My name is Laurie Brown. I taught middle school for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for a…

My name is Laurie Brown. I taught middle school for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for approximately 26 years. I rarely was ill and accumulated approximately 800 hours of sick time during my career, the equivalent of nearly 7-8 months of work. I enjoyed a normal, healthy life and never had to concern myself with routers, Wi-Fi or electro-magnetic radiation. Unfortunately, my career, health, and life as I knew it changed in April 2015, when my school “upgraded” our Wi-Fi system and added 190 access points, two in every classroom, and brought in wireless devices, increasing the total wireless radiation on campus. My District did little to protect me from the peaks or spikes of radiation emitted from all the wireless devices on campus. Our system was activated in April 2015. After a few hours on campus, I would begin to feel ill and experience symptoms such as headaches, heart palpitations, skin burning, earaches, nausea, foggy headedness, inability to concentrate, and many other debilitating symptoms – all symptoms of microwave sickness. I was becoming electro sensitive and was diagnosed with Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome caused by exposure to RF radiation. After a few consecutive days of work and increased exposure on campus, I started using my illness days. Some other staff members experienced physical and debilitating symptoms from the increased radiofrequencies on campus, too. My Principal contacted LAUSD’s Office of Environmental Health and Safety (OEHS) and wrote to the Inspector General of LAUSD sharing his concern as well as staff members’ concerns. The District’s OEHS waited approximately 6 weeks, until Common Core Testing was over, when fewer students would be operating devices and on campus with cell phones, to measure the RF frequencies in specific classrooms. On June 22, 2015, during the summer break, my principal wrote to LAUSD's Inspector General stating, "After the system was turned on, several employees complained of illness (headaches, light headedness, etc.).” After the installation of the new commercial Wi-Fi system at my school and becoming ill from my exposure to EMF/EMR, I learned LAUSD had been warned by doctors and scientists, prior to installation, that the commercial grade Wi-Fi being considered was untested and potentially dangerous in school environments. Cindy Sage, an EMF expert and environmental scientist, critiqued URS Corporation’s (the designer and installer of the new Wi-Fi system), evaluation and could not support URS’ conclusions regarding the safety of LAUSD’s proposed Wi-Fi system. In February 2017, Sage wrote the following to LAUSD: “Children who attend LAUSD schools are being placed into classroom environments with pervasive exposures from wireless routers and devices, and for some of them, is likely to result in permanent electro hypersensitivity characterized by chronic health and cognitive impairments. The same is already true for some teachers who have sought accommodations due to their acquired hypersensitivity to wireless exposures.” The Executive Committee of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine wrote to LAUSD and stated, “it is unlikely that there are currently enough doctors in Los Angeles County familiar with the biological effects of microwave radiation to diagnose and treat the numbers of children who will potentially become symptomatic from exposure to your wireless system should you elect to install it. Statistics show that you can expect an immediate reaction in 3% of your students and time‐delayed reactions in 30% of them. This will also include teachers.” In my opinion, by using averages compared to “raw” data, the RF peaks/spikes to which students and staff are exposed each day, every day, over the course of an entire school day or school year (cumulative effects of spikes and exposure), are mitigated and diluted on paper, likely creating, and providing a false sense of safety to the public, parents, staff and students. Clearly, spikes, density, and time (duration) of exposure are important and should matter to those responsible for protecting the public and assuring safety measures. Here is an example of LAUSD’s RF protocol and evaluation: “For the purpose of the evaluation, The AVE data set was evaluated and compared to the LAUSD adopted criterion. A combination of the magnitude and the duration of the energy bursts are integrated by the SRM-3006 to provide the AVE power density results which are averaged for each frequency. The AVE power density is lower than the Maximum power density results. The average of the AVE (AVE-average) of each measurement is used for comparison to the adopted criterion.” In other words, averaging the spikes and peaks does not truly reflect real life exposure! The current FCC guidelines are outdated and only thermal based. The FCC and Department of Health and Human Services should not continue to ignore the overwhelming abundance of scientific studies proving biological harm caused by pulsed EMR/EMF/RF, nor should they allow RF spikes to be averaged and diluted over time. Medications are prescribed with specific instructions to minimize side effects and overdosing. The same safety precautions and concerns apply to overdosing on wireless radiation. More is not better and controls and guidelines are necessary. The FCC and Department of Health and Human Services must address this immediate public health crisis. Protocols and protective measures must be developed and applied in real time, before it is too late. Today, I no longer teach, something that was not only a career, but a great passion in my life. I loved teaching, found it stimulating, rewarding, and incredibly fulfilling. Because I enjoyed it so much, I intended to work for a lot longer, until a ripe old age, but I found it difficult to return to work without being reasonably accommodated. Unfortunately, I am unable to fill all my free time with meaningful activities and work due to the proliferation and installation of wireless antennas and devices everywhere. My husband and I removed our Wi-Fi and cordless phones, turned off our wireless emitting devices, and use hardwired connections. I have a cell phone, but do not keep it on and my husband mostly keeps his off around me. I know longer have the same freedom or luxury to enjoy limitless time out, travel, staying in a hotel, visiting family, and grocery shopping as I once did without feeling lousy. Living with Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome caused by EMFs (microwave sickness) is challenging and limiting. My quality of life has been severely reduced and none of it occurred by my choice: it was the direct result of the FCC’s, Department of Health and Human Services’, and FDA’s failures and disregard of biological harm caused by pulsed wireless radiation. My health, lifestyle, quality of life, and freedom to come and go as I please have been drastically and negatively affected. In addition, my income and retirement have been significantly reduced. I am very fortunate to have a supportive and loving husband and family. Still, though, my condition and losses have impacted us. Federal guidelines, limits, and protocols are needed to monitor and ensure the public’s safety from exposure to wireless radiation in real time, without averaging the spikes and peaks! No longer can we ignore biological effects caused by pulsed, wireless radiation. Although it may be an inconvenient truth, more is dangerous and is biologically disruptive; we are electrical beings. Too many people are already sick and more people will become seriously ill if we stand by and do nothing to address our chronic and limitless exposure to wireless radiation. I do not want others to suffer the same fate as me. /s/Laurie Brown Laurie Brown 4221 Noble Ave Sherman Oaks, CA 91403