Guidance to governments, legislators, environmental organizations, schools, and religious, political and community leaders. If your organization wishes to join in supporting this brief, please email us.

Key Points The study of electricity should be restored to biology and medicine. Personal wireless communication must be phased out because the radiation that carries all the messages is destroying life on earth. Mobile phones must be replaced with landline phones, WiFi with ethernet cables, and other wireless consumer devices with devices connected by wires and cables. Mobile phone antennas and masts must be phased out and removed. Wireless technology must be removed from vehicles. Smart meters must be replaced with analog meters. Smart highways, smart cities, and the Internet of Things must cease being developed and deployed. Radar stations must be limited in number, location and power. Radar (microwave) ovens should not be used for heating food. An international treaty on electrosmog, addressing radiation on land, in the oceans, and in space, must be drafted. Introduction

Electrosmog is the totality of the electric fields, magnetic fields, and electromagnetic radiation that bathes us 24/7 from all electrical and electronic devices, electric wires, power lines, and wireless devices and antennas. With wired communication, information is transmitted via the wires, and the electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and radiation are unintentional. Proper engineering can reduce these unwanted fields and radiation to a minimum.

By contrast, with wireless communication, the radiation is the product. Radiation substitutes for wires in transmitting information. Wireless means radiation. The ability to use a mobile device everywhere on earth means that every square meter of the earth must be irradiated at all times. Mobile devices operate in the microwave spectrum, with the result that the entire planet is now swimming in a sea of microwave radiation that is millions to billions of times stronger than the radiation from the sun and stars with which life evolved (1).

Life is based not only on chemistry but more fundamentally on electricity (2, 3). The unimpeded flow of electrons is essential to the functioning of our nerves, heart, and metabolism (3). Interference with these electric currents causes neurological diseases, heart disease, metabolic diseases such as diabetes, and cancer (4). Organisms that have a very high metabolism, such as bees and other insects, are being wiped out (5, 6). Thousands of studies document the devastating effects of wireless radiation on mammals, birds, insects, amphibians, and forests (7).

Because EMFs are not a foreign substance to living beings, a toxicology model does not apply and there is not a dose response: reducing the power does not reduce the effect. Even a signal that is almost immeasurably weak can interfere with normal biological functioning (8). “While the dose rate/SAR concept is adequate for description of acute thermal effects, it is not applicable for chronic exposures to N[on]T[hermal] M[icro]W[aves].” (9). Even at near-zero power levels, microwave radiation has been found to change the structure of DNA (10) and alter brain waves (11). Some studies have even found an inverse dose response. When the power of the radiation was reduced 1000-fold, damage to the blood-brain barrier increased (12). A review of 113 studies found that radiation with the lowest power tended to cause the greatest ecological damage (5). In another review of 108 experimental studies, a lower exposure level tended to have a greater biological effect, and the difference was highly significant (p < 0.001) (13).

The damage done to our health and our world by wireless devices and their infrastructure is caused not only by the microwave carrier frequencies, but also by the low-frequency modulation and pulsations that carry the transmitted information. “Thus modulation can be considered as information content embedded in the higher frequency carrier wave that may have health consequences beyond any effect from the carrier wave directly” (14). No matter what the carrier wave, the modulation is the same because it has to carry the same information. Therefore using light as the carrier wave, as is being done over short distances with LiFi, or using sound as the carrier wave, as is being done in the oceans, does not reduce the harm.

The finding that only a single two-hour exposure to a mobile phone during their lifetime, even when the power of the phone was reduced 100-fold, caused permanent brain damage in young rats (15) makes it likely that we are raising, and perhaps have already raised, a generation of children with brain damage. There is no question but that this must cease, and that cell phones are not safe at any power level, at any distance from the head, and for any duration.

