Electromagnetic sensitivity

I am a 72 year old woman in excellent health. I eat well, exercise and get plenty of sleep, usually 8-9 hours per night. I typically get up to use the bathroom once per night. There was a time when my sleep was interrupted. I had trouble falling asleep, staying asleep and getting enough sleep. Since I had changed nothing in my routine, I looked deeper. I discovered that without informing, let alone consulting with me, a smart meter was installed about 20 feet from my head where I sleep. Even though I never authorized this installation, I had to get a doctor's note that I'm EMF sensitive to have it removed. I can't believe it's legal to come onto my property and install any device without authorization, but the power company was unyielding on a human level, which is just wrong. When they came out, they only brought another smart meter. Good thing I was at home. I made it very clear that they were to reinstall the analog version, and the tech had to call around to locate one. I'm in a rural area and many landowners have the analog version and even call in their meter readings, so it's not that the analog meters are in short supply. Since that time, my sleep returned to the original quality and quantity. It seems to me that this falls into informed consent territory. People have the right to choose that which affects their health and safety. I should have been consulted.

I no longer have a life anymore because I can't go out where there are cell towers and activity with enhaced 4G/5G frequencies. I have to wear EMF blocking clothing and shungite just to go into town for normal things like going to the store, and even then I can only be around that amount of EMFs for a few hours. If I'm in it too long I start to have nosebleeds and I also feel a flu-like sickness that goes away after a day from staying out of heavy cell tower areas. Everything I have found online with my symptoms points to microwave sickness, the exact same type that people who say they are hypersensitive to EMFs suffer from. I no longer can work a normal job. My health has been and still is negatively affected by this. The more they add to the cell towers around me, the worse it gets. I have lost friends and everyone thinks I'm crazy because I have been very out spoken about this. 6G is coming soon which means even more EMFs will be added on top of what I'm already suffering from. I have no real future and if I can't secure a reliable source of income I'm looking at being homeless sometime in the future.

I am electrohypersensitive since I had an accident at the dentist with "Paraformaldehyde" in 2008. I swallowed it and got it in the bone. My health got worse and worse over the years. At first, I got red when i was sitting in front of the PC. Didn´t know that it was electrohypersensitivity, because I had never heard about that illness. In 2017 when it was the worst, I couldn´t go to work for years and couldn´t enter my flat anymore. I was disabeld and had to live in the car in the winter although I have a good salary. I felt every smartphone and couldn´t no longer be in the wireless lan. I felt it burn on my skin and got problems with the heart when I came in the near of a wlan router, I had bad headache, insomnia and cognitive problems with foming a sentence. Couldn´t find the words easily. Finally, I became aware that it has something to do with toxins, that had damaged my cell and nerve system. I found a rare doctor who had experience with that and started to get rid of toxines and heavy metals in my body. I have had almost 100 infusions with Dimercaptopropanesulfonic acid (DMPS) up to now. My body couldn´t get rid of these toxines without that DMPS. Then, it got slowly better. After two years I could got to work again. I had to spend lots of my money for the treatment. I live in a house now, but in a flat, I would not be able to live, because of the neighbours wlan. In the case of having an accident and go to hospital, I am not sure if I will survive it. I hope, I can help you with my experience. There are more people in Germany who suffer from EHS but our government constantly ignores us people. We have any Civil Rights. Thanks very much for your intitiative. This is great of you, but the government must consider that few people can relate between the exposure of emf and their suffering. (Aggressive Intoxications like mine are seldom.) The new generations of smartphones, for example the i-pone has radiation, even if you switch it off. Because we have radiation from everywhere at any time, it is nearly impossible to find out that it is radiation, that damages your health. Most people think that the symptoms they have, for example insomia which is widespread in Germany, result from other things. They have no idea that i might be the wlan. Sincce I use an emf canopy, I have no longer problems with sleeping. I suffered from insomnia for ten years. Thank you very much, if you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

There is a cell phone tower about a block away from my house. In 2020 I was playing the piano which is in the front of the house closest to the cell phone tower. My forearms felt as if they were burning. I know that is EMF sensitivity. I had to buy a very expensive anti-EMF device and put it under the piano. Then I could play without the burning sensation.

I first noticed how I was affected by transmission lines about 35 years ago when I was fishing near a hydro-electric dam (Wells Dam) in the Columbia river in Washington State. While spending more than two days at a time fishing around the dam I started getting terrible headaches and it was affecting my ability to focus and I would actually get quite nauseous. When leaving in the evening, my headaches and nausea would disipate rather quickly. Only to return again the next day when back at the same location. In the years to come I would find that any time I would get close to a large distribution pole that had a four-footed base, I would start to feel the same affects as when I was fishing around hydro-electric dams. In fact, when I was looking for property to build our house, there was a large transmission line crossing some state land in Stevens county, WA adjacent to one of the properties we were looking at. That fact was a deciding factor in not purchasing said property because I was concerned about the long-term affects the lines might have on me if I chose to build a home there. To this day I'm still very sensitive to any place with large amounts of electricity running to it.

