Towers & siting

My name is Dr. Marion Van Horn. I am a neuroscientist and mother of three. I am submitting this comment because I believe there is an urgent need to reassess whether the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) radiofrequency (RF) exposure limits adequately protect human health and the environment. This issue recently came to our attention when our friend Alison Morrow Westover tried to stop a cell tower from being installed in her neighbour’s backyard. What surprised us most was learning that, under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, health concerns cannot be used as grounds to reject a proposed cell tower, provided it complies with FCC exposure limits. But I was shocked to learn that the FCC’s RF exposure limits haven’t been substantially updated in nearly 30 years, despite ongoing scientific research in this area! As a neuroscientist who has studied brain development, I know that early-life environmental exposures can profoundly influence the developing brain. These are critical periods of development, during which environmental influences can have lasting consequences. While the long-term health effects of RF exposure remain an active area of scientific investigation, parents are absolutely justified in asking questions about the safety of placing a cell tower so close to where their children are growing up. Given the evolving scientific evidence, I believe it is essential that the FCC undertake a thorough, independent review of its exposure limits, with particular attention to long-term exposure, children’s developing nervous systems, and potential environmental effects. We should not have to wait for conclusive evidence of harm before asking whether our existing safety standards are sufficiently protective.

I do not want cell towers near my home or school due to the health concerns with EMFs. EMFs disrupt the voltage gated calcium channels of the cell and by doing so harms human health:

I live within 500 feet of a cell tower and since I lived here I have gotten migraines, insomnia, tinnitus and an auto immune disease that is excruciatingly painful to live with. My life is over from these conditions but I would hope and pray that others can be saved, please update the regulations, people cannot and should not live like this. Thank you, Susan Emrick

This comment shares my perspective as a private citizen of the United States. I am a 37-year-old male. Below, I address questions 2, 3, 5, 6, 12, 13, 14, and 15 from the Request for Information. Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields (EMF), Radiofrequency (RF) radiation, and Wireless radiation is a major environmental contributor to my own illness: chronic, neurologic Lyme disease, tick-borne co-infections, and related autoimmune complications. When exposed to this radiation, I suffer fatigue, brain fog, headaches, vertigo, and exacerbation of underlying neurologic illness. I have been a patient of a practitioner of orthomolecular and environmental medicine for the past 17 years. My symptoms increase in severity the stronger the radiation, the closer the source, and the longer my time of exposure. Two hours of driving in a car on a highway past cell towers induces mild to moderate fatigue and brain fog. An entire day of exposure to WiFi at a home, school, or hotel induces moderate to severe headache, brain fog, fatigue, and vertigo. Repeated exposures day after day in a workplace eventually contributes to severe episodes of head pain, debilitating vertigo, vision disturbances, and loss of ability to think and speak. I have had to leave jobs due to this inability to function. In hindsight, this was also a reason why I had to take multiple medical leaves while attending college on a campus covered with 24/7 WiFi. My family and I have remediated our home environment from wireless radiation by hard-wiring all of our computers, telephones, and electronic devices. We disable all wireless capabilities and do not use any “smart” devices or appliances. I do not use a cell phone. I am able to stay healthy in this low-EMF environment, and in outdoor environments in my semi-rural town. I cannot function for prolonged periods in city or densely-populated suburban environments with high radiation levels. I do not think of myself as “electrically-sensitive,” but simply as a living being who is aware of the harm that EMF, RF, and Wireless radiation cause me. The harms of this radiation to all of life on Earth are well documented in the scientific literature. Arthur Firstenberg presents this evidence in his book "The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life". The presence of electrical, radio, satellite, and wireless infrastructure correlates strongly to the major diseases of modern man: cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and infectious disease. Man-made radiation inhibits the basic functioning of the cells of all living organisms, damaging their metabolism and ability to communicate properly. The result is confusion, disease, and death in humans, animals, and plants. The current regulatory standards and exposure limits regarding this radiation do not protect anyone. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is a captured agency, controlled by the telecommunications industry it is supposed to regulate. Through this agency and federal law which shields them from liability, telecom companies can build and deploy any technology that suits them, without threat of litigation for health and environmental harms. This state of affairs consolidates power and profit for a few giant corporations, while actually benefitting nobody. Our cell tower and wireless infrastructure is making us all sick, and we must acknowledge this damage and turn off these technologies. At the very least, individuals must have the freedom to opt out of smartphones, smart meters, and all other wireless technologies, and local communities must have the right to reject cell towers and antennas if they do not want them. Once we recognize the cost of unchecked wireless radiation throughout all of society, we can return to wired connections and encourage engineers and inventors to develop communication technologies that do no harm to living beings. We have many such technologies already, including pencil and paper! I encourage all at HHS to read "The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life" by Arthur Firstenberg (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2020), to read the scientific literature demonstrating the health harms of EMF, RF, and Wireless radiation, and to work with any and all parties willing to cooperate with the reduction and elimination of the technologies harming us all. For more information about the work of Arthur Firstenberg and his book "This Invisible Rainbow", visit the website of the Cellular Phone Task Force: https://www.cellphonetaskforce.international/ Thank you for this opportunity to comment on the harms of EMF, RF, and Wireless radiation exposure.

