets at the speed of light.
Posted on locked fences around the huts are "danger" warning signs. Hurtado says, "You look around these sites and you find many dead birds on the gravel. They can't take the radiation and they'll just die. You don't have to ponder that too long to figure it's bad."
Hurtado doesn't know how much radiation he got on the job. He says there are at least four connection spots inside the hut where radiation can leak. He could not avoid the "heat" when he turned the radios on for testing and he wonders if his cancer is the result. "When I first got hired, we had safety meetings, but they pretty much minimized the hazards," he remembers. He was issued no electromagnetic safety clothing and it was not until 2002 that he got a radiation meter to wear. "The meter is supposed to warn you if you are getting too much radiation," he said, "but I put mine on a stick and placed it next to antennas and the alarm never went off."
A medical report in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health confirms that workers exposed to high levels of RF/microwave radiation routinely have astronomical cancer rates.12 The report notes that, for these workers, the latency period between high radiation exposure and illness is short compared to less exposed populations.
Hurtado said there are many industry workers who are dangerously over-exposed. "I've talked to guys on power crews who have to climb around the
antennas and they've told me that before a work day is half over, they start feeling really sick." He added, "In my mind they are getting
cooked."
Hurtado suspects that, since the early days of the wireless buildout, there has been illegal activity related to public exposure from transmission sites.
"I'm pretty sure," he says, "that some of the carriers are exceeding FCC exposure limits. They can turn the radios and amplifiers up to
get a bigger footprint and they don't care if the alarms go on once the installers are gone." Regulatory inspectors could identify violators because
channels can be spectrum analyzed. "But," he says, "there is just no one to check and I believe that the public is getting way too much
radiation now."
Regulators Asleep At The Wheel
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the single agency with authority to regulate the communications industry, has neither money, manpower nor motive
to properly monitor radiation output from hundreds of thousands of commercial wireless installations spewing carcinogenic waves across the nation. The FCC
admits that physical testing to verify compliance with emissions guidelines is relatively rare.
Critics say that FCC appointees, with virtually no medical or public health expertise, represent an old-boy network and a cheering squad for the
telecommunications and broadcast industries. The Center for Public Integrity found that FCC officials have been bribed by the industries with such perks as
expensive trips to Las Vegas.13
Dr. Carlo confirms that there is no regulatory accountability. He says, "You have to go to those base stations and independently measure what is coming out of them because we have had many instances where you have an antenna that is allowed by law to transmit at 100 watts and we have seen up to 900 to 1000 watts. You can turn things up when nobody is looking."14
Neighborhood groups monitoring the broadcast/communications antenna farm on Lookout Mountain near Denver, Colorado, have consistently found that, despite protests to the FCC over nine years, radiation on the mountain has been measured at up to 125 percent of exposure levels permitted by federal law.15
Lethal Exposure Guidelines
Even if there were reliable compliance monitoring, experts say that FCC public exposure guidelines for RF/microwave radiation are deadly because they are
based on the obsolete and unfounded theory that only power density hot enough to flash-cook tissues is harmful. This puts FCC at odds with current scientific
evidence regarding the minimum exposure level at which harm to living cells begins.
Myriad symptoms of radiation poisoning can be induced at exposure levels hundreds, even thousands of times lower than current standards permit.
Russia's public exposure standards are 100 times more stringent than ours because Russian scientists have consistently shown that, at U.S. exposure
levels, humans develop pathological changes in heart, kidney, liver and brain tissues, plus cancers of all types.16
Norbert Hankin, chief of the EPA's Radiation Protection Division, states that the FCC's exposure guidelines are protective only against effects
arising from a thermal (flash burn) mechanism. He concedes that, "the generalization by many, that these guidelines protect human beings from harm by
any and all mechanisms, is not justified."17
Thus, public microwave exposure levels tolerated by the FCC and its industry-loaded advisory committees are a national health disaster. Yet, for pragmatic and lucrative reasons, federal exposure limits have been deliberately set so high that no matter how much additional wireless radiation is added to the national burden, it will always be "within standards."
The FCC regulatory mess comes into focus with the Likely Mountain case. Jasso says that when she and Garcia contacted the FCC regarding their radiation injuries, they were met with an appalling lack of expertise and concern. "FCC has no answers," Jasso says. "Their exposure guidelines are convoluted and nonsensical. They refuse to address problems of multiple antennas, field expansion, human body coupling and blood reversal because they want to avoid regulatory problems at telecommunication sites." She adds, "FCC will fine a licensee thousands of dollars for not having a light installed on top of a telecommunications tower, but they have not issued even a warning letter to their licensees for the injuries that occurred on Likely Mountain. They say injury cannot occur because their licensees are regulated."
