Manufacturers
Industry Whistle-Blower, Retired Microsoft Canada President Frank Clegg
Please see the following 10-minute public service announcement from an industry insider who did his research and discovered how harmful today's wireless technology is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSP2exnmJXg
Former FCC Attorney: How the FCC Fails to Follow Environmental Laws and Fails the Public
See interview and article: ehtrust.org/former-fcc-attorney-how-the-fcc-fails-to-follow-environmental-laws-and-fails-the-public/
T-Mobile Report in 2000 Shows Biological Effects
The Mobile Communications and Health study commissioned in 2000 by T-Mobil, the German parent company of T-Mobile, concluded there are many non-thermal biological effects well below public radiation exposure limit levels. They recommended specific precautionary measures should have been taken, but they were not and the industry continued to market hazardous products:
alpaca-chinchilla-x6xf.squarespace.com/s/T-Mobile-Study-2000Reduced.pdf
2018 Investigation by The Nation
An independent peer review of the U.S. National Toxicology Program’s cell phone study announced their findings of clear evidence that cell phone radiation causes cancer—validating The Nation’s special investigation:
How Big Wireless Made Us Think That Cell Phones Are Safe: A Special Investigation
The disinformation campaign—and massive radiation increase—behind the 5G rollout.
Harvard's Captured Agency Report
In 2015, Harvard University's Norm Alster published "Captured Agency: How the Federal Communications Commission is Dominated by the Industries it Presumably Regulates". This further details what has happened with the FCC since telecom industry leaders like Tom Wheeler took the helm, and how they have been able to establish laws that protect industry profits over public health.
In 2020, the Washington Spectator published a lengthy article, "Wireless Hazards" detailing industry's denial of the science: https://washingtonspectator.org/wireless-hazards/
Prof. Tom Butler: Ethical Risk Analysis
This paper, released in February 2021, traces the history of the development of safety guidelines and why they haven’t changed since the 1990s, and suggests “potentially unethical behaviour in a variety of institutional and organisational actors, the consequence of which is a significant risk to the health and wellbeing of adults and children.” Wireless Technologies and the Risk of Adverse Health Effects in Society: A Retrospective Ethical Risk Analysis of Health and Safety Guidelines by Ireland's Professor Tom Butler: https://ehtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/Wireless-Technologies-Ethical-Risk-Analysis-Working-Paper-2021.pdf
Industry Lobbying Influence
In 2023 the wireless industry influenced the introduction of many federal bills aimed at stripping local control from our municipalities and allowing installation of toxic cell towers anywhere without notice, consent or review by local boards. See expert forum with attorneys detailing this power grab:
www.bbilan.org/blog/2023-08-16-wbi-town-hall-on-federal-bills
See action items from Americans for Responsible Technology to contact your elected officials:
www.americansforresponsibletech.org/stop3557Powerful Industry Lobby Group Behind 5g Roll-Out Despite Public Opposition and Health Dangers exposes one of the largest industry organizations in American that is paving the way to make 5G a reality: the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
See Open Secrets' Top Telecom Contributors to Political Campaigns: https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=b09
World Health Organization
The Precautionary Principle, as defined by a 2004 World Health Organization report, states, “In cases of serious or irreversible threats to the health of humans or ecosystems, acknowledged scientific uncertainty should not be used as a reason to postpone preventive measures.” iris.who.int/handle/10665/346211
In collaboration with industry, many of our federal agencies appear to be following what the World Health Organization calls the Tobacco Control Playbook to suppress evidence of harm in mainstream media, design studies of their own under conditions that deliberately show no harm, create doubt among the public, and continue to promote their toxic products.
See especially, Do tobacco companies take a responsible approach to education and information? It contains a list of common tactics used.
After the U.S. National Toxicology Program and Italy's Ramazzini Institute both published large studies concluding "clear evidence" of tumors (cancer) and DNA damage, the WHO initiated an ongoing project to assess potential health effects of exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields in the general and working population: https://web.archive.org/web/20200514165110/https:/www.who.int/peh-emf/research/rf_ehc_page/en/index1.html
Dr. Lennart Hardell documents conflicts of interest with the telecom industry and an EMF group at the WHO in this 2021 paper: https://www.wjgnet.com/2218-4333/full/v12/i6/393.htm
The Fine Print That Few Have Read
Did you know the little product information pamphlets that come with wireless devices contain a passage about Exposure to Radio Frequency Energy? Some of the manufacturers have taken the passage out of the hard-copy materials, and imbedded it deeply within the device settings, usually under the Legal heading, where consumers are unlikely to see it. Showthefineprint.org has compiled these passages so you can easily see what your device warns.