Purpose of This Document

This policy brief provides an overview of an immediate threat to life on earth—even more immediate than climate change—that has been allowed to get completely out of control because it has been completely ignored. The source of the threat is a technology to which everyone has become addicted, and which, during the past two and a half decades, has become firmly entrenched in every aspect of life. Although more scientific studies have been published on the health and environmental effects of EMFs than on almost any other pollutant except for mercury and tobacco smoke, the impact of all this research upon public policy to date has been zero. Average citizens still do not even know that a mobile device emits radiation. Much less do they suspect that it is causing them brain damage or threatening their life and their future on this planet. The purpose of this brief is to outline actions that are required to be taken by political leaders, religious leaders, environmental organizations, public schools, medical schools and doctors to educate the public and to begin to dismantle this existential threat to the earth.

Essential Actions Required by National and International Leaders and Organizations

I. An International Treaty or Convention on Electrosmog must be adopted by all nations

The number of antennas and their distance from people

Low-radiation reserve on Texel Island, early June 2023

SEA BIRDS’ LAST REFUGES

All over the Earth, birds — symbols of freedom and joy — have been disappearing, and unless we stop killing them, they will never more enliven our skies and imaginations. They are terns, seagulls, avocets, gannets, skuas, guillemots, puffins, oystercatchers, ducks, geese, godwits, pheasants, magpies, sanderlings, storks, cranes, pelicans, herons, swans, loons, sparrows, pigeons, red-winged blackbirds, owls, cormorants, grebes, dunlins, crows, ravens, bald eagles, hawks, falcons, vultures, all of them vanishing from the landscapes of our homes, forests, sea coasts and minds. It rarely makes the news, and a world grown accustomed to ever-dwindling resources and diminishing life has not been paying attention. The warning of a Silent Spring, sounded sixty years ago like a trumpet’s blare, has shrunken from a year-round emergency to the almost-meaningless ritual of Earth Day, celebrated just once a year.

But last spring, during May and June, the world was awakened to shocking tales and heart-rending photographs of dead seabirds littering their breeding grounds all over the Northern Hemisphere, nowhere so vividly as in the De Petten Nature Reserve on the island of Texel in the Netherlands, where the corpses of Sandwich terns littered the ground as if they had fallen dead out of the sky in mid-flight:

Texel Island, early June 2022

Ornithologists and bird conservation organizations, reflexively, said to themselves and the world, “This must be bird flu,” and they dressed in hazmat suits and masks as they wandered among the avian graveyards with their specimen collectors and testing equipment, while ignoring obvious signs to the contrary. Bird flu, they pronounced, is so contagious and deadly that it travels round the world in days, spreads like water between species, and kills entire colonies in weeks. While ignoring the fact that two Dutch colonies of Sandwich terns just 20 miles apart during the same breeding season had completely different outcomes: Waterdunen, whose 7,000 nesting birds were completely wiped out, and Yerseke Moer, whose smaller colony suffered zero mortality. That in France, 3,000 Sandwich terns at Platier d’Oye were entirely killed while thousands of pairs of Sandwich terns at Polder de Sébastopol had no disease at all. That bird flu was an autumn and winter disease and had never before been known to occur in spring or summer. And that it had never before affected so many different kinds of birds at once.

But this was not “bird flu”, it was radiation sickness from cell towers, as documented in my newsletter of July 28, 2022. Eighteen new 4G antennas had been added to three cell towers located at De Petten, within the territory where the birds were breeding, just days before they began dying. And a large number of other antennas and towers were aimed at the reserve from across a busy shipping lane whose traffic made heavy use of those antennas. While Yerseke Moer is host to no cell towers, has far fewer antennas aimed at it, and is in an isolated location, not near a major port, and not on a shipping lane.

Similarly, in France, dozens of new 4G and 5G antennas had just been added to towers near and at the reserve at Platier d’Oye, located near the port of Calais, while the Polder de Sébastopol is on an isolated island with no towers, few human residents or visitors and far from any shipping traffic.

