The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life

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Overview

What this book is about

Firstenberg argues that electricity is a basic property of life, not a neutral utility. Every stage of electrification, he says, has disturbed the fields and currents that living things evolved in, and those disturbances show up as the "diseases of civilization." In his account, anxiety disorder, influenza in its modern form, heart disease, diabetes and cancer were rare or behaved differently before the world was wired. Each of them rose with a specific technology:

- telegraph wires in the 1840s–1860s - AC power in 1889 - mass radio in 1918 - radar in the 1950s - satellites in 1968 - digital cell phones and towers from 1996

The title comes from the prologue. Before electrification, the visible rainbow held nearly all the energy around us. Radio frequencies, low-frequency pulsations and other "invisible colors" were present only at trillion-fold weaker levels. Today we have filled them in at intensities that rival sunlight.

The book has two parts:

- Part I ("From the Beginning…") covers 18th- and 19th-century electricity. It starts with the Leyden-jar craze and electrotherapy (including electrical cures of deafness). It then covers early reports of electrical sensitivity and the 1790s Galvani–Volta dispute, which Firstenberg sees as the moment science divorced electricity from biology. Next comes the rise of neurasthenia (the chronic "weak nerves" illness of the telegraph era) alongside the telegraph. The influenza chapters make his most disputed claim: that influenza is an electrical disease rather than a contagious one. The part ends with the earth's natural electromagnetic environment and the role of porphyrins (the heme-type molecules in blood, mitochondria and nerve sheaths) as life's electronic machinery. - Part II ("…To the Present") applies one proposed mechanism to modern chronic disease. Electromagnetic fields, he argues, slow electron transport in the mitochondria, starving cells of oxygen. He links this to heart disease, diabetes, cancer and longer-but-sicker lifespans. Chapter 15 covers hearing electricity, tinnitus, ultrasonic hearing and "the Hum." Chapter 16 covers bees, birds, amphibians, insects and forests near transmitters. Chapter 17 covers electrical sensitivity in the wireless era, ending with an appeal against 5G and satellite internet.

The book is a sweeping, heavily referenced, openly advocacy-driven history. The bibliography is organized by chapter and topic and runs about 57,000 words. Its evidence is mostly:

- archival and historical medical reports - vital statistics, including the author's own charts of US rural mortality against the percentage of households with electricity in 1931 and 1940 - epidemiological and laboratory studies, many from the Soviet bloc - animal, plant and insect experiments - first-person testimony from Firstenberg and other electrically sensitive people

Many of its central claims directly contradict mainstream medicine. Examples are that influenza is not contagious and that the major pandemics were set off by electrical milestones. The summary below reports them as the author's claims.

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Key Ideas

The core frameworks and findings

The "road not taken" in 1800

Volta won his dispute with Galvani by insisting electricity has nothing to do with life. Firstenberg says this let industry wire the world without asking biological questions. Modern safety rules, he argues, only aim to "keep human exposure below a level that will cook your cells." They also rest on Pflüger's 1859 law of nerve stimulation, which J. C. Bose showed was wrong. The currents he cites as biologically active are tiny:

Electrical sensitivity is old, common and extremely variable

18th-century experimenters reported injuries of their own: Dalibard's tremor, Benjamin Wilson's headaches, and Doppelmayer, the "first electrical martyr." Early electricians compiled a stable list of symptoms, including dizziness, headache, palpitations, insomnia, nosebleeds, metallic taste and ringing in the ears. Beard & Rockwell's 1881 textbook named "electro-susceptibility." They noted that it runs in families and hits active adults aged 20–50 hardest. In 1892 Auguste Morel found that 12% of healthy people have a low threshold for hearing electric current. Firstenberg calls biometeorology's finding that about 30% of people are weather-sensitive a proxy for electrical sensitivity. (Felix Sulman found that 80% of 935 weather-sensitive patients sensed weather changes 12–48 hours ahead.) His comparison: a phone call deposits about 0.1 J per second into the brain, or 360 J per hour. The shock from a full one-pint Leyden jar is about 0.1 J.