Attached at the bottom of this page are the guides for the iPad and the iPhone 4.
If you own an iPhone, go to Settings, General, About, Legal, RF Exposure to see their warnings to keep the device away from your body else possibly exceed public radiation exposure limits.
Basically, the manufacturers say they comply with FCC regulations. Science, however, has proven the current FCC regulations are 100s to 1,000s times too high to prevent the damage being done at the non-thermal level by mobile devices.
In the fine print you will discover:
There are multiple antennas in each device, aiming radiation from different angles at your head and body. The brochures state:
The iPhone cellular antennas are located at the top and bottom edges of iPhone. The Wi-Fi and Bluetooth® antenna is located near the top of iPhone.
iPad contains radio transmitters and receivers. When on, iPad sends and receives radio frequency (RF) energy through its antenna. The Wi-Fi and Bluetooth® antennas are located behind the screen to the left of the Home button, and behind the Apple logo.
The attached documents also tell us we shouldn't keep these devices near our bodies, or near other objects where the radiation bounces back into our bodies:
When carrying iPhone, keep it 1.5 cm (5/8 inch) or more away from your body to ensure exposure levels remain at or below the maximum levels. Avoid cases with metal parts.
The iPad brochure states: For optimal mobile device performance and to be sure that human exposure to RF energy does not exceed the FCC, IC, and European Union guidelines, always follow these instructions and precautions: Orient the device in portrait mode with the Home button at the bottom of the display, or in landscape mode with the cellular antenna (located under the black edge at the top of the device) away from your body or other objects.
In other words, if you keep these devices on your body, the radiation you receive will exceed even the FCC's guidelines which we now know are already 100s to 1,000s of times too high. The manufacturers are only required to adhere to current government guidelines, so they continue to introduce more devices to earn more revenue.
The last line in this 2012 abstract from the NIH's PubMed database, on harm from laptops, is, "Laptop is paradoxically an improper site for the use of a LTC (laptop computer), which consequently should be renamed to not induce customers towards an improper use." So, that is what industry subsequently did. They renamed "laptops" to "tablets" but didn't inform the public that they are unsafe to use in the lap, and should be used on a table instead (and, might I add, best used in airplane mode and/or hard-wired). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22315933
In 2020, the IEEE reports a radiofrequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro exceeds the FCC's limit: the test, conducted by Penumbra, also highlights problems with the U.S. FCC’s wireless safety regulations, and other phones that have failed the test: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/radio-frequency-exposure-test-iphone-11-pro-double-fcc-limits
Congressional Hearing
This was addressed in a 2008 congressional hearing where scientists presented findings of increased penetration of cell phone radiation in the brains of children:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_YhKblPtOo
Here is the FCC's response to the scientist's claims:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIEQdE-nO18
FCC Fails to Respond to Public Health Issues
In 2012 the Government Accountability Office instructed the FCC to "formally reassess the current RF energy exposure limit, including its effects on human health" and as of this writing in 2017, it has not been done. Our FCC chairman is from the telecom industry so we may not see changes at the national level in the near-term.
On June 20, 2016 FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler indicated the priority with 5G is to be first to market, regardless of public health or safety. He states, "Unlike some countries, we do not believe we should spend the next couple of years studying what 5G should be, how it should operate, and how to allocate spectrum, based on those assumptions. Like the examples I gave earlier, the future has a way of inventing itself. Turning innovators loose is far preferable to expecting committees and regulators to define the future. We won’t wait for the standards to be first developed in the sometimes arduous standards-setting process or in a government-led activity." See his six-page speech below:
https://www.fcc.gov/document/remarks-chairman-wheeler-future-wireless
This 2017 FCC press release indicates the goal is to remove 5G infrastructure barriers, despite public health hazards:
http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0420/DOC-344486A1.pdf
Israeli and New York lawyer Dafna Tachover has developed electrohypersensitivity from wireless technology and in September 2016 testified before the FCC's Disability Advisory Committee. See her five-minute testimony here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qg0H63GLkU&feature=youtu.be
Click here to hear the history from Dr. George Carlo of how industry was able to get this technology to market before it was properly tested and how research findings have been suppressed since. You may also wish to read his book, "Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in a Wireless Age (Avalon, 2001)".