The roll of out 5G has nearly ruined my life and my health. I have always been sensitive to electromagnetic fields, but 5G is infinitely worse. When I am in an enclosed space (public transportation) with 5G or in close proximity to a wifi router my symptoms start this way. First, I notice a sense of pressure inside my head, followed by intense headache. Then my face and muscles start to hurt and I get ringing in my ears. The more time I spend near it the worse I feel. If the exposure is prolonged I get heart palpitations and nausea. It keeps me from sleeping at night as well. I know this is not psychosomatic because after I connected my commuter in my workstation with an ethernet cable and turned the wifi off, all these symptoms disappeared. I have been able to control to some degree what I am exposed to inside my living space, but public spaces are a different matter. 5G has significantly damaged my ability to participate in life to the point that I cannot work in a public office space and have to limit travel. I have not traveled by plane for 2 years because of this. A change in public policy would hugely impact my life for the better.

I am submitting this comment in response to HHS’s Request for Information on Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs), Radiofrequency (RF) Radiation, and Wireless Radiation Exposure. I am responding from the perspective of a researcher, environmentalist and advocate for persons with the functional impairment known as electrosensitivity.who has experienced it herself. My research has documented biological and environmental effects from RF sources such as smart electricity meters and 5G transmissions. I am a member of Life-Environmental Network, a Japanese NGO advocating for the rights of persons with electrosensitivity and multiplechemical sensitivity. I am a US citizen living abroad. I am attaching a summary of my observations on the introduction of smart meters and my full report on changes in flora and fauna coinciding with the introduction of 5G service in the area I currently reside in. It is important to note that for people with electyrosensitivity, including myself, the world where we can safely conduct our activities has become increasingly narrow. We had to move out of Tokyo to a rural area, in particular for my husband's health, but I also find it hard to tolerate the environment in large cities.I've had to install RF-shielding material at home, and can no longer enjoy eating at restaurants that have introduced wireless ordering equipment.The electrosensitive have to limit their time at public meetings, and many of them cannot tolerate computer equipment enough to participate on line, so our voices are heard infrequently, and many people who know about the problem assume it has been solved because they're not hearing from these people. Over the years, many people I've known with electrosensitivity have died or gone missing. In February 2020, a group of the affected patients assembled in Tokyo to talk with the ministries involved in health and telecommunications. They described their difficulties, including the social stigma they face, and they asked for a "leper colony" where they could live with others similarly affected and recover their health. Then COVID hit and no one could meet with anyone else, and it was all forgotten. This was Japan, but the people affected in other countries, including the US still exist and still need help. I hope their needs can be taken into consideration.

I am electro sensitive. I have to shield my home from EMFs because I react to them. When my kids turn on their mobile phones when I'm fast asleep I immediately wake up and start shaking. I feel burning on the top of my head and my heart palpitates. I then switch on a broad range microwave meter and sure enough my body is always right about detecting these unwanted microwaves. For me ES is just like any other allergic reaction. I have even fallen over in a shop when the WI Fi was too high. I can no longer shop in my groceries store because their new EMF communications system on the many self-service tills gives me a very strong feeling in my heart and my blood pressure goes sky high without me feeling stressed. It's not stress - it's the new system. It also burns my eyes and makes the skin on my face feel sore. Some people think allergies are psychosomatic but people can't stop a peanut allergy or feeling pain and ES is the same. I can't work because I couldn't sit in an EMF environment for long. At times in the past when badly exposed I have actually experienced red burns and patches on my face. I live in an apartment surrounded by other people's routers & wi-fi and mobile phone, blue tooth gadgets etc. My husband and I have had to completely shield all walls facing these other apartments using metal based wallpapers and carbon paint and earthing these to the mains earth to better act as a shield and drain any static build up etc. This has been a horribly painstaking process as only an unbroken surface of shielding with prevent microwave emissions entering the space (Microwaves are pretty tiny...). I have had to use special silver-coated shielding net curtains to block wi-fi from entering through windows from where the neighbors apartment wraps round to face our part of the building. In order to monitor this we have bought a small acoustic and LED monitoring wide range microwave acoustimeter (meter). Which is quite sensitive and we use for diagnosis during and after blocking treatments. At times we have 'over treated' areas and this seems counterproductive and I can't remain in the room feeling some kind of build up. We have to constantly react to neighbors who may move a router, buy a different device and specifically are fighting every new pressure technique to install smart meters for electricity in a small cupboard right the other side of the wall to our apartment - this has been a horrific and ongoing battle and has the potential to ruin our relationship with our sometimes baffled neighbors. Part way through this process our MD Doctor assessed me and diagnosed me as having Electrosensitivity what has been of some help in countering arguments from installers of the smartmeters etc. Engineers lie about the meters swearing blind that they can instal them in 'dumb mode', which is only partially true as the meters still emit a very strong microwave call-and-response signal every minute or so to try and make a connection, and this part of the device cannot be switched off - it is part of how it works. I am also susceptible to other allergies, have a strong sensitivity to dust, moulds and other allergens. We would love to move to a detached house in the country away from all exposure but in the UK that is prohibitively expensive. We also live in fear of mobile phone masts of 5G masts being suddenly erected near our house as these can circumnavigate all planning regulations in the UK (In fact they need not even apply in most cases). In all our right to live a peaceful life without microwaves is completely non-existant in reality - we cannot require neighbors to stop their wi-fi entering our property, we cannot require councils not to place mobile phone masts wherever they want and we cannot stop supermarkets, shops or other facilities flooding their premises with microwave emissions with it seems stronger and stronger levels built off the back of being better and better at penetrating through walls etc to give consumers a 'good signal'. This is an extraordinary strain on one's wellbeing and mental health as a single issue encountered could drive us out of our house with no safe place to go that may not be subjected to the same problems suddenly and often irreparably. It is also a strain on family life and friendships as everyone has to be told not to have their phone on in the house, including smartwatches and unfortunately the hearing aid of my mother in law who does visit but can't hear what we are saying because she has to have the hearing aid off (It is a wireless version - all that is available nowadays). When people come in and are 'swept' with the microwave meter they will often get grumpy when they have turned their phone onto airplane mode, then have to be asked to turn off bluetooth as well, then location services and then even when they have given up and powered off the whole device (So they think) we discover that even so they may have a 'Find my Phone' service still on.