I'm writing on behalf of my wife, son and myself. We are the Haller family from Minnesota. Our story has been all over the internet so privacy is already compromised. We live in very very rural northern MN. Only 4 neighbors in a half mile. We purchased our property in 2007 and while building our home in 2008 a 300 food tall cell tower went up at the same time. We were unaware this was even happening until it reached above the trees and almost appeared to be on our property. It ended up being on the neighbors land but only 900 feet from our home. We didn't think much at the time and even joked at least we'll have great cell service. Life was normal from 08 until 2012, when I was diagnosed with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis at Only 39 years old. No family history of it but I learned how to deal with it and once again life returned to normal until 9-2019. A large crane appeared at the tower for two weeks, we watched the workers remove the top and replace it with a new one. When they left we noticed immediately our phones switched from 4glte to 5g. Within a week of the crane leaving my wife was stricken with severe vertigo, that's what the hospital said anyway. After a few days of no relief and worsening symptoms we were back at the emergency room. After a MRI the confirmed she was having mini strokes, buy the dozens. Local hospitals had no idea what was happening so we were referred to the mayo clinic in Rochester. They treated her with plasmapherisis and chemo therapy to slow her immune system down enough to make the strokes stop. This worked for a short time until we returned home. Symptoms returned with our return. While we were navigating our own problems we learned our neighbor who owned the property where the tower is had a brief battle with aggressive cancer and died from a stroke at home in 2/2020. We couldn't stay at home so we moved to the inlaws house which is only a mile away. They were working across the country at the time and offered it to us. We moved there in March 2020 and stayed until they returned home in Oct 2020. While staying there the wife's condition improved immensely, she went from walking with a walker to walking on her own. Her brain function improved and she decided to return to nursing school, she was in school when the first round of strokes started but we had her withdrawn. As a family I noticed we were happier, more energetic, sleeping better and just "better". When we returned home in just days the nightmare was returning. With no choice at the time I built her a room in our detached garage and made it RF proof. It worked excellent, while in the room she feels no Symptoms. When she would feel like she had been exposed for too long she'd simply say "I'm going out to the room"! I nicknamed it "the penalty box"! We've stayed away from home as much as possible since Mar 2020 and sleep together every night in that black box I created. It's now been 6 years sleeping in there. She fully recovered to a point, she completed nursing school and is indeed a nurse. She can take some exposure but too much time on the computer or phone and she has to go out to the room. She can feel the tower in her head as soon as she comes home, describing it as a "buzzing" in her head. We've adapted as best as possible. Doctors still are baffled at how this all happened and what made it stop(I never told them what we did), they said it's a miracle...I beg to differ. We tried getting the tower owners to redirect the antennas, through local town board and even federal court. Each time we were told that the FCC preempts local government from any action against telecom. If I was better at computers I would attach files and documents but I simply don't know how. I would love to discuss this further with you and would love if you reached out to us. In closing I would like to say no business/person/organization should be immune from causing personal harm to others, such as the wireless industry. More studies, more testing needs to be done at today's levels of radiation and done so in a 24-7 exposure time. This wireless radiation affects more than just humans. I've studied the local American Grey(timber) wolf as well as whitetail deer, hummingbirds and bats for the last 6 years. I've learned much about their behavior around this tower and the lengths they go through to avoid it. We've lost family pets to this as well. Our beloved dog Ms Daisy had so many tumors on her the weight of them wouldn't let her breathe. The vet had never seen anything like this when we brought her in to be put down. Please HHS listen to all these pleas you are receiving, for too long they have been swept under the rug. I've met hundreds to thousands of families like our after out story aired on the children's health defense website. We were receiving phone calls everyday from people asking for help. I told them what I did for us and it helped. Now I'm asking for your help! We are not crazy,we are victims. Jay & Marcia Haller

