HHS-OASH-2026-0397-2079
https://www.regulations.gov/comment/HHS-OASH-2026-0397-2079

I am submitting this comment as a member of the public who is concerned not only about the scientific questions surrounding radiofrequency and electromagnetic field exposure, but also about the increasingly involuntary nature of that exposure.

For many years, I made a deliberate personal choice to minimize unnecessary wireless radiation in my home. That choice became increasingly difficult to exercise as communications providers and other systems shifted away from wired infrastructure and toward wireless technologies.

In my case, Cox Communications previously provided service over fiber-optic infrastructure extending directly to our home. That option was later discontinued, leaving wireless-based service as the practical alternative presented to us. I had avoided relying on that technology because of concerns about RF exposure, but eventually found myself in a position where accepting greater wireless exposure was effectively a condition of maintaining ordinary modern communications service.

This raises a broader public-health concern that I hope HHS will consider carefully.

When the long-term biological effects of a form of environmental exposure remain the subject of scientific investigation, individuals should not be placed in a position where meaningful avoidance is progressively designed out of everyday life. Yet wireless transmitters are now embedded not only in phones and routers, but throughout homes, vehicles, appliances, utility systems, schools, workplaces, public spaces, and communications infrastructure.

For people who would prefer to exercise precaution, the practical ability to do so is disappearing.

I am not asking HHS to presume a conclusion that the scientific evidence has not yet established. I am asking the Department to recognize the ethical and public-health significance of involuntary exposure itself. A population should not effectively become the subject of a decades-long, uncontrolled exposure experiment simply because wireless deployment has outpaced our ability to establish complete answers about cumulative, chronic, and multi-source exposure.

Where reasonable lower-exposure alternatives exist, they should be preserved.

In particular, I encourage HHS to consider recommending policies that protect access to wired communications, fiber-optic service, wired building systems, and other non-wireless alternatives. People who wish to reduce RF exposure should not have to abandon basic communications services in order to do so.

I also encourage HHS to examine cumulative real-world exposure rather than treating each device or transmitter only in isolation. The relevant question for many members of the public is no longer simply whether one device complies with an exposure limit. It is what happens when many sources operate continuously in the same home, neighborhood, workplace, vehicle, and public environment over many years.

Whatever conclusions HHS ultimately reaches about health risk, precaution and informed choice should remain legitimate options. Individuals should have a meaningful ability to reduce unnecessary exposure in their own homes and immediate environments, rather than having that choice gradually removed by technological and infrastructure decisions over which they have little control.