Catch 22
When Garcia and Jasso filed suit against companies operating microwave transmitters on Likely Mountain, they could find no attorney who would take their case
and they were forced to proceed pro se. In August, 2007, a California district court denied their claim, mainly on the grounds that they had not proven that
the defendants had exceeded FCC exposure guidelines. Under federal law the shattered health of 24 people, plus medical testimony, is not sufficient proof of
negligence and liability.
Since FCC provides no enforcement monitoring at transmitter sites and since the radiation industry is not required to prove with consistent documentation that it is compliant, injured parties have little chance of proving non-compliance because the damage to their health often becomes obvious months or even years after their typically undocumented exposure.
The court worried that the Garcia-Jasso case highlights "the conflict between the FCC's delegated authority to establish RF radiation guidelines
and limits and plaintiffs' attempt to establish that wireless facilities like the one at Likely Mountain are ultrahazardous."
So, while current science provides ample evidence that FCC's guidelines are ultrahazardous, the radiation industry hides behind FCC incompetence, simply
because FCC retains exclusive authority to set the standards.
The FCC's disastrous authority is calcified by the Telecommunications Act (TCA) of 1996. The telecom industry is infamous for lavish
"donations" which keep legislators on its leash. Anticipating a national radiation health crisis and the public backlash that would follow, the
telecom lobby blatantly bought itself a provision in the law that prohibits state and local governments from considering environmental (health) effects when
siting personal wireless service facilities so long as "…such facilities comply with the FCC's regulations concerning such emissions."
Many say the TCA insures that America's war on cancer will never be won, while protecting gross polluters from liability.
On Our Own
After passage of the TCA, a group of scientists and engineers, backed by the Communications Workers of America, filed suit in federal court. They hoped the
Supreme Court would review both the FCC's outdated exposure guidelines and the legality of a federal law that severely impedes state and local authority
in the siting of hazardous transmitters. In 2001, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The group's subsequent petition to the FCC asking the
agency to bring its exposure guidelines current with the latest scientific data was denied.18
This is where we stand today. The public has no vote, no voice, no choice. Chronic exposure to scientifically indefensible levels of DNA-ravaging radiation is now compulsory for everyone in America. This is why Garcia and Jasso are ill today; this why the industry enjoys unchallenged power to place dangerous transmitters in residential and commercial areas with unsafe setbacks and; this is why untold thousands of Americans in buildings with transmitters on the roof are given no safety warnings, though they work and dwell in powerful, carcinogenic electromagnetic fields. In the meantime, the radiation industry rakes in $billions in quarterly profits, none of which is set aside for to pay for the national health catastrophe at hand.
Every citizen is now condemned to protect and defend himself against radiation assault as best he can. There have been a number of lawsuits against the radiation industry since cell towers began going up in backyards across the nation. In 2001, a group action lawsuit was filed in South Bend, Indiana, by families living in close proximity to towers. The complaint describes health effects suffered by the plaintiffs, including heart palpitations, interference with hearing, recurring headaches, short term memory loss, sleep disturbances, multiple tumors, glandular problems, chronic fatigue, allergies, weakened immune system, miscarriage and inability to learn.19
The South Bend suit was settled out of court on the basis of nuisance and decreased property values. Health claims don't hold water if emissions are within FCC exposure standards. This case is valuable for understanding the lunacy of FCC standards. The sick families enlisted the help of radiation consultant Bill Curry, who honed his expertise as an engineer for Argonne and Livermore labs. Dr. Curry found that one of the towers was irradiating homes at over 65 microwatts per square centimeter.20 This power density is well within federal exposure standards, which allow any neighborhood to be zapped with at least 580 microwatts per square centimeter, or higher, depending on the frequencies. If the families were sick at 65 microwatts/cm22 what would they be at 580? Considering that the Soviets used furtive Cold War microwave bombardment to make US embassy personal radiation-sick at an average exposure level of only .01 microwatts/cm2, America's clear and present danger is obvious.21
How Radiation Sick Is America ?
Since the wireless revolution began wave-nuking the U.S. in the 1990s, there have been no federally funded health studies to assess the cumulative effects of
ever-increasing communications radiation on public health. There is no national database enabling citizens to study the location of transmitters in their
areas. Local and state governments can offer no information on how much commercial wireless radiation is contaminating their populations. When trying to find
out who owns a tower or which companies have transmitters on that tower, citizens usually hit a brick wall.
