{"id":"HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639","name":"Joel Wright","organization":"","posted":"2026-10-20T04:00Z","received":"2026-10-14T04:00Z","body":"My name is Joel Wright. I am in my 20s and am a U.S. citizen. At 18, I began suffering extreme health complications which I believe are directly caused by exposure to modern telecommunications equipment. I ask HHS to research the biology of my condition and set conservative emissions standards to protect future generations and allow people like me to rejoin society. I offer my testimony for any official proceedings. \n\nMy hypothesis is simple: current ambient levels of non-ionizing radiation are unsafe. The environmental levels of ten years ago were high enough to collapse my health, and they have only intensified in the years since.\n\nThe collapse was sudden and violent. I started college and a small business at 14; at 16 I earned Eagle Scout; at 18 I had a top ACT score. Yet, within months of graduating high school in 2017, that life ended. Bedridden, I suffered from agonizing neurological pain, memory loss, chronic fatigue, and extreme muscle spasms, among other symptoms. At times, I lost the ability to speak and walk. I was forced to abandon a full ride scholarship.\n\nWe discovered in 2020 that the world’s most powerful technology was destroying my young body. There was no escape; the dangerous radiation emanates from homes, vehicles and every person’s purse or pants pocket. When the COVID lockdowns began and people fled an invisible virus, I fled invisible radiation, isolating from society in search of respite. The world adapted and reopened, but I persist in my lockdown. \n\nMy current health comes at enormous cost. Until six months ago, this meant near-total isolation. I left home perhaps twice a year. I could not even attend church. The life my peers never consider, walking into a store, sitting in a crowd, carrying a phone, is for me a series of calculated risks. I follow strict regimens of diet and medication, controlling for stressors down to caffeine and sugar. \n\nEven now, visitors must leave their phones at the door, a request which I know sounds unreasonable, costing me standing each time I ask. Maintaining my dignity spends that same dignity in the eyes of others; to be young without a phone is unthinkable. It has cost me opportunities, friendships, dating, and my youth, all spent trying to heal. My condition is doubted not because of contradictory evidence, but because for decades agencies like the HHS and FCC declined to study whether this exposure is safe.\n\nRF exposure is nearly inescapable. I can leave a building, but I cannot control what passes through its walls into my body. Radio frequencies are integrated into everything, leaving no room for choice. Whatever the truth, this exposure has been imposed for decades - untested, unquestioned and ubiquitous. That is what I am asking HHS to change.\n\nThe scientific case is stronger than ever.\n\nFor decades, inaction rested on one claim: fields too weak to heat tissue could not affect us. That no longer holds. In 2026, a CRISPR screen identified a protein, Cyb5b, that transduces electromagnetic fields into cellular calcium oscillations through a voltage-gated calcium channel (Hwang 2026), confirming a mechanism proposed years earlier (Pall 2013). These fields act on cells without heating them, and calcium signaling governs DNA repair, oxidative balance, and cell death. A field that reliably disturbs it is biologically active, with a threshold where its effect becomes harm.\n\nThis harm does not require extreme exposure. At the low environmental levels of everyday life, below federal limits, RF induces oxidative stress - a driver of inflammation and cellular damage - and disrupts a vertebrate nervous system (Yakymenko 2016; Engels 2014; ICBE-EMF 2022). Yet FCC limits still assume only heating can harm, a premise a federal court found inadequately justified (EHT v. FCC 2021).\n\nThe gap is widest for developing bodies. In-utero exposure altered neurodevelopment in animals, dose-dependently (Aldad 2012); birth cohorts link prenatal exposure to childhood behavioral problems (Divan 2008); and in nearly 700 adolescents, cumulative RF brain dose tracked reduced memory development (Foerster 2018)-consistent with children absorbing more RF, more deeply, than adults (Gandhi 2012). Limits built on brief adult-animal tests cannot be assumed to protect a brain developing from birth.\n\nThese conditions-below the limits, over a lifetime, from childhood-remain unstudied. I ask HHS to fund the mechanistic and long-latency research they demand, before exposure grows. \n\nI can comment only because I recovered, a rare gift. The comments HHS receives come from those well enough to find and respond to this request. Those still bedridden and impaired, as I was, cannot respond. I’ve included health journals from before I suspected RF, untainted by expectation, to show the truth. I survived as much by luck as by effort. I am asking HHS to act so that survival is not left to chance, to act so people like me and those still trapped, unable to speak, may live once more.","source_hash":"61305602a645b7d710cf48661408056a45001170478a8d41f803fc7db0c27f60","filing_type":"","proceedings":"","captured_at":"","source_name":"","number":"3639","withheld":false,"attachment_inventory":true,"capture_reviewed":false,"source":"https://www.regulations.gov/comment/HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639","slug":"child-development-comment-3639","tags":[],"attachments":["https://downloads.regulations.gov/HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639/attachment_1.pdf","https://downloads.regulations.gov/HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639/attachment_3.pdf","https://downloads.regulations.gov/HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639/attachment_2.pdf"],"attachment_names":{"https://downloads.regulations.gov/HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639/attachment_1.pdf":"JWright_HealthJournal_Redacted_2026_FNL_Pt1","https://downloads.regulations.gov/HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639/attachment_3.pdf":"JWright_HHS_RFStatement_Scientific_References_FNL","https://downloads.regulations.gov/HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639/attachment_2.pdf":"JWright_HealthJournal_Redacted_2026_FNL_Pt2"},"classification":{"id":"HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639","body_sha256":"91ec57b66d46b0365bc755a9a84b00316fccac103cf2e5e83a7397d78da9fc27","status":"ai_reviewed","primary_topic":"research","topics":[{"id":"research","evidence":"to