After suffering from a brain injury as flight crew in 2017 I began experiencing reactions around wireless technology. Since then it is impossible for me to leave my home without suffering from symptoms of migraine, vertigo, latent sleep disorder, and even at times seizures. Thankfully I can function on my own property without wi-fi as I was able to switch to wired internet. Sadly though, every year it seems the intensity of my neighbor’s wireless networks increases, causing me to suffer mild symptoms on a round the clock basis. If I am so affected by these frequencies, what might they be doing to the developing child’s brains or to our pets and wildlife? After deep diving into published research, it is clear that the literature shows wireless technologies are neurotoxic to biology via neurotransmitter changes and Voltage Gated Calcium Channel disfunction. With our current uptick in maladies such as cancers of all kinds, infertility, neurodegeneration, Cardiovascular Disease, ASD, Hoshimoto’s Thyroiditis, Type 2 Diabetes, and more, we should be asking why this is happening exponentially as we increase the rate of our wireless radiation exposures. At the very minimum, while we continue to perform long-term studies on the effects of non-ionizing radiation exposures on humans and the environment, I propose that we: .Re-introduce wired phone lines and ethernet connections in homes, businesses, and public places. . Require all wireless technologies sold in the US to have an “offline mode” which completely disables all wireless functions. . That all wireless functions of all devices be required to be in their offline mode at our schools, parks, public buildings, places of gathering, hospitals, public transportation, and the like. . That cell phone towers, power stations, and other facilities or antenna that emit ELF, EMF, or RF be required to be positioned a mile or more away from buildings, public spaces, and areas of residence OR require informed consent from all potentially affected parties as to the exposures and their unknown possible effects. . That public warnings be instituted regarding the possible harms of using wireless devices. . That manufacturers be held responsible for any adverse effects from their devices, products, or their infrastructure of wireless technologies.

We are deeply concerned by the ample evidence of harm caused by radiofrequency radiation (RFR) to our own health and to public health in this country. Current exposure limits for RF radiation are based on numerous assumptions; however, research studies published over the past 25 years show that most of those assumptions are not supported by scientific evidence. Based on this abundance of scientific evidence we want strict laws to protect us and allow us to opt out of excess radiation, and provide local control for when and where to site infrastructure that causes radiation. We want better safeguards to limit RFR in all public spaces. We have personally experienced a reduction from symptoms of RFR exposure by turning off the wireless feature on our router and putting many our electronic devises on ethernet cables, and by reducing our cell phone use. The majority of the scientific literature related to RFR stems from cell phone studies. There is strong evidence that people who use a cell phone held directly to their ear for more than ten years are at significantly increased risk of developing gliomas of the brain and acoustic neuromas of the auditory nerve. There is also evidence that the risk of developing these cancers is greater in younger than older people. The May 2016 report from the US National Toxicology Program showing that rats exposed to cell phone radiation for nine hours per day over their life-span de- velop gliomas of the brain and Schwannoma of the heart (the same kind of cancer as acoustic neuroma) adds proof to the conclusions from the human health studies that radiofrequency radiation increases risk of cancer. While the strongest evidence for hazards coming from RFR is for cancer, there is a growing body of evidence that some people develop a condition called electrohypersensitivity {EHS). We are among these individuals that respond to being in the presence of RFR with a variety of symptoms, including headache, fatigue, memory loss, ringing in the ears, "brain fog" and burning, tingling and itchy skin. Some reports indicate that up to three percent of the population may develop these symptoms, and that exposure to smart meters is a trigger for development of EHS. Please find attached some relevant studies and references that relate to the dangers of RFR. There are thousands more listed at https://ehtrust.org/science/science-on-health-effects-of-cell-phone-and-wireless-radiation/?link_id=5&can_id=4e10ca07001c7ba173b2541d8c5cab8e&source=email-act-now-to-support-h3551-in-the-ma-legislature&email_referrer=email_3146404&email_subject=act-now-to-support-h3551-in-the-ma-legislature Please take the following actions to protect our family and the public from the dangers of RFR. • Governmental and institutional support of data collection and analysis to monitor potential links between RFR associated with wireless technology and cancers, sperm, the heart, the nervous system, sleep, vision and hearing, and effects on children. • Further dissemination of information regarding potential health risk information that is in wireless devices and manuals is necessary to respect users' Right To Know. Cautionary statements and protective measures should be posted on packaging and at points of sale. Governments should follow the practice of France, Israel and Belgium and mandate labeling, as for tobacco and alcohol. • Regulations should require that any WTD that could be used or carried directly against the skin (e.g., a cell phone) or in close proximity (e.g., a device being used on the lap of a small child) be tested appropriately as used, and that this information be prominently displayed at point of sale, on packaging, and both on the exterior and within the device. • IARC should convene a new working group to update the categorization of RFR, including current scientific findings that highlight, in particular, risks to youngsters of subsequent cancers. • Emerging human evidence is confirming animal evidence of developmental problems with RFR exposure during pregnancy. RFR sources should be avoided and distanced from expectant mothers, as recommended by physicians and scientists (babysafeproject.org). • Other countries should follow France, limiting RFR exposure in children under 16 years of age. • Cell towers should be distanced from homes, daycare centers, schools, and places frequented by pregnant women, men who wish to father healthy children, and the young.