One year later

In August 2022, researchers were astonished to find that 600 pairs of Sandwich terns — at least some of whom had come from the colonies that had been wiped out — had decided to try again so late in the season. They laid their eggs and raised at least 300 young birds, successfully, during July and August in a new location on Texel Island, a beach at the Prince Hendrik Sand Dike, owned by the water authority, Hoogheemraadschap Hollands Noorderkwartier (HHNK). And this spring in 2023, the Prince Hendrik Sand Dike is filled with almost 3,000 breeding pairs of Sandwich terns, while a second reserve — the island of De Bliek in the Haringvliet — has more than 2,000 breeding pairs. These two colonies, and five smaller colonies, total about half the number of Sandwich terns of previous years. They are thriving, but all of last spring’s disastrous breeding grounds, many of which had been the breeding grounds for this species for years or decades, have been abandoned. “It is striking: the areas with colonies that were heavily affected by bird flu last year remained vacant this year, including those of Waterdunen (ZL), Wagejot and De Petten on Texel (NH), Griend and De Putten near Camperduin (NH)”, wrote Ruud van Beusekom of Vogelbescherming Nederland (BirdLife Netherlands) on June 5, 2023.

Now everyone is assuming that the birds nesting successfully this year have acquired immunity from the H5N1 influenza virus. But the areas chosen this year by the Sandwich terns are lower-radiation areas. The Prince Hendrik Sand Dike, the only breeding ground for these birds this year on the island of Texel, is the quietest, least visited beach on the island. The nearest antennas are about 3 kilometers away, and because of the small number of visitors and ships they are little used and emit little radiation. Likewise De Bliek, in the Haringvliet, is an island with no people and no antennas in a closed waterway visited by few ships.

Another anomaly not explained by researchers is the fact that removing all dead birds from the colonies last year increased mortality: “Last year it appeared that collecting carcasses in colonies has a negative effect on the further spread of bird flu,” wrote Odessa Langeveld on May 12 of this year. In other words, leaving virus-infected carcasses to rot on the breeding grounds decreased the spread of the disease, while removing them increased its spread. But no one is considering that the teams of workers removing the carcasses on a daily basis were all

Diana Kordas is a naturalist living on the island of Samos in Greece. She has been recording her observations about animal and plant life there since the 1990s. Since 2017 she has published detailed observations of the stages of decline of bird life, insect life, and forests on Samos and throughout Greece that have accompanied the stages of development of wireless communications, from 2G to 5G:

Birds and Trees of Northern Greece: Population Declines since the Advent of 4G Wireless: An Observational Study. October 5, 2017 https://cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/BirdsTreesNorthGreece.pdf

5G towers cause massive insect decline on the Greek island of Samos, February 22, 2022 https://cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/5G-causes-massive-insect-declines-on-Samos.pdf

Update to 5G cell towers cause massive insect decline on the Greek island of Samos, July 29, 2022 https://cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Update-5G-Insect-Declines-Samos.pdf

How to Kill at Wetland, May 19, 2023

https://cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/How-to-Kill-a-Wetland.pdf

DNA and Developmental Damage from Cell Towers on the Greek Island of Samos: Effects on Insects, Flowers and Vegetables, February 8, 2024

https://cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Cell-Towers-Cause-DNA-and-Developmental-Damage-Samos-2024-1.pdf

NUMBER OF OPERATING SATELLITES PASSES 7,000 

On the evening of Thursday, December 8, 2022, OneWeb launched 40 satellites from Cape Canaveral, Florida, bringing the total number of active satellites in orbit around the Earth to more than 7,000. These cell towers in space are altering the electromagnetic environment of the entire planet and are debilitating and exterminating all life on it.

Even the first fleet of 28 military satellites launched by the United States caused a worldwide pandemic of influenza when they became operational on June 13, 1968. The Hong Kong flu began in June 1968, lasted through April 1970, and killed up to four million people worldwide. To understand why requires a proper understanding of our connection to the universe and what it is that really gives us life and health, and makes our bodies move. In a sense, we are all puppets on invisible strings that connect us to heaven and earth, strings that resonate at the age-old frequencies of the biosphere in which we live, the space between Earth and Sky, whose dimensions never change. And when we modulate and pulsate those strings at random from thousands of locations in space, we change the beautiful music of the earthly orchestra into a discordant chaos that scatters bodies all over the world, helpless before it.

