Arthur Firstenberg

Arthur Firstenberg

Anyone who has been attending to the health and environmental ramifications of wireless technologies—and the other modern technologies impinging on the realm of “bioelectromagnetics”—is no doubt familiar with the name of Arthur Firstenberg. The author and activist who dedicated most of his adult life to warning the world about invisible electromagnetic threats passed away in late February, not quite having attained 75 years of age.

Active for many years with the Cellular Phone Task Force (an organization dedicated to ending wireless technology that he founded), Firstenberg came to more widespread attention with the 2017 and 2020 publication of his groundbreaking book, The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life (over 100,000 copies sold). The book’s 2020 re-release in paperback was particularly timely; many readers found Firstenberg’s analysis of the Spanish influenza, which he convincingly blamed on radio waves rather than an infectious agent, to be eerily suggestive of a similar relationship between “Covid” and the rollout of 5G small cells. Pre-2020, Firstenberg had helped launch, in 2018, an International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space, signed (as of April 2025) by nearly 306,000 scientists, doctors, environmentalists, and citizens representing 218 nations and territories.

Firstenberg initially intended to pursue a medical career but had to leave medical school when he developed microwave sickness from dental x-rays. Instead of letting that stop him, he dedicated the rest of his life to extremely effective public education and legal activism, while also conducting the meticulous research featured in his books and other writing. In recent years, his worldwide network of correspondents helped him document a dramatic correlation between the launch of satellites (or activation of related technologies) and people’s development of new or intensified symptoms of microwave illness.

Firstenberg was uncompromising, considering the radiation emitted by “cordless phones, cellular antennas, mobile phones, laptops, fluorescent lights, satellites, smart utility meters, newer cars and other transmitting devices” to be a violation of nature. He never owned a cell phone or television.

In her 2020 review of The Invisible Rainbow, Catherine wrote,

“[W]hile Arthur Firstenberg is around, don’t ever say, ‘Why is no one doing anything?’ Firstenberg is doing plenty, and then some.”

Firstenberg may no longer be around, but he has left a powerful legacy that we would be wise to heed. It was his fervent and often articulated hope that many more people would choose to take up the gauntlet.