Dr. Carlo heads the only independent, post-market health surveillance registry in the nation where people can report radiation illness.22 Dr. Carlo said the registry has heard from thousands of people who believe that their illnesses, including brain and eye cancers, are due to telecommunications radiation from both wireless phones and tower transmitters. In the last two years, the registry has seen an upsurge in reports as transmitters become ever more energetically dangerous in order to accommodate increased data flow for new, multi-media technologies.
We can only guess how many Americans are in their graves today from microwave assault. Arthur Firstenberg, who founded the Cellular Phone Task Force, wrote that, on November 14, 1996, New York City's first digital cellular provider activated thousands of PCS antennae newly erected on the rooftops of apartment buildings. Health authorities reported that a severe and lingering flu hit the city that same week. In response to its classified newspaper ad advising that radiation sickness is similar to flu, the Task Force heard back from hundreds of people who reported sudden onset symptoms synchronous to microwave startup-symptoms similar to stroke, heart attack and nervous breakdown.
Firstenberg gathered statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and analyzed weekly mortality statistics published for 122 U.S. cities. Each of dozens of cities recorded a 10-25 percent increase in mortality, lasting two to three months, beginning in the week during which that city's first digital cell phone network began commercial service. Sites with no cellular system start up in the same time period showed no abnormal increases in mortality.23
Studies Abroad
Recent health surveys in other nations confirm that people living close to wireless transmitters are in big trouble:
• In 2002, French medical specialists found that people living close to cell towers suffered extreme sleep disruption, chronic fatigue, nausea, skin
problems, irritability, brain disturbances and cardiovascular problems.24
• German researchers found that people living within 1,200 feet of a transmitter site in the German city of Naila had a high rate of cancer and developed
their tumors on average eight years earlier than the national average. Breast cancer topped the list.25
• Spanish researchers found that people living within 1,000 feet of cellular antennas had statistically significant illness at an average power density of
0.11 to 0.19 microwatts /cm2, which is thousands of times less than allowed by international exposure standards.26
• An Egyptian medical study found that people living near mobile phone base stations were at high risk for developing nerve and psychiatric problems, plus
debilitating changes in neurobehavioral function. Exposed persons had significantly lower performance on tests for attention, short term auditory memory and
problem solving.27
• Researchers in Israel studied people in the town of Netanya who had lived near a cell tower for 3-7 years. They had a cancer rate four times higher than
the control population. Breast cancer was most prevalent.28
Europe In An Uproar
A new European Union poll of more than 27,000 people across the continent reveals that 76 percent of respondents feel that they are being made ill by
wireless transmitters.29 Seventy-one percent in the UK believe they suffer health effects from mast (cell tower) radiation. In April 2007, The London Times
reported a startling number of cancer clusters in mast neighborhoods. One study in Warwickshire, found 31 cancers around a single street.30 Some sick Brits
send their blood to a lab in Germany, which uses state of the art methodology to confirm wireless radiation damage.
Radiation sickness is now so prevalent in Germany that 175 doctors have signed the Bramberger Appeal, a document calling the situation a "medical disaster." It asks the German government to initiate a national public health investigation. This appeal closely follows the Freiburger Appeal, signed by thousands of German doctors who say they are dealing with an epidemic of severe and chronic diseases among both old and young patients exposed to wireless microwave radiation. The head of the cancer registry in Berlin found that one urban area with cellular antennas had a breast cancer rate seven times the national average.31
Sweden was one of the first nations to go wireless. Swedish neuroscientist, Dr. Olle Johansson, with hundreds of published papers to his credit, said that
a national epidemic of illness and disability was unleashed by the wireless revolution. Long periods of sick leave, attempted suicides and industrial
accidents all increased simultaneously with introduction of mobile phone radiation. Ninety-nine percent of the Swedish population is now under duress of
powerful third generation masts. Johansson reports that people are plagued with sleep disorders, chronic fatigue that does not respond to rest, difficulties
with cognitive function and serious blood problems. Recurrent headaches and migraines are a "substantial public health problem," he says.32
Rooftop transmitters, which readily pass microwave radiation into structures, can be a death sentence. Across the world there are reports of cancer clusters
and extreme illness in office buildings and multi-tenant dwellings where antennas are placed on rooftops directly over workers and tenants. In 2006, the top
floors of a Melbourne University office building were closed after a brain tumor cluster drew media attention to the risks of communications transmitters on
top of the building.33 Likewise, ABC's Brisbane television complex, topped with satellite dishes and radio antennas, was the site of a well-publicized
breast cancer cluster among workers.34
Deadlier Death Rays
In the meantime, the radiation cowboys of America are having a good 'ol time because they know there's no sheriff in town. The commercial wireless
industry is relentless in its drive to construct thousands of new transmitter sites in neighborhoods and schoolyards everywhere, while adding more powerful
antennas at its older sites. Countless WiFi systems, both indoors and out, accommodate wireless laptop computers, personal digital assistants, WiFi-enabled
phones, gaming devices, video cameras, even parking and utility meters. Hundreds of cities already have or are planning to fund WiFi networks, each
consisting of thousands of small microwave transmitters bolted to buildings, street lamps, park benches and bus stops. Some networks are being buried under
sidewalks. These access points or "nodes" blast carcinogenic energy at 2.4 to 5 gigahertz with virtually no warning signs about radiation exposure.