On March 24-25, 2021, the chaos was brought to a new level, that the world now accepts as normal. In that 24-hour period, a record 96 satellites were launched into space on a single day—60 by SpaceX and 36 by OneWeb—and on the same day SpaceX dramatically increased the speed of its satellite internet connections. On that day, people all over the world suddenly could not sleep, were weak and exhausted, had muscle spasms, and hurt and itched all over, especially in their feet and legs. They had skin rashes, were dizzy and nauseous, and had stomach aches and diarrhea. The ringing in their ears was suddenly amplified. Their eyes were inflamed, and their vision suddenly worsened. They had heart arrhythmias, and their blood pressure went out of control. Some had nosebleeds, or coughed up blood. They were anxious, depressed or suicidal, and irritable. Their cats, dogs, chickens, goats and cows were sick at the same time.

My newsletter of April 15, 2021, Survey Results, quoted from some of the thousand letters I received from people young and old, from people who called themselves electrosensitive and from people who did not, from people who had no wireless technology and from people who had smart meters and 5G antennas outside their homes and who emailed me from their cell phones, all reporting the same experiences, commonly reporting that not only they, but their spouse, children, parents, neighbors, friends, coworkers, clients, and everyone else they knew were sick, exhausted and irritable on March 24 or 25 and had trouble sleeping. The reports came from 42 states and 50 countries.

Deaths of blue titmice spiked in Germany beginning on March 25, 2021. March 25 registered the second highest number of COVID-19 deaths in 2021, and the fifth highest since the pandemic began. The number of mass shootings in the US rose suddenly on March 25 and remained high for three weeks. An average of 6 shootings involving 4 or more victims occurred every day between March 25 and April 13. Photographs of hundreds of worms, and of hundreds of sheep, moving silently in perfect spirals, were taken on March 25 and March 26.

Long-term pain, sickness, and debility has become so common that it is now accepted as a normal part of life that the world thinks it can address with endless vaccinations, mask-wearing, and the wiping of all hands and surfaces with toxic disinfectants.

Last week, on December 8, 2022, on the day OneWeb launched satellites that will expand its coverage across the US, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, I experienced within my body, and heard from some other people both locally and far away that the pains and debilities from which we have been suffering at some level for the past 20 months suddenly intensified. I was almost crippled for three days. As on March 24-25, 2021, I would like to find out how widespread this is. Please reply to this email if you have experienced something similar. 

Although SpaceX and OneWeb are (so far) building the largest fleets of Earth-destroying satellites, they are far from the only entities launching them. The 7,000 satellites presently operating were launched by governments or private companies of the following countries:

Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, European Space Agency, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait,  Laos, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, Morocco, Multinational, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam

And they were launched from the following spaceports:

Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakhstan) Cape Canaveral (Florida, USA) Dombarovsky Air Base (Russia) Guiana Space Center (French Guiana) Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (Inner Mongolia, China) Kodiak Launch Complex (Alaska, USA) Kwajalein Island (Marshall Islands) Naro Space Center (South Korea) Pacific Ocean (from Odyssey Sea Launch vessel) Palmachim Launch Complex (Israel) Plesetsk Cosmodrome (Russia) Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 (New Zealand) Satish Dhawan Space Centre (India) Shahroud Missile Range (Iran) Svobodny Cosmodrome (Russia) Taiyuan Launch Center (China) Tanegashima Space Center (Japan) Uchinoura Space Center (Japan) Vandenberg Air Force Base (California, USA) Vostochny Cosmodrome (Russia) Wallops Island Flight Facility (Virginia, USA) Wenchang Satellite Launch Center (China) Xichang Satellite Launch Center (China) Yellow Sea (from a mobile sea platform) 

 Other Satellite News European IRIS Satellites

The European Union just got into the act with its own program to

view as PDF: in English en français auf Deutsch en español

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS What is wireless technology?

Wireless technology is any means of sending information or energy through space without wires. It includes:

satellites, radar, radio, television, cell towers, cell phones, cordless phones, microwave ovens smart meters, WiFi, Bluetooth, fitness trackers, smart watches, baby monitors wireless keyboards, mice, printers, headphones and speakers, wireless security systems, wireless car keys, wireless garage door openers, wireless battery chargers, remote controls, wireless microphones RFID chips in credit cards and driver’s licenses, radio collars and chips in wildlife, cattle and pets, chips in home appliances wireless hearing aids, assistive listening devices, medical alert pendants, chips in medical implants, wireless pacemakers autonomous vehicles, drones, and robots numerous other radio-enabled devices that are proliferating in today’s world

Every one of these devices, without exception, emits radiation.