The FCC has been sued for ignoring 11,000 pages of evidence of harm entered into the public record. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. in August 2021 remanded it back to the FCC to account for long-term effects, harm to children, infertility, electrosensitivity and environmental impacts. There was no deadline set and the FCC has failed to respond:
ehtrust.org/environmental-health-trust-et-al-v-fcc-key-documents/The above court order also tasks the FCC with rexamining how they test radiation exposures. They use SAM, a specific antropomorphic mannequin head modeled after a military recruit in the 90% of fitness, 6'3", 220 pounds. The head is filled with gel, and testers see how much heat it would take from a radiating antenna in six minutes or 30 minutes to raise the temperature of the gel inside SAM's head. This heat model has been proven unsafe by thousands of studies showing harm to our brains, eyes, skin, immune system, nervous system and more at the non-thermal level. See the website We Are Not SAM!
www.wearenotsam.com/See Legal Issues for more lawsuits.
Public Hotspots
In 2013, Comcast/Xfinity began installing public hotspots on private residential routers which broadcast the wi-fi signal from your home out to the street, further blanketing your home and neighbors in electromagenetic radiation. As the article indicates below, you can opt to shut off this signal by accessing your account on-line and turning off your wireless settings, or you can call Comcast and they'll do it for you. Note: Comcast may have up to five RF antennas in their home routers: 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, 2.4 GHz hotspot, 5 GHz hotspot, plus a wireless home security antenna. Customer service representatives are not typically trained on this, so consumers may need to ask for a tier-two tech support person to disable the latter antennas:
http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/16/technology/security/comcast-wifi-hotspot/index.html
Cell Tower Regulation Compliance
For those who live near cell towers or need rooftop access in their lines of work, the following whistle-blower article will be disconcerting:
http://microwavenews.com/news-center/cell-phone-carriers-fcc-cozy
Schilling CJ. "Effects of exposure to very high frequency radiofrequency radiation on six antenna engineers in two separate incidents."Occupational Medicine (London) 50.1(January 2000):49-56. Describes the health effects on six men exposed to high levels of RF radiation (100 MHz) while working on transmission masts. Symptoms included headache, paresthesia, diarrhea, malaise and lassitude. The condition of the four men with the highest exposure has shown no significant improvement. The incidents occurred in 1995 and 1996.
The link to the abstract is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10795393
Patent for Safer Technology
Retired Microsoft President and Founder of Canadians for Safe Technology Frank Clegg indicates the industry can absolutely make safer technology, they just need an incentive to do so. In 2004, Swisscom filed a patent titled, "REDUCTION OF ELECTROSMOG IN WIRELESS LOCAL NETWORKS". The patent acknowledges the biological effects of today's routers on DNA and other systems, and would create new technology where wireless networks would be in sleep mode as the default until a connection is sought from a mobile device. Currently, most of today's routers emit a biologically hazardous microwave pulse many times per second, 24/7/365 if not turned off. It's time to use our voices and wallets, and refrain from purchasing wireless devices until they can be made safely. See the patent below.
Scientists at the Chinese Institute for Science and Technology are working on an alternative technology using a form of quantum mechanics called direct counterfactual communication via quantum Zeno effect. This may prove to be a biologically safer way to communicate wirelessly:
History of Prior Public Health Concerns
As we aim to understand how the EMF issues are likely to play out with regard to government regulations, it is important to consider precedents set with other public health toxins. It has taken 117 years for our government to regulate lead emissions, 42 years to regulate smoking and the U.S. still has not ratified the World Health Organization’s anti-smoking measures. It took 65 years to ban asbestos. Granted, some health conditions take time to surface and to draw the direct connection to the cause. However, history shows the manufacturers knew but chose profit over public safety.
