Microwaving Our Planet:
The Environmental Impact of the Wireless RevolutionARTHUR FIRSTENBERG 1997
Published by the Cellular Phone Taskforce
"From Bill Gates' planned fleet of 300 satellites to the millions of ground based antennas being constructed through-out the world, our privacy is being invaded, our health undermined, our water polluted, endangered species threatened, the ozone layer destroyed, and our climate altered. The assault has already begun.
The purpose of this report is to give a general overview of the environmental threats associated with the wireless revolution, and an in-depth review of 70 years of research into the health hazards of microwaves.
The lack of an adequate review of the literature until now has led to the incorrect perception that the scientific evidence is contradictory and inconclusive. In fact the scientific evidence is consistent and overwhelming."
"Until recently almost all radio transmitters have been fixed and their range limited. The addition of more broadcast channels and new types of communication devices did not change that. But with the advent of cellular technology, all limits have been lifted. Telephones are no longer just communicators but also transmitters, and they are mobile. Suddenly every human being is a potential source of radiation. Suddenly electronic communication is a human right. Suddenly fixed transmitters and satellites are being built to accommodate mobile human beings, rather than the other way around.
Electromagnetic pollution will no longer remain concentrated in population centers, nor will radio transmitters be confined any longer to non-residential zones. In the space of a year or two, unless the people put a stop to it, this form of pollution will be spread more or less evenly over every square inch of the world."
"We cannot expect to increase the irradiation of the entire earth 1000-fold or more virtually overnight without health effects and without massive biological consequences. Indeed this technology is more invasive than virtually any other and has the potential of causing worldwide catastrophe."
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Electromagnetic Fields (EMF): Killing Fields" by A. Firstenberg, The Ecologist v.34, n.5, 1 jun 2004.
Sage, C., & Carpenter, D. O. (2009).
Public health implications of wireless technologies. Pathophysiology, 16(2), 233-246.
Global exposures to emerging wireless technologies from applications including mobile phones, cordless phones, DECT phones, WI-FI, WLAN, WiMAX, wireless internet, baby monitors, and others may present serious public health consequences. Evidence supporting a public health risk is documented in the BioInitiative Report. New, biologically based public exposure standards for chronic exposure to low-intensity exposures are warranted. Existing safety standards are obsolete because they are based solely on thermal effects from acute exposures. The rapidly expanding development of new wireless technologies and the long latency for the development of such serious diseases as brain cancers means that failure to take immediate action to reduce risks may result in an epidemic of potentially fatal diseases in the future. Regardless of whether or not the associations are causal, the strengths of the associations are sufficiently strong that in the opinion of the authors, taking action to reduce exposures is imperative, especially for the fetus and children. Such action is fully compatible with the precautionary principle, as enunciated by the Rio Declaration, the European Constitution Principle on Health (Section 3.1) and the European Union Treaties Article 174."
Human beings are bioelectrical systems. Our hearts and brains are regulated by internal bioelectrical signals. Environmental exposures to artificial EMFs can interact with fundamental biological processes in the human body. In some cases, this may cause discomfort, or sleep disruption, or loss of wellbeing (impaired mental functioning and impaired metabolism) or sometimes, maybe it is a dread disease like cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. It may be interfering with ones’ ability to become pregnant, or carry a child to full term,
or result in brain development changes that are bad for the child. It may be these exposures play a role in causing long-term impairments to normal growth and development of children, tipping the scales away from becoming productive adults. We have good evidence these exposures can damage our health, or that of children of the future who will be born to parents now immersed in wireless exposures.
In the United States, the deployment of wireless infrastructure (cell tower sites) to support cell phone use has accelerated greatly in the last decades.
The spread of cell towers in communities, often placed on pre-school, church day-care, and school campuses means that young children can have thousands of times higher RF exposures in home and school environments than existed even 20-25 years ago. CTIA estimates that in 1997 there were only 36,650 cell sites in the US; but increased rapidly to 131,350 in June 2002; 210,350 in June 2007 and 265,561 in June 2012 (CTIA, 2012).
About 220,500 cell sites existed in 2008. These wireless antennas for cellular phone voice and data transmission produce whole-body RFR exposures over broad areas in communities that are an involuntary and unavoidable source of radiofrequency radiation exposure. Further,
the nearly universal switch to cordless and cell phones, and away from corded landline phones means close and repetitive exposures to both EMF and RFR in the home. Other new RFR exposures that didn’t exist before come from WI-FI access points (hotspots) that
radiate 24/7 in cafes, stores, libraries, classrooms, on buses and trains, and from personal WI-FI enabled devices (iPads, tablets, PDAs, etc).
The largest single source of community-wide, pervasive RFR yet rolled out is the ‘smart meter’ infrastructure. This program places a wireless device (like a mini-mobile phone base station) on the wall, replacing the electromechanical (spinning dial) meter.
They are to be installed on every home and classroom (every building with an electric meter). Utilities from California to Maine have installed tens of millions already, despite health concerns of experts and enormous public resistance. The wireless meters produce spikes of pulsed radiofrequency radiation 24/7, and in typical operation, will saturates living space at levels that can be much higher than already reported to cause bioeffects and adverse health effects (utilities can only say they are compliant with outdated federal safety standards, which may or may not always be true – see http://sagereports.com/smart-meter-rf). These meters, depending on where they are placed relative to occupied space in the home or classroom, can produce RFR exposure levels similar to that within the first 100 feet to 600 feet of a mobile phone base station (cell tower).
The cumulative RFR burden within any community is largely unknown. Both involuntary sources (like cell towers, smart meters and second-hand radiation from the use of wireless devices by others)
plus voluntary exposures from ones’ personal use of cell and cordless phones, wireless routers, electronic baby surveillance monitors, wireless security systems, wireless hearing aids, and wireless medical devices like implanted insulin pumps all add up.
No one is tallying up the combined exposure levels. Billions of new RFR transmitters from the smart meter rollout alone will raise the baseline RFR levels, and will significantly add to the existing RFR background.
Sometimes, science does not keep pace with new environmental exposures that are by-products of useful things we want to buy and use in society. So,
the deployment runs ahead of knowledge of health risks. It is an old story. This is the case for EMF and RFR, and this Report underscores the critical need to face difficult questions, make mid-course corrections, and try to repair the damage already done in this generation, and to think about protecting future generations."
-Why we care: THE BIOINITIATIVE REPORT 2012: A Rationale for Biologically-based Public Exposure Standards for Electromagnetic Fields (ELF and RF)
Bellieni, C. V., Unit, N. I. C., & Pinto, I. (2012).
Fetal and Neonatal Effects of EMF.
The exposure of the developing fetus and of children to electromagnetic fields (EMF) including both radiofrequency radiation (RF) used in new wireless technologies, and to extremely low frequency or power frequency fields (ELF-EMF) has raised public health concerns because of
the possible effects (cancer, neurological effects, developmental disability effects, etc) from the long-term exposure to low-intensity, environmental level fields in daily life. This chapter documents some studies on RF and ELF-EMF that report bioeffects and adverse health impacts to the fetus, and young child where exposure levels are still well within the current legal limits of many nations.
Several studies report adverse health effects at levels below safety standards; the evidence to date suggests that special attention should be devoted to the protection of embryos, fetuses and newborns who can be exposed to many diverse frequencies and intensities of EMF throughout their lifetimes, where the health and wellness consequences on these subjects are still scarcely explored. 
