For 50 Years Regulators Ignored Report Linking Wireless Radiation to 23 Chronic Diseases
The authors of a new report, posted Feb. 6, discuss how the U.S. Naval Medical Research Institute in 1971 issued a report that reviewed 2,311 scientific studies on the biological and health effects of EMR. They concluded the U.S. government has failed to protect the public from known harms.
FEBRUARY 18, 2025
The U.S. government has known for over 50 years that wireless radiation is linked to 23 chronic diseases but has failed to protect the public from chronic wireless radiation exposure, according to the authors of a new report.
Richard Lear and Camilla Rees posted their report on Feb. 6 as a preprint on ResearchGate. Lear and Rees are business executives and long-time health and environmental researchers.
The report, which Rees called a “discussion and commentary” on published science related to wireless radiation’s biological impacts, is geared toward an everyday audience. It is not intended for publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal.
Lear and Rees posted the report on ResearchGate to make it accessible to the public.
On Feb. 14, Rees shared the paper with attendees of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine’s annual conference in San Antonio, Texas, according to a press release.
Miriam Eckenfels, director of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless called the report an “easy-to-understand distillation of pertinent scientific findings that gives the public a sense of how regulatory agencies ignored earlier science and why agencies need to take protective action now.”
In the report, Lear and Rees discuss how the U.S. Naval Medical Research Institute in 1971 issued a report that reviewed 2,311 scientific studies on the biological and health effects of electromagnetic radiation (EMR).
Most of the studies examined by the Navy involved low-intensity EMR signals in the 1 to 4 gigahertz (GHz) range, said Lear and Rees. “These types of wireless exposures are virtually identical with those from modern devices and wireless sources such as cell phones, WiFi, Bluetooth, smart meters, GPS, wearables, and wireless infrastructure.”
The Navy’s review found 132 different biological effects, symptoms and diseases linked to wireless exposures.
According to Lear and Rees, 23 of those are among the fastest-growing chronic diseases and conditions in the U.S. today, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, anxiety, asthma, autism, chronic fatigue, diabetes, leukemia, autoimmune disease and celiac disease.
In 2016, Lear examined the growth of chronic disease from 1990 to 2015 and the related economic costs of those diseases. His research found that 36 chronic diseases and conditions doubled from 1990 to 2015.
“Of the 36 chronic diseases and conditions that more than doubled (1990-2015), the U.S. Navy study warned us of the connection between wireless radiation and twenty-three of those chronic diseases, predicting what has indeed happened to the health of Americans,” the authors of the report wrote.
They added:
“By ignoring the earlier science, U.S. regulators failed to protect the American people from the dangers of wireless technologies. In doing so, they imposed millions of unnecessary chronic exposure conditions on the American public.”
Rees told The Defender she hopes U.S. regulators finally take action. “Pressure is needed from all directions to encourage federal regulatory agencies to do their jobs, and to hold these agencies accountable.”
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has not updated its exposure limits for wireless radiation since 1996.
In 2021, CHD and other groups won a lawsuit challenging the FCC’s exposure limits.
The groups filed 11,000 pages of evidence of harm from 5G and wireless technology, which they alleged the FCC ignored when it decided to keep its 1996 guidelines. The pages included evidence of widespread sickness due to wireless radiation exposure.
The FCC has yet to comply with a court-ordered mandate to explain how the agency determined that its current guidelines adequately protect humans and the environment against the harmful effects of exposure to wireless radiation.
Lear and Rees plan to send hard copies of their report to all U.S. Congress members and at least 1,000 U.S. business leaders.
“We want this information to get to people who are courageous enough to make a difference, including government leaders, business leaders, religious leaders and media,” Rees said.
Business leaders need to understand the connection between wireless exposures and their employees’ mood, health and therefore productivity, she said.
Rees is a senior policy adviser for the National Institute for Science, Law and Public Policy and founder of Manhattan Neighbors for Safer Telecommunications.
According to the report:
“By 2015, the 23 diseases the U.S. Navy predicted may have added more than $2 trillion in annual health care costs to the U.S. economy due to their negligence.”
The authors acknowledged that other factors have likely contributed to the current U.S. chronic disease crisis, such as sugar consumption, glyphosate and other pesticide exposures.
‘We’ve been misled about the benefits of wireless’
In the report, Lear and Rees also cite other scientific reports that have shown a link between wireless radiation and negative health impacts, including the BioInitiative 2012 Report.
The BioInitiative Report, updated in 2017, cites more than 2,200 scientific studies that link low-level EMR exposure to dozens of diseases and biological effects, including neurological effects, brain cancer, fetal effects, blood-brain barrier damage, DNA damage, breast cancer, biochemical imbalances, leukemia, decreased fertility and oxidative stress.
The report also discusses studies that suggested a possible biological mechanism for explaining how wireless radiation is linked to chronic disease.
Rees said, “We have been misled about the relative benefits of wireless.”
Wired connections are far superior to wireless for numerous reasons, including connection speed, according to a 2018 National Institute for Science, Law and Public Policy report.
“It is faster, far more energy efficient, higher audio quality, more reliable, more resilient in weather events, more secure, and more enduring, meaning that it is not subject to the costs of planned obsolescence like wireless technologies,” Rees said.
She added:
“We need to start taking responsibility ourselves, and minimize our personal wireless exposure while supporting efforts, such as CHD’s new ‘704 No More’ initiative, to restore local control over cell towers and antennas.”
The 704 No More initiative is raising money to legally challenge Section 704 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which prohibits local authorities from denying cell tower applications based on health and environmental effects.
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