Lead: Our government took action to protect the public from lead exposure after nearly 10,000 studies were done. We already have more than 20,000 studies on electromagnetic radiation:
http://scienceprogress.org/2008/10/a-brief-history-of-lead-regulation/
Smoking:
http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/science/smoking-regulation-tobacco-smoking.html
Asbestos:
http://zidbits.com/2011/06/what-is-asbestos-and-why-was-it-banned/
Lobbying Influence on Government Regulations
If you look at today’s most influential lobbyists, you’ll see AT&T, Verizon and Comcast in the list of Top All-Time Donors
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php
This helps to explain why the United States has kept wi-fi users in the dark and has not adopted the Precautionary Principle as other countries have done to protect their citizens. The Precautionary Principle states:
1. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, uncertainty should not be a reason for postponing action to prevent that damage.
2. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, precautionary measures should be taken even if cause-and-effect relationships are not clearly established.
3. Whenever an action or substance could cause irreparable/irreversible harm, even if that harm is not certain to occur, the action should be prevented and eliminated.
Even though the FCC has its 1996 public radiation exposure regulations under formal review, and we would like to believe our government will protect us, history dictates otherwise and we have to allow that the lobbyists may influence an outcome that does not serve public health.
Louisville, Kentucky provides a good example of a municipality that determined building its own fiber-optic broadband network would be the most economical and effective solution. The industry interceded by influencing local authorities in meetings, and misleading residents via social media.
Here is Louisville's plan: https://medium.com/louisville-metro-opi2/kentucky-wired-we-need-your-support-4573225b686a
Here is how the industry applied their influence, as reported in the article by Harvard Law School Professor Susan Crawford, Koch Brothers Are Cities' New Obstacle to Building Broadband: https://www.wired.com/story/koch-brothers-are-cities-new-obstacle-to-building-broadband/
See Hundreds of Cities Are Wired With Fiber—But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unused, by Jason Koebler in Motherboard: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gvyyym/hundreds-of-cities-are-wired-with-fiberbut-telecom-lobbying-keeps-it-unused
"Why do we still not have a fiber optics system if we paid for it in our rates? Bruce Kushnick has spent decades following Telecom/FCC actions with regard to fiber. He has an in depth understanding of how consumers have paid out billions in rate increases for fiber optic networks that Telecom never delivered on. Furthermore, the FCC has been completely complicit and has turned a blind eye to Telecom’s shoddy accounting and broken promises.” Link to video lecture and book by Bruce Kushnick: http://scientists4wiredtech.com/regulation/kushnick-primer/
See how the industry accused the director of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program of lobbying: https://theintercept.com/2018/01/22/linda-birnbaum-niehs-house-science-committee/
This article by the American Bar Association clarifies what lobbying is, and that non-profits can indeed lobby to a certain extent: https://apps.americanbar.org/buslaw/blt/2009-03-04/mehta.shtml
Advertising Influence on Public Media Content
A common thought for many citizens and scientists, when they first learn about potential harm from wireless technology radiation, is:
"If this were true, surely we would have heard of it!"
Unfortunately, the largest advertising dollars in mainstream media throughout the world come from the telecom, technology and energy sectors. Given everyone needs to make a living, mainstream media is reluctant to run content that would adversely impact their advertising dollars. According to Advertising Age in their most recent data from 2014, Microsoft was the number one advertiser, followed by AT&T and Verizon. Rounding out the top ten are other technology, energy and telecom companies: Apple, Samsung Electronics Co., IBM Corp., General Electric Co., Intel Corp., Staples and Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile): http://adage.com/article/btob/top-100-b-b-advertisers-spent-4-8-billion-b-b-ads/300042/
Using the tobacco industry playbook, these conglomerates have become experts at suppressing evidence of harm and creating doubt when folks start asking questions, all the while putting out advertisements that entice the public to buy their latest-and-greatest products. In so doing, they bank on the fact that the public will not take the initiative to look into any controversy themselves, and continue to purchase their potentially harmful products.
When media outlets do run a story on potential harm from wireless technology, they introduce the issue, then usually stop short of telling the public what the world scientists have stated in their International Appeal to the World Health Organization and the United Nations, which is to use hard-wired technology, update our radiation standards, and protect the public from wireless radiation. Instead, the media outlets say more research needs to be done.