Neurasthenia is chronic electrical illness under other names

It first appears in Austin Flint's 1866 textbook and in George Miller Beard's 1869 paper. It spread along railroads and telegraph lines. Telegraph and telephone operators showed the syndrome, including tinnitus and hearing loss, and Rudolf Arndt tied it to electrosensitivity in 1885. In 1894 Freud renamed it "anxiety neurosis." Firstenberg traces what followed:

Influenza as an electrical disease (the most disputed claim)

Firstenberg ties each of the four modern pandemics to an electrical milestone: His evidence for non-contagion: His conclusion is that influenza viruses are "associated" with epidemics but "have never been shown to cause them."

Earth's electric envelope tunes living things

Several points support this in his account:

Porphyrins and the "canaries in the mine."

Porphyrins drive energy transfer in life: chlorophyll, heme and the cytochromes. They also sit in the myelin sheaths of nerves, which Robert Becker showed carry growth and healing currents. William E. Morton of Oregon Health Sciences University made three findings: Chemicals and EMFs act together on this pathway. Henry Peters found zinc overload in porphyric patients and treated it with chelation. Firstenberg extends this to argue that zinc toxicity is common and that supplements above about 20 mg a day may be harmful in the long term.

One mechanism, many diseases

The book's unifying claim is that electromagnetic fields reduce the activity of cytochrome oxidase and the electron transport chain. This produces a chronic, low-grade cellular oxygen starvation. The sources he cites: The consequences he draws: unburned fats deposit in arteries (heart disease), unburned glucose accumulates (diabetes), cells revert to fermentation (cancer), and metabolism slows (longer but sicker lives).

Heart disease tracked electrification

In 1850 heart disease was the 25th cause of death in the US. The CVD death rate rose from about 77 to 384 per 100,000 between 1850 and 1950. His supporting evidence:

Diabetes changed its character

It was once a rare wasting disease of thin people. It became an obesity-linked, insulin-resistant epidemic, which Firstenberg says sugar intake cannot explain. His examples: He supports the metabolic picture with:

Cancer as oxygen starvation, with electricity as the starver

Otto Warburg showed that cancer cells ferment glucose even when oxygen is present. The Warburg effect (the basis of PET scanning) and the hypoxia-inducible-factor (HIF) research that followed support respiration damage as the root of cancer. Firstenberg links cancer trends to transmitters: For phones at the head, he relies on Lennart Hardell: 2,000 hours of cell-phone use triples brain-cancer risk. Starting before age 20 raises the risk of astrocytoma (the commonest malignant brain tumor) on the same side of the head as the phone eightfold, for both cell and cordless phones.

"Suspended animation."

Calorie restriction, cold and hibernation extend life by slowing metabolism. Firstenberg argues EMFs do the same while injuring. His examples of irradiated animals that got more tumors but lived longer: He reads rising centenarian numbers alongside rising chronic disease the same way: "We live longer, but are less alive."

You can hear electricity

Chapter 15 argues that the inner ear works partly electrically: Firstenberg's conclusion is that electromagnetic energy at ultrasonic frequencies (about 20–225 kHz) is converted into sound. These frequencies come from switch-mode power supplies, CFL and LED electronics, smart meters, power-line data signals and cell-signal modulation. He claims most of today's "ringing in the ears" is not true tinnitus but people hearing the electricity around them: it is heard in both ears, at the top of the person's hearing range, with normal hearing. The low-frequency "Hum" is heard by 2–11% of people. He attributes it to submarine-communication transmitters (VLF, very low frequency) and LORAN-C navigation beacons.

Non-human evidence answers the "psychosomatic" objection

Animals and trees cannot imagine symptoms, so Firstenberg leans on studies of them:

Industry and regulators have a conflict of interest, and the science has been suppressed

Firstenberg's examples:

The wireless era, and "the safe level is zero."

Firstenberg describes his own collapse after digital service launched in New York on November 14, 1996. In his survey of 57 electrically sensitive people, 86% fell ill on September 23, 1998, the day Iridium began service, and US deaths rose 4–5% over the next two weeks. He also cites: From Ross Adey and Neil Cherry he takes the view that no exposure level is safe. He closes by opposing 5G and mega-constellations of satellites (SpaceX, OneWeb, Amazon).

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Chapter by chapter — click to expand

§ 1. Captured in a Bottle ▾

The 1746 Leyden-jar craze (Musschenbroek, Allamand, Kleist): the first shock injuries, and Winkler's nosebleeds and head heaviness.
Nollet's mass human-chain shocks (240 soldiers at Versailles, a monastery circle over a mile around), electric canes, the "electric kiss."
Medical electricity everywhere: Franklin ("franklinization"), John Wesley's tract, Marat, lay "electricians" in every street, electrical abortions.
A lost body of 18th-century knowledge about electricity's effects.