WiFi radiation is unregulated by the FCC.
Sprint-Nextel and Clearwire are now rolling out in U.S. cities tower-mounted WiMAX transmitters providing wireless internet access "to die for." WiMAX is WiFi on steroids. Upon startup of WiMAX transmitters near the Swedish village of Gotene, the emergency room at the local hospital was flooded by calls from people overcome with pulmonary and cardiovascular symptoms.35
WiMAX radiation could one day be cranked up to a bone-incinerating 66 gigahertz.36 A single WiMAX tower could provide internet coverage for an area of
3,000 square miles, although coverage for 6-25 square miles is the norm now. Promoters say WiMAX may some day replace all cable and DSL broadband services
and irradiate virtually all rural areas.
Not a single environmental or public health study has been required as the industry unleashes infrastructure for this savage new wireless technology from
which no living flesh is able to escape.
The commercial ray-peddlers are not alone in their quest to make the U.S. a radiation wasteland. In August, 2007, Congress approved new Homeland Security
legislation which funds a program to "promote communications compatibility between local, state and federal officials."
We catch a glimpse of what this portends as the state of New York gears up to erect hundreds of new wireless installations for a "Statewide Wireless
Network (SWN)," allowing agencies at various government levels to communicate instantly.37 SWN will blanket 97 percent of the state, adding to the fog
of commercial wireless pollution. The New York Office for Technology says that the radiation power densities of the system will be within FCC limits.
Angela's Story
Angela Flynn, a 43-year-old caregiver, lives in Santa Cruz, California. Last spring she took classes at a local church where wireless antennas were concealed
in a chimney on the building. She recalls, "Every muscle in my body felt sore. And my joints were feeling creaky. My instructor mentioned how people at
the women's center on church property had similar symptoms. During my sixth day I had a severe reaction. My short term memory was gone and I was
disoriented and confused. When the instructor asked a question, I could not recall anything from the lecture."
At night, Angela could not sleep and she would lie awake, feeling her body buzz. She became hypersensitive to other sources of electromagnetic radiation. The symptoms became so bothersome that she canceled the rest of her course. Using a chart for calculating cumulative, non-ionizing, electromagnetic radiation exposure levels, she found that the classes-located only 100 feet from antennas in the building-had suffered the highest possible exposure during peak operation.
"It took a month before I regained my health," she reports.
When Angela wrote letters to the church inquiring whether it was monitoring the health of the people exposed to antenna radiation, church officials were "unresponsive and dismissive." So Angela saw the light. She helped organize a community group to put pressure on county officials for answers. After hearing community testimony, officials directed the zoning department to create a comprehensive map of county transmitter sites and to put together a report on emissions testing.
Angela says, "We recently had a delay of an installation of a tower near a middle school. The superintendent has even come out against the tower and was instrumental in delaying the hearing on the site. He also arranged a school board meeting on the issue." Angela's efforts to share critical information with her community made a difference.
Conclusion
America must soon face its radiation cataclysm. The EMR Network says that millions of workers occupy worksites on a daily basis where operating antenna
arrays are camouflaged and where no RF safety program is carried out. Thanks to shameless predatory advertising techniques, American youth are now literally
addicted to "texting," watching TV and accessing the Internet on tiny wireless screens. These are the toys that keep cell towers and WiFi hot spots
buzzing. A nation that requires compulsory mass irradiation to fuel its trivial entertainment needs is surely destined to have a sickly and short-lived
population.