modern telecommunications equipment. I ask HHS to research the biology of my condition and set conservative emissions "},{"id":"access","evidence":" cost. Until six months ago, this meant near-total isolation. I left home perhaps twice a year. I could not even attend "},{"id":"neurological","evidence":"d. Bedridden, I suffered from agonizing neurological pain, memory loss, chronic fatigue, and extreme muscle spasms, among other sy"},{"id":"standards","evidence":"rch the biology of my condition and set conservative emissions standards to protect future generations and allow people like me to r"},{"id":"mechanisms","evidence":" transduces electromagnetic fields into cellular calcium oscillations through a voltage-gated calcium channel (Hwang 2026), confi"},{"id":"children","evidence":"HT v. FCC 2021).\n\nThe gap is widest for developing bodies. In-utero exposure altered neurodevelopment in animals, dos"},{"id":"reproductive","evidence":"dently (Aldad 2012); birth cohorts link prenatal exposure to childhood behavioral problems (Divan 2008); and in nearl"}],"summary":"The commenter attributes disabling symptoms and years of isolation to telecommunications exposure, discusses proposed non-thermal mechanisms and developmental effects, and requests HHS research and conservative emissions standards.","reviewed_at":"2026-10-20T21:58:43Z","review_method":"Full comment-text review; neutral attributed summaries and exact supporting passages.","review_source_sha256":"1636a03906bb9bd33b0885504d9bb38be850f505b1e53113d6b7904b9689eefe","source_url":"https://rfsafe.net/hhs-comments/data/catalog.json","scope":"Original comment body; attachments excluded"},"supplied_classification":{"id":"HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639","body_sha256":"91ec57b66d46b0365bc755a9a84b00316fccac103cf2e5e83a7397d78da9fc27","status":"ai_reviewed","primary_topic":"research","topics":[{"id":"research","evidence":"to modern telecommunications equipment. I ask HHS to research the biology of my condition and set conservative emissions "},{"id":"access","evidence":" cost. Until six months ago, this meant near-total isolation. I left home perhaps twice a year. I could not even attend "},{"id":"neurological","evidence":"d. Bedridden, I suffered from agonizing neurological pain, memory loss, chronic fatigue, and extreme muscle spasms, among other sy"},{"id":"standards","evidence":"rch the biology of my condition and set conservative emissions standards to protect future generations and allow people like me to r"},{"id":"mechanisms","evidence":" transduces electromagnetic fields into cellular calcium oscillations through a voltage-gated calcium channel (Hwang 2026), confi"},{"id":"children","evidence":"HT v. FCC 2021).\n\nThe gap is widest for developing bodies. In-utero exposure altered neurodevelopment in animals, dos"},{"id":"reproductive","evidence":"dently (Aldad 2012); birth cohorts link prenatal exposure to childhood behavioral problems (Divan 2008); and in nearl"}],"summary":"The commenter attributes disabling symptoms and years of isolation to telecommunications exposure, discusses proposed non-thermal mechanisms and developmental effects, and requests HHS research and conservative emissions standards.","reviewed_at":"2026-10-20T21:58:43Z","review_method":"Full comment-text review; neutral attributed summaries and exact supporting passages.","review_source_sha256":"1636a03906bb9bd33b0885504d9bb38be850f505b1e53113d6b7904b9689eefe","source_url":"https://rfsafe.net/hhs-comments/data/catalog.json","scope":"Original comment body; attachments excluded"},"attachment_metadata":{"https://downloads.regulations.gov/HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639/attachment_1.pdf":{"title":"JWright_HealthJournal_Redacted_2026_FNL_Pt1","mime":"application/pdf","source":"https://downloads.regulations.gov/HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639/attachment_1.pdf","upstream_key":"930cf4da8307d94d8fd742857a0b9b2c4887fbff9b00e0170eaffbfc5c6f81ff","key":"930cf4da8307d94d8fd742857a0b9b2c4887fbff9b00e0170eaffbfc5c6f81ff"},"https://downloads.regulations.gov/HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639/attachment_3.pdf":{"title":"JWright_HHS_RFStatement_Scientific_References_FNL","mime":"application/pdf","source":"https://downloads.regulations.gov/HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639/attachment_3.pdf","upstream_key":"dee0c0c9037d1cf8c4e32b40216697f4f9be6b0e15c99e0ddf6a35485dc81223","key":"dee0c0c9037d1cf8c4e32b40216697f4f9be6b0e15c99e0ddf6a35485dc81223"},"https://downloads.regulations.gov/HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639/attachment_2.pdf":{"title":"JWright_HealthJournal_Redacted_2026_FNL_Pt2","mime":"application/pdf","source":"https://downloads.regulations.gov/HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3639/attachment_2.pdf","upstream_key":"33c789bf2cc210615eada6f9c85e2ecf021796310df12bd93f09a8cab5979036","key":"33c789bf2cc210615eada6f9c85e2ecf021796310df12bd93f09a8cab5979036"}},"mirror_fingerprint":"b0390208d23ca814ffe57693d3dc0baf84729e64c50e53ed07572a417b1e4832","seo_modified":"2026-10-29T15:28:52Z","forum_topics":["research","access","neurological","standards","mechanisms","children","reproductive"],"primary_topic":"research","forum_title":"The commenter attributes disabling symptoms and years of isolation to telecommunications exposure, discus…"}