Honoring the Life of EMF Activist Arthur Firstenburg

Honoring the Life of EMF Activist Arthur Firstenburg

We are sad to report that EMF activist, researcher and author Arthur Firstenburg passed away recently, at age 74. After months of enduring an undiagnosed illness, he died at home, surrounded by family and friends, on February 25th, 2025.

We want to take the time right now to remember and honor his life, and his accomplishments in bringing awareness to the harms of electromagnetic fields. He is especially remembered as a spokesperson for EMF hypersensitive individuals, as he struggled with extreme sensitivity to common EMF sources, and could not tolerate them without severe reactions. Although he went through many hardships in life, due to his sensitivity, he was also a prolific and studious researcher. He continuously studied the subject of the biological harms of EMFs for 30 years, and is known to have thoroughly read each study he cited in his newsletters and published works.

Many consider his crowning achievement to be his book, The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life, originally published in 2017, with a second edition released in 2020. The publisher states that 100,000 copies of his book have been sold, marking its significant impact on EMF awareness. This extensively researched, 576-page volume explores the effects that electricity has had on human health and the environment, all the way back to early electricity experiments in the 18th century. Firstenburg suggests that as humans began experimenting with continuous electricity, they unknowingly introduced new biological stressors.

As technology use became more widespread, chronic illness has increased at similar rates. Firstenburg’s book goes through the history of our implementation of electricity and wireless radiation sources, and links the widespread adoption of new technologies to outbreaks of viral illness and disease epidemics. While he has correlated these patterns of events in human history very well, causation itself cannot be established for certain, and that is likely why many of his theories have fallen on deaf ears in mainstream scientific circles. Even though this is the case, finding such a direct correlation stresses the value and importance of prioritizing more extensive studies on the topic, as that is how causation is determined. It also urges caution when using devices that emit wireless radiation, taking a “wait-and-see” stance by limiting exposure.

Of course, many of us are now aware of Dr. Martin Pall’s work, which has established
causation by linking EMFs to the voltage-gated calcium channels in all living organisms, and how this directly results in the harmful health effects of EMFs that have been discovered by many previous studies.

Firstenburg was the founder of the independent campaign group the Cellular Phone Task Force, a nonprofit membership organization created in 1996. This was in response to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which granted the United States government considerable power to implement wireless technologies throughout the country at a fast pace, by dramatically limiting opposition based on health or environmental concerns.

The Cellular Phone Task Force website has cataloged Firstenburg’s extensive library of newsletters full of research, and his calls to action. He also continually compiled anecdotal reports from all over the world from people who are have noticed health and environmental effects from new sources of wireless radiation and electricity in their area.

Firstenburg’s struggle with electromagnetic hypersensitivity

Arthur Firstenburg was born on May 28th, 1950, in Brooklyn, New York. He studied
mathematics at Cornell University in 1971, then went on to medical school from 1978 to 1982. He did not complete medical school, however, due to illness that he attributed to extreme electromagnetic hypersensitivity, which began to appear after undergoing several diagnostic dental x-rays. He began to experience nausea, headaches, insomnia, and heart arrhythmia in the presence of appliances, computers, wireless routers and other common electronics. His symptoms increased in severity to the point where he was compelled to leave his home to seek a refuge away from electrical pollution, even sleeping in his car at times, because living in a house was too risky.

In a 2008 article in Mother Jones magazine, he was quoted as saying, “Your neighbor could get wifi, and then you have to leave and hunt for a new home.” His condition became so debilitating that he even filed a lawsuit against a neighbor, attempting to force her to turn off her Wifi router, stop using her cell phone (and replace it with
a landline), and even to replace dimmer switches and unplug her computer at night. He offered her $10,000 to comply, and when she refused, he saw no other option than to leave his house.

He eventually settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a relatively low EMF city, and one of the last refuges from 5G and smart meters. Since settling in Santa Fe, he became very active in protesting cell tower and smart meter installations in his area, regularly attending city council meetings. He filed eight lawsuits since 2010 against various entities, including the city of Santa Fe and several cell service providers. All were unsuccessful.

You can’t change the whole world, but you can create zones of health and safety

Unfortunately, trying to change the patterns of the entire world around you is exhausting and discouraging, as Arthur found. Mother Jones magazine states:

“Of course, if you’re really worried, you could ditch your cell phone for a quaint landline. Just don’t expect the rest of the world to follow suit. Firstenburg has found that it’s almost impossible to avoid the mobile-wielding masses. He used to ask strangers—politely—to stop talking on their phones in his presence until he got reprimanded in a grocery store for harassing a customer. “People get offended,” he says. “They just don’t know about microwave radiation.”

Modern society’s excitement and acceptance of wireless technology already has too much momentum, and the time to turn back is long past, if there was ever a chance of halting these massive technological trends in the first place. The best we can hope for us to bring awareness of safe usage and habits, and to push for safer designs and standards for these products over time, as more people wake up to the harms of our electronic and wireless devices and infrastructure.

Since we cannot change the behavior and choices of the masses of society, we need to focus on improving our own health and resilience in every way we can. Living a healthy lifestyle connected to nature – the electrons from the Earth, fresh air and sunshine – and eating a nutrient rich diet high in antioxidants, can go a long way in increasing our resilience to life’s inevitable stressors, including pervasive EMFs.

We can reduce our EMF exposure as much as possible or practical, without overlycompromising our lifestyle and our ability to work and connect with others.

Developing “EMF hygiene”, or an awareness of the EMF sources around us and how we interact with them, is foundational. We can reduce so much of our acute exposure simply with more awareness of our proximity to wireless radiation, and the duration of our exposure periods.

For all the exposure sources we cannot control or eliminate, we can utilize effective, clinically tested EMF protection devices, like our Blushield home and portable units. Our clinical trial demonstrated statistically significant improvements across a variety of health markers, especially in areas that are commonly affected by EMFs like cognitive function, sleep, blood glucose, immune markers and heart rate variability, all the way down to a quieting of overactive voltage-gated calcium channel genes, which are now considered to be at the very
foundation of the biological harm from EMFs.

All of these strategies combined could make the difference between suffering and being comfortable and healthy, especially if we consider ourselves to be EMF hypersensitive.

We want to honor Arthur’s life by sharing his research and accomplishments, and take the conversation further by exploring sophisticated and effective solutions to the EMF dilemma that all of us are facing in these modern times.




 

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