What’s wrong with wireless technology?

By substituting radiation for wires, we are swimming in an ocean of artificial electromagnetic fields that are interfering with life itself. We are in effect electrocuting ourselves, our children, our pets, the insects, birds, animals, trees and plants around us and all of living creation. We are killing our planet.

This is about long-term exposure, right? Cancer that takes years to develop?

No. The effects are rapid. Heart rate changes immediately. Blood sugar rises in minutes. Having wireless devices on in your house interferes with your sleep and your memory. Using a cell phone destroys brain cells in minutes to hours, and can cause a stroke or a heart attack. Studies show that even cancer can develop within months of first exposure. When a cell tower is turned on, birds leave the area immediately. Insects disappear. Even slugs and snails vanish. Most of this takes no time at all.

What types of radiation are used in wireless technology?

All frequencies of radio waves, microwaves, infrared radiation, visible light, lasers, sound waves, even nuclear radiation. Most home devices use microwaves.

Isn’t microwave radiation natural? Don’t microwaves come from the sun and stars?

Almost all the radiation we receive from the universe is the light and heat from the sun, not microwave radiation. The microwave radiation a person receives from an average cell tower is millions of times stronger than all the microwave radiation from the sun and stars. The microwave radiation a person’s brain receives from their cell phone is billions of times stronger than the microwave radiation from the sun and stars. And at any particular frequency it is trillions of times stronger than the microwave radiation he or she receives from the sun and stars at that frequency. And the faint microwaves from the sun and stars are not pulsed and modulated. It is the pulsations and modulation that cause much of the harm.

Aren’t light and microwaves both electromagnetic? Therefore isn’t microwave radiation safe?

No. That is like saying arsenic is safe because oxygen and arsenic are both elements, or that cyanide is safe because water and cyanide are both chemicals. But oxygen and water are necessary for life, while arsenic and cyanide are deadly poisons. It is the same with electromagnetic radiation. Visible light is necessary for life. Microwave radiation is a deadly poison.

Aren’t toxic chemicals more harmful than electromagnetic radiation?

Electromagnetism is more complex and more fundamental than chemistry. Electromagnetism shapes the sun and stars. Electromagnetism animates life. Electromagnetism is behind chemistry. There is no “chemical force” in the universe. Outside of atomic nuclei, there is only gravity and electromagnetism. Electromagnetism guides everything we see, including ourselves. Chemistry is an effect, not a cause.

Can’t we find safe frequencies? Won’t that solve the problem?

That is looking at both wireless technology and life too simplistically.

Most wireless technology has only one goal: to transmit information to computers, information of great complexity and variety. It is not simple, constant radiation of one amplitude and one frequency: such radiation would carry no information. Instead, it is multiple large frequency bands, each divided into hundreds, thousands, and millions of individual frequencies of all different bandwidths, overlapping and interacting, pulsed at an enormous variety of intervals, in an enormous variety of shapes, patterns and durations, all over the world. Even a single signal from a single device has a variety of amplitudes, frequencies and pulsations, and is modulated in complex ways in order to carry all the information needed to be read by a cell phone or computer.

Life has to also carry an enormous, almost infinite complexity of information in its nervous systems and its meridians, and to store and process this information in its cells, organs and chakras, and in its DNA which is shared and circulated among trillions of individuals of 50 million different species, all connected to one another and to the earth, sky and universe in a grand circuit of energy and information.

The artificial cloud of energy and information is interfering with, overpowering and destroying the natural, living circuitry of energy and information. It cannot be otherwise.

What about LiFi? If light is safe, why not use light instead of microwaves?

Light is a nutrient. We absorb it with our eyes, and into our blood. It is necessary for health. It regulates our biorhythms. Green plants need it for photosynthesis. We absorb more of the pulsations and modulation frequencies when they are carried into our bodies by light than when they are carried into our bodies by microwaves. LiFi is more harmful to life than WiFi.