They will usually cite some industry-funded science instead of credible, peer-reviewed non-industry funded research. The media could cite the thousands of world-wide studies covered in the BioInitiative Reportthat prove the science has already been done and concludes this radiation is harmful. But they don't, and this leaves the public puzzled, but not to the degree that they will consider changing their usage or buying patterns. Note, the industry has been known to discredit the BioInitiative Report saying it was never published, but it was. The original report was published in a 2009 special issue of Pathophysiology.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09284680/16/2-3
The following is another example of media choosing not to cover this issue with true investigative journalistic integrity. There was a lawsuit announced against the prestigious private boarding school, Fay School in Southborough, MA, USA. A child has a diagnosis of electrohypersensitivity and the wi-fi system at school makes him ill. The school administration has refused to grant him accommodations to access to his education, even after the family offered to pay to hard-wire the ten classrooms in which the student would need to be for the school year. So, they have filed a federal lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
When news broke about the lawsuit, Fox25 in Boston found me through Senate Bill 1222 and asked if they could come to my home for an interview. I taught the journalist and cameraman about EMFs and used an Acoustimeter to demonstrate how much radiation comes out of our everyday devices and routers. I walked them through the BioInitiative Report. I showed them Harvard's Captured Agency report that details how the FCC is protecting corporate profits over public health.
They said that evening's story would just be a two-minute piece on the Fay School, but the journalist wanted to talk to her network about doing a bigger story on wireless radiation. Below is the Fay School story that ran (note, when I have looked at this clip, I have to sit through advertisements first. Often they are from telecom companies, or others pitching wireless services. I also have to adjust the mute/volume buttons to hear the clip):
http://www.myfoxboston.com/news/parents-say-schools-wifi-signal-making-son-sick/7363472
I noticed right away they did not reference credible science. Instead, they used a 2014 draft document of 16 inconclusive studies instead of the BioInitiative Report. They also reported the school has "safe levels" of radiation exposure, yet there have never been safe levels set by the FCC, just levels indicating at what exposure tissue heating occurs. That thermal-effect is obsolete since science has proven biological harm at the non-thermal level but the FCC has not updated its standards to mirror the science.
I have since looped back in with the journalist to see if she pitched the EMF story to her network, and she said she had, a couple of times, but there didn't seem to be any interest. I let her know the influence of advertising dollars was the likely reason why.
Scientific American wrote the following article titled, "How the FDA Manipulates the Media": https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-fda-manipulates-the-media/
There is hope though. California was sued to release a long-suppressed public health fact sheet on cell phone radiation, and in December 2017 CBS Evening News covered the story although they did not inform the public that all wireless devices, not just phones, come with similar fine print: http://www.cbs.com/shows/cbs_evening_news/video/_jQJ5tcCsj5o8qcZbBUBQS5R20mkRaYP/california-to-set-guidelines-limiting-cellphone-radiation-exposure/
In 2019 Forbes began reporting on the biological risks with an article entitled, "An Electromagnetic Health Crisis": https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/09/09/an-electromagnetic-health-crisis/amp/?fbclid=IwAR2Jyzhdd2eSkK91GN9b7jMvgKRoStBjSwHYYsHVPItev-SNSEDMAJ5Xl-g
Professor Tom Butler of University College Cork filed a complaint with the Office of the Press Ombudsman for the Press Council of Ireland about a cell phone story written by William Broad for The New York Times (William J. Broad, "The 5G Health Hazard That Isn't;" New York Times, July 16, 2019) and reprinted by The Irish Times (William J. Broad, "Are there any real links between wireless technology and health?," September 5, 2019).
The Press Ombudsman concluded that the Broad story violated the truth and accuracy code of practice of the Press Council of Ireland.
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/professor-tom-butler-and-the-irish-times-1.4164003
Dr. Devra Davis reveals the NYT has conflicts of interest with industry and clarifies important 5G facts that Mr. Broad got wrong in his article:
https://medium.com/swlh/5g-the-unreported-global-threat-717c98c9c37d
So, since we may not fully be informed by mainstream media of potential harm from wireless technology, it is up to each of us to educate ourselves on what the non-industry funded scientists are telling us, and take action accordingly in our own homes and communities.
Note: The information provided here is publicly available on the Internet.
It is intended to provide a starting point to inform you of EMF dangers.
Please do your own research, draw your own conclusions, and act accordingly to protect those you love.