I am submitting this comment in response to HHS’s Request for Information on Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs), Radiofrequency (RF) Radiation, and Wireless Radiation Exposure. I am responding from the perspective of a person who has been personally affected by this exposure. I am 73 years old, and have been suffering from health issues, mostly digestive, since I was 50. In my health journey I finally found a naturopathic doctor who knew how to help me about 5 years ago. After making many changes to reduce my exposure to toxins in my environment, there came a point that she told me that she told me that my biggest obstacle to health was now wireless radiation and that she would not be able to help me further until I addressed my exposure to EMFs. That was the first time I even heard of this. She put me in touch with an expert who guided me in the purchase of a special router that goes into standby mode if Wi-Fi was turned off on all devices and the purchase of a meter to detect exposures. I also hard-wired all devices that I could and turned off Wi-Fi settings at night. I stopped using the microwave completely when I saw how much radiation it emitted. I bought radiation blocking covers for our cell phones and stopped using earbuds. I was fortunate that my condo is not located near a cell phone tower but because I am in a condo, I am affected by my neighbors somewhat. After these changes, I noticed a big difference in my ability to sleep through the night. On nights that my husband forgot to turn his cell phone settings off, I felt my heart pounding at night and when I got up, invariably found that one of his devices had not been turned off. As I get healthier inside, I find I am much more sensitive to these exposures, which are getting stronger and stronger as technology evolves. This is such an important issue, and most people don’t know anything about it and/or don’t believe that companies would be allowed to sell products that are harmful to human life. I support HHS taking an active role in examining the potential health and environmental effects of wireless radiation. Questions about human health should be addressed by federal agencies with appropriate expertise in medicine, biology, epidemiology, and public health, and the experiences of individuals and families who report being affected should be considered alongside the scientific evidence. I urge HHS to carefully evaluate these experiences and the scientific evidence, identify gaps in current research, give particular attention to children and other potentially vulnerable populations, and establish appropriate federal research priorities regarding wireless radiation and public health. Thank you for providing individuals, families, health care providers, researchers and scientists with an opportunity finally be heard on this critical public health issue.

In September of 2021 I had an unfortunate accident requiring metal plates to be surgically attached to my scull. The injury had also left me with nerve damage. During my recovery, I noticed I was becoming hyper sensitive to RF and other frequencies. When traveling on roads and highways, it became evident that upon approaching cell towers, my face, where the metal plates are located, became inflamed. I could feel a burning sensation and my face would literally heat up. The further away from the towers I got, the less discomfort I felt though each encounter had lasting effects. On a long road trip, the affects were cumulative as approaching and passing by tower after tower left its unwelcome marks. After 5 years, I am able to predict when my phone might ring or receive a notification before it rings by the burning in my face. Had it not been for my injury, I might never have known how these frequencies might be affecting us all. Just because you may not be able to feel it happening as I do, does not mean that you are not being affected as well. I do not know what the long term ramifications are but it is obviously taking a toll on my quality of life. I am posting this with the hope my statement may serve to help others. Thank you for this opportunity.