Cell Towers Are a Toxic Burden on Americans

Radiation from cell towers placed near homes and public spaces is a toxic burden to Americans, causing EMR Syndrome and more. It’s time for our government to take these impacts seriously.

During the July 22 MAHA Media Hub, Miriam Eckenfels, an international lawyer and public health advocate with Children’s Health Defense (CHD), spoke about the damage wireless radiation is causing Americans, especially young people.

Eckenfels noted that there are voluntary radiation exposures – our phones, computer screens, and other electronic devices that we choose to use. These exposures are significant, but we have control over them. We can put our phones down and walk away from other devices that emit radiation.

Miriam Eckenfels

What is increasingly alarming, Eckenfels explained, is the radiation we are involuntarily exposed to, such as that being emitted from cell towers.

As our technology migrates from 4G to 5G to 6G, our devices use higher and higher frequency bands. Those frequencies do not travel as far as lower frequencies. That means that the technology industry is placing infrastructure for this technology – cell towers – closer and closer to people, the end users. In front of homes, schools, playgrounds, football fields – even churches, she said.

“We now find cell towers in a lot of places where our children spend the majority of their days,” Eckenfels added.

Eckenfels leads the Electromagnetic Radiation & Wireless program at CHD. She said there are thousands of studies demonstrating the harmful effects of radiation from cell towers on human health, particularly children. She reported that symptoms include headaches, tinnitus, sleeplessness, nausea, difficulties focusing, even type 2 diabetes in children.

A review of the science on cell tower radiation in Environmental Health Sciences found, as of May 2025: 89% of 407 oxidative stress studies since 1997 show harm.

• 72% of 511 genetic studies since 1990 found effects.

• 78% of 480 neurological studies since 2007 found harm.

• 85% of 380 reproductive/developmental studies since 1990 showed impact.

Even with all of this evidence, government agencies are doing virtually nothing to protect people because the “the industry enjoys such a broad liability shield that was confirmed by, conferred by the Telecommunications Act of 1996,” said Eckenfels.

The issue needs more public attention and government scrutiny. Everyone values the ability to communicate and access data, but no community should have a dangerous technology dropped on them without an understanding of the risks and without recourse for the people who are injured.

Once again, an issue that our readers are well acquainted with rears its ugly head – corporate capture.

An industry lobbies Congress for special laws to enhance, protect or facilitate corporate interests. The laws quietly free industry from responsibility for the damage that their products, service or technology may cause to people.

Years later, people experience the negative impacts.

Federal regulators need to hold corporate actors accountable and protect the public – not Big Tech.

“For most people, this is an abstract issue and remains an abstract issue,” Eckenfels said. “even though some studies suggest that up to 30 percent of the general population suffer symptoms from wireless exposure. But only about 5 to 6 percent connect the dots, connect their symptoms to radiation exposure, and about 2 percent are so severely affected that it actually amounts to disability.”

Eckenfels introduced 18-year-old Amelia Gilardi, a victim of cell tower radiation. She’s one of the clients that the EMR and CHD is representing in a legal action against the corporation that placed the tower in her Pittsfield, Massachusetts, neighborhood six years ago.

[You can view Eckenfels’ and Gilardi’s entire interview with Tony Lyons, President of MAHA Action and producer/ host of the weekly MAHA Media Hub, here (@24.36) and below.]

In an emotional reflection on what happened to her, Gilardi said she and her sister were “healthy kids” until the day, when Amelia was 12-years-old, the cell tower was activated in her neighborhood. She and her sister suddenly “felt dizzy, fuzzy, and headachy,” symptoms they had never experienced before.

Within weeks of the tower being active, 17 of Gilardi’s neighbors reported similar symptoms – headaches, dizziness, nausea, tinnitus, Atrial fibrillation, heart palpitations, insomnia, double vision, increased depression, anxiety, and cognitive impairment.

“I developed migraines so bad that I couldn’t concentrate in school,” said Gilardi. “Dizziness that had me walking into walls, and nausea that had me sleeping with a vomiting bucket next to my bed each night, if I could sleep at all.”

Gilardi added, “One [neighbor] developed dementia. Others have had heart attacks, three developed cancer, which two have since died from.”

Fortunately, there are strategies to reduce exposure. So says Robert Brown, MD, author of the new book, UnPlug: A Radiologist Explores the Damage Caused by Electropollution and How You Can Prevent It.

Robert Brown MD

“Amelia’s symptoms are similar to those reported by others who suffer the negative health impacts from electromagnetic fields, what we now call EMR syndrome,” Brown tells The MAHA Report. “It is estimated that 5% of the population experience symptoms of EMR from wireless communication whether they make the association or not.”

Local health officials investigated citizen reports, reviewed published science, and determined that the cell tower radiation was the cause.

Pittsfield’s health board sued Verizon in an effort to discuss solutions. A decision rendered last week was not good – the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court dismissed the suit, ruling that the city of Pittsfield “had no authority to pre-empt federal legislation, specifically the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996.”

The legal fight continues and CHD recently called on the FCC to scrap a plan for a four-fold increase in power limits for wireless devices.

Gilardi’s health improved but only after she relocated. Her fight for justice against radiation exposures will continue with Eckenfels and the CHD legal team.

The fight is not just for Gilardi or other people impacted in her Pittsfield neighborhood. A recent survey in Newstarget revealed that 10.1% of Americans report health issues from wireless radiation.

In the United States, that is 38 million people.

It’s time for our government to take EMR syndrome seriously.

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