Cell phones are much smaller than cell towers. Doesn’t that mean they are safer? Doesn’t it mean the radiation does not travel as far?

Cell phones and cell towers emit the same radiation; size has nothing to do with it. The main difference is that a cell tower emits as many signals simultaneously as there are cell phones communicating with it at that time, whereas a cell phone only emits one voice channel and one data channel. A cell tower therefore emits stronger

Note: On March 4, 2022, the Supreme Court refused to hear our case. Below are the briefs that were filed, and a review of what we were requesting.

Briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court

Petition for Writ of Certiorari, October 25, 2021: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-629/196710/20211025140205639_Santa%20Fe%20Alliance%20Petition.pdf

Reply to City of Santa Fe and United States of America, February 10, 2022: http://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-629/213870/20220210153648714_21-629.%20Santa%20Fe.%20Reply.pdf

Amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief, filed on behalf of 289 organizations and 34 individuals from 34 states and 29 countries: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-629/201178/20211123153745013_41714%20pdf%20Gregory%20br.pdf

Summary of our case

The Santa Fe Alliance for Public Health and Safety filed a petition On October 25, 2021 asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on a threat to the existence of this country, and this world.

In 1996, Congress passed a law that permitted the pollution of every square inch of this country with microwave radiation. The polluters – telecommuni­cations companies — were exempted from all liability for injury, death and property damage. Cities and states were forbidden to protect their citizens. State courts were prohibited from hearing lawsuits. The millions of people injured, killed, and deprived of their income and property by cell towers and antennas have had no remedy for their injuries, deaths and losses.

The law that accomplished this destruction of our country is the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Section 704 of that law states:

“No State or local government or instrumentality thereof may regulate the placement, construction, and modification of personal wireless service facilities on the basis of the environmental effects of radio frequency emissions to the extent that such facilities comply with the Commission’s regulations concerning such emissions.”

The “Commission” is the Federal Communications Commission, which has no authority over health or environment, and does not even have the power to enforce its own regulations concerning microwave (also called radio frequency) radiation. The result of Section 704 is that no one has been protecting our country, our citizens, and our environment from this radiation for the past 25 years — not the FCC, not the states, not the cities, and not the courts.

The advent of 5G technology has brought this situation to a crisis. Like many other cities, Santa Fe, New Mexico passed an ordinance exempting antennas in the public rights-of-way from all land use requirements, and in 2018, franchises were awarded to five telecommunications companies to place cell towers and antennas anywhere they please in the streets and on the sidewalks of Santa Fe. The Santa Fe Alliance for Public Health and Safety immediately filed a lawsuit in federal district court. That lawsuit is now before the highest court of the land.

We asked the Supreme Court to rule on two related questions:

1. Does Section 704 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 violate the right of access to courts guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution?

2. Does “environmental effects” mean “health effects” in Section 704?

History

During the 1950s clinics were established in Moscow, Leningrad, and other cities in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to study and treat thousands of workers suffering from a new occupational disease. It was named radio wave sickness. These patients manufactured, inspected, repaired or operated microwave equipment. Some worked at radar facilities, others for radio or TV stations, or telephone companies. Still others operated radio frequency heaters and sealers being used in an expanding number of industries using technology developed during World War II.

The patients at these clinics suffered from headaches, fatigue, weakness, sleep disturbance, irritability, dizziness, memory difficulty, sexual dysfunction, skin rash, hair loss, decreased appetite, indigestion, and occasionally sensitivity to sunlight. Some had heart palpitations, stabbing pains in the region of the heart, and shortness of breath after exertion. Many developed emotional instability, anxiety or depression, and a few had mania or paranoia.

On physical exam they had acrocyanosis (blue fingers and toes), decreased sensitivity to odors, sweating, tremors, altered reflexes, unequal pupil size, heart arrhythmias, and unstable pulse and blood pressure. They had abnormal EEGs and EKGs and, in advanced stages, signs of oxygen deprivation to the heart and brain. Some developed cataracts. Blood work showed hyperactive thyroid, elevated histamine, elevated blood sugar, elevated cholesterol and triglycerides, an increase in blood proteins, a decrease in the albumin-globulin ratio, decreased platelets and red blood cells, and abnormally high or low white blood cell count.