1. & 2. I am responding as: an individual 3a. Type of wireless or RF/EMF sources involved (e.g., mobile phones, Wi-Fi, smart meters…)5G Tower 3b. Nature, duration, frequency, and approximate timing (e.g., years):I worked approximately 75 meters from a 5G tower for 5 years. 3c. Adverse health effect(s) experienced:I immediately felt a pressure sensation in my head upon arriving to work every day. As the time went on, I progressively was unable to concentrate, think clearly, or remember in the short term. I would set something down and immediately forget where I had placed it. Then my vision began deteriorating rapidly. These symptoms intensified the longer I worked there. 3d. Time from first exposure to first appearance of adverse health effects; and did a change in exposure coincide with the onset of adverse effects:The effects were subtle at first, as I worked for about 1 year near the tower while it was still 4G. However when converted to 5G(during COVID) I noticed the effects within the first week. 3e. Was medical evaluation or treatment sought? (Optionally:) Was there a diagnosis?no 3f. Were steps taken to reduce or eliminate exposure, and were there subsequent changes in the effects?I used nutritional approaches, supplements, and electromagnetic devices to offset the effects with some help, but eventually quit the job as the symptoms were unbearable and I was getting worse. 3g. Any supporting documentation? This includes Scientific Reports, exposure measurements, or other relevant information:No Additional Details you would like to share about your experiences of adverse health effects you believe to be associated with exposure to wireless radiation or EMF's: B1a. Sources you experience as causing you Adverse Effects: B1b. Sources you can sense, but don't seem to harm you: B1c. Sources you can use without sensing or being harmed: B1d. Sources that seem to provide benefit (i.e., electrotherapy): B2a. Health conditions you think may contribute to your sensitivity to EMFs including wireless: B2b. Health conditions you don't necessarily associate with your sensitivity to EMFs including wireless, but might be relevant: B3. For each subquestion please list up to 5 drugs or therapies or home remedies (if any) B3a. That you recommend, as they helped you tolerate or recover from EMF exposure: B3b. That you recommend, but you’re not positive that they help: B3c. That helped you but you don’t recommend. (e.g., the benefit did not last long or the side effects were too harmful): B3d. Treatments that had no effect: B3e. Treatments that made your sensitivity worse: B4. What is your age range? B5. What year did you become aware of your sensitivity to wireless radiation or electromagnetic fields? B6. What country, state, province, or major city were you living in when you first noticed your sensitivity to wireless or electromagnetic fields?

I don’t want cell towers any where near me where I live! They make me extremely anxious, I can’t sleep, I can’t think straight. I haven’t been the same since they were installed.

My comments represent the perspective of an individual citizen. 3)a)For five and a half years now I have experienced "atypical migraine" (as diagnosed by a neurologist) which becomes severe during and following exposure to radiofrequency radiation from mobile phones, Wi-Fi routers, cell towers, smart meters and any radiating devices. These migraines are characterized by long episodes of afflictive, abnormal, painful, distressing neuropathy, pressure, burning, and palpations in the meninges region. They became severe and chronic starting in the spring of 2021, and at that time always started when I used a hotspot modem to connect to the internet, often for video conferencing. From that time I experienced the above-described form of intolerant physiological reaction while and after coming into close proximity to cell phones, Wi-Fi routers, cell towers, smart meters, wireless printers, and devices including bluetooth AirPods worn by someone nearby. The migraine is also characterized by sometimes severe brain fog, by near total deficit of executive function, memory issues, trouble concentrating, anxiety, and disturbing tingling in my hands, feet, and diaphragm. Over time, unable to establish a stable ongoing life free from exposure, the intolerance is worse. I am also affected by "dirty electricity," and electric and magnetic fields associated with wiring in my home, which has not been assessed by a credentialed professional with knowledge about idiopathic environmental intolerance and best mitigation practices. My comment is uploaded in full in the attached file Pfoutz