Right now, 11.7 million Americans have been diagnosed with cancer. Because humans can harbor cancer conditions for years before detection, additional millions of cancer victims are yet undiagnosed. The Journal of Oncology Practice predicts that, by 2020, there will be so many cancer cases in the U.S. that doctors may not be able to cope with their caseloads. The report concludes the nation could soon face a shortage of up to 4,000 cancer specialists.38
A recent CBS news series on the raging American cancer epidemic left viewers with the mindset that trainloads of federal cash must flow if we are to find
the cancer answer. But the cancer cause now inundates our cities, roadways, schools, offices and homes. Any environmental stressor that jackhammers human
cells at millions to billions of cycles per second is a cancer factor. Any wave-pollution that breaks the DNA and causes pre-cancerous micronuclei in human
blood is a cancer factor. Logic tells us that there will be no "answer to cancer" until we eliminate the cancer factors.
Wireless communications radiation is to America today what DDT, thalidomide, dioxin, benzene, Agent Orange and asbestos were yesterday. Historically, the
truth about the public health menace of extreme toxins is never told until thousands sicken and die.
Dr. Robert Becker, noted for decades of research on the effects of electromagnetic radiation, has warned: "Even if we survive the chemical and atomic threats to our existence, there is the strong possibility that increasing electropollution could set in motion irreversible changes leading to our extinction before we are even aware of them. All life pulsates in time to the earth and our artificial fields cause abnormal reactions in all organisms…These energies are too dangerous to entrust forever to politicians, military leaders and their lapdog researchers."39
Our mission to save the nation's health and restore sanity in the wireless age seems daunting. The wireless juggernaut is an aggressive, mean machine. Federal regulators are clearly compromised and incompetent to protect the public health. Uninformed consumers dearly love their magic digital toys and don't yet understand the connection between those toys and a national raging cancer epidemic that may consume us all.
Powerful economic interests have lied to us long enough. Americans need and deserve the facts. We need dialogue. Wireless radiation is a form of electronic trespass. America must decide whose rights are more important-idlers beaming death rays for gibberish or the elderly with pacemakers who are made ill by cell phone and tower radiation wherever they go. Must we all prematurely perish so that wireless enthusiasts can capture cell phone photos and instantly send them for processing via carcinogen express? Does a human being have the right to NOT be forcibly WiMAXED into a coffin, or do only wireless providers and their devotees have rights?
What Can We Do ?
We can commit to join the growing radiation awareness movement and continue educating ourselves and others. We can employ digital and audio radiation
detectors to help safeguard our personal health and to demonstrate the ceaseless brutality of ubiquitous wireless radiation which threatens the genetic
integrity of future generations. We can promote emerging technologies that could make communications technologies safer.
We can demand that federal radiation exposure standards be updated and that wireless emissions from transmitters be drastically reduced. We can demand routine compliance testing at all transmitter sites. We can see to it that people living and working near transmitters be given opportunity to report their illnesses in national surveys. Proper epidemiological studies must be conducted and their results published and broadly disseminated. Federal communications law must be rewritten so that local jurisdictions can regain their right to consider health and environment when reviewing wireless siting applications.
Each of us can break the seductive, but oppressive wireless habit ourselves. We can play no game, use no wireless Internet system, make no trivial phone call that necessitates enlarging America's dense forest of wireless transmitters.
If no one buys WiMAX-enabled devices and related services, the system will fail. Whenever possible, we can go back to the old-fashioned, corded phones and
message machines which made yesteryear a far more healthy time. We can encourage others to contact us by land line only.
Can we enjoy a leisurely conversation knowing that an irradiated caller risks disease and disability for mindless chatter? What good is wireless convenience
if it means being ultimately tethered to a hospital bed? We can teach our children that health is more important than passing convenience and instant
gratification.
According to OSHA, no environment should be deliberately made hazardous. Backed by current scientific knowledge, we can refuse to work or shop in an environment which endangers our health. We can demand that megahertz and gigahertz cordless phones, walkie talkie radios, WLAN and WiFi systems be removed from schools, offices, hospitals and any public place where people are grossly irradiated without their informed consent. Second hand smoke is bad; second hand radiation is worse.
We wish to thank the courageous radiation victims interviewed for this report who have generously revealed the details of their personal suffering in order to warn others. Following their example, we must continue undaunted in the moral quest to protect the national health and restore the world to sanity before it is too late.