Although only about 15% of microwave workers complained of their illness, and only 2% ceased working (Sadchikova 1960, Klimková-Deutschová 1973), laboratory work revealed abnormalities in the majority of workers. Blood cholesterol was elevated in 40% of microwave workers (Klimkova-Deutschova 1974), triglycerides were elevated in 63% (Sadchikova et al. 1980), fasting blood sugar was increased in 74% (Klimkova-Deutschova 1974), and 70% had abnormal thyroid activity. Objective cardiac changes were found in 18% to 35% of microwave workers, depending on the length of time worked.

These workers were exposed to microwave radiation only during working hours. And they were exposed to levels of radiation that were less than what the general public is exposed to now for hours per day, or even all the time, from cell phone and wireless Internet technologies.

Because of the large number of publications about radio wave sickness coming out of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, a US/USSR scientific exchange on microwave radiation research was begun in the mid-1970s. And the US government contracted with Dr. Zorach Glaser to catalogue the world scientific literature—journal articles, books, conference proceedings—on reported biological and health effects of radio frequency and microwave radiation. By the end of the 1970s, Glaser’s bibliography included 5,083 documents (Glaser 1984).

Also during the 1960s and 1970s, ophthalmol­ogist Milton Zaret, under contract with the Army and the Air Force, examined the eyes of thousands of military and civilian personnel working at radar installations in the US and Greenland. Large numbers of them, he found, were developing cataracts. Most of these cataracts were caused by chronic exposure of the eye to radiation at power densities around one milliwatt per square centimeter—a level which is regularly exceeded by each of the eight billion cell phones in use today (Birenbaum et al. 1969; Zaret 1973).

During those years American biologist Allan Frey discovered that microwave radiation damages the blood-brain barrier (Frey et al. 1975), and he proved that humans and animals can hear microwaves (Frey 1961). One of the most active American researchers during the 1960s and 1970s, Frey caused rats to become docile by irradiating them at a power density of 50 microwatts per square centimeter (Frey and Spector 1976). He altered specific behaviors at 8 microwatts per square centimeter (Frey and Wesler 1979). He altered the heart rate of live frogs at 3 microwatts per square centimeter (Frey 1970). At only 0.6 microwatts per square centimeter, 100 times less than levels commonly encountered today at a normal operating distance from a wireless laptop, he caused frogs’ hearts to develop arrhythmias, and sometimes caused the hearts to stop beating, by timing the microwave pulses at a precise point during the heart’s rhythm (Frey and Seifert 1968).

In 1977 Paul Brodeur, in his book, The Zapping of America, warned that proliferating microwave towers and radar facilities were endangering public health. But compared to today, microwave and radio facilities were still very rare indeed.

When in 1977 Apple sold its first personal computers, exposure to high levels of electromagnetic radiation spread to the general population, and electromagnetic illness ceased being only an occupational disease. In that year deaths from asthma in the US, which had been declining steadily for decades, began to rise for the first time.

In 1981, Representative Al Gore chaired the first of a number of Congressional hearings on the health effects of video display terminals (VDTs). These were held because two editors at The New York Times, young men in their 20s and 30s, had developed cataracts; half of all surveyed UPI and AP employees were complaining of visual problems or headaches; an unusual number of babies with birth defects had been born to employees at The Toronto Star; and clusters of miscar­riages were occurring among female VDT operators all over the U.S. and Canada.

The newspaper industry had been the earliest industry to be transformed by computer technol­ogy. During the 1981 hearings by the House Committee on Science and Technology, Charles A. Perlik, Jr., president of the Newspaper Guild, testified that had his member­ship known that VDTs were capable of dangerous emissions, “We would not have quietly permitted the transformation of an essentially benign workplace into a hazardous one.”[1] In 1985 Canadian author Bob DeMatteo published a popular book titled Terminal Shock: The Health Hazards of Video Display Terminals.

In the mid-1980s Olle Johansson, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, discovered a new skin disease. Since only people who worked in front of computer screens got it, he named it screen dermatitis. Such patients