§ 2. The Deaf to Hear, and the Lame to Walk ▾

Electrotherapy methods: the "electric bath," "electric wind," sparks, positive vs. negative electricity. Acupuncture framed as conducting atmospheric electricity.
The London Electrical Dispensary (1793–1819): 8,686 patients, 84% "cured" or "relieved."
Making the Deaf Hear:
Duchenne (1851) used feeble pulses through an ear-canal electrode.
Sprenger in Jever restored hearing to about 40 people with pulses on the tragus, ear canal and mastoid.
Lindhult (1752) treated patients including a man with hearing loss and tinnitus; La Beaume also reported cures.
The common rule was that treatments were brief, gentle and painless.
Seeing and Tasting Electricity: Humboldt's one-volt zinc/silver experiments produced taste, light flashes and nausea. Volta heard crackling with 30 pairs of plates in his ears. Rudolf Brenner is flagged for chapter 15.
Speeding up the Heart and Slowing it Down: Humboldt restarted animal hearts. Positive electricity raised the pulse and negative lowered it (van Barneveld, 169 trials).
"Istupidimento": the catalog of side effects (mental confusion, dizziness, headache, fatigue, insomnia, nosebleeds, slowed clotting). Nollet (1753) showed biological effects from a DC field alone. Table 1 of 18th-century effects includes ringing in the ears and metallic taste.

§ 3. Electrical Sensitivity ▾

Early casualties: Dalibard, Wilson, Doppelmayer, Franklin's recurring illness ("a humming noise," giddiness), Morin's collapse.
Wide individual variation (Bertholon, Sigaud de la Fond, Humboldt). Some people were human non-conductors; fever changed conductivity. Young adults were most susceptible, which foreshadows the influenza argument.
The 1748 Morin–Nollet debate: Nollet predicted wires spanning the world, and Morin asked what would happen to "the spectators."
Beard & Rockwell (1881): "electro-susceptibility," with a symptom list that includes ringing in the ears. Morel (1892): 12% hear low-level current.
The phone vs. Leyden-jar energy comparison, and the static charge from computer screens.
Weather Sensitivity: biometeorology; the International Society for Biometeorology (founded by Tromp, 1956); Sulman's 935 patients. Firstenberg reports claims that cell-phone companies pressured researchers, and describes Richner's 2008 Tokyo remarks and Persinger's view that "the scientific method has been abandoned." Also Beccaria's global circuit and the Yellow Emperor's Qi.

§ 4. The Road Not Taken ▾

Electricity as the life principle (Newton, Nollet, Voltaire, Marat, Wesley).
Galvani vs. Volta. Volta's victory enthroned mechanism and chemistry and banished "long-range forces" from biology, which let the world be wired without biological concern.

§ 5. Chronic Electrical Illness ▾

The telegraph spread worldwide from 1839: the London rooftop telegraph (Dickens) and about 700,000 miles of wire by 1875.
Firstenberg's field calculations for early earth-return telegraph lines. Operators keyed at about 7.5 pulses per second, near the 7.8 Hz Schumann resonance, producing fields up to 30,000× the natural field at that frequency. Trowbridge detected stray ground currents miles away.
Neurasthenia (Flint 1866, Beard 1869) and famous neurasthenes. A correction to historians who say it was not new.
Margaret Cleaves, an electrotherapist and neurasthene: tinnitus, hearing loss in one ear, weather prediction.
Occupational illness in telegraphers ("mal télégraphique"; Cronbach's 17 cases, 4 with hearing loss) and in telephone operators (Beyer, Engel, Bernhardt; Schilling's 1915 description with tinnitus; Le Guillant 1956; Yassi 1989).
"Railway spine" and return currents in rails. The characteristics of neurasthenia, including reddish urine, which is linked to porphyria in chapter 10. Arndt (1885).
The Renaming: Freud's "anxiety neurosis" (1894); ICD/DSM treatment; neurasthenia persists in Russia, Asia and Eastern Europe; the Sechenov–Pavlov tradition; "radio wave sickness."

§ 6. The Behavior of Plants ▾

J. C. Bose: plant nerves, the pulsating cells that pump sap, instruments magnifying movement up to 100 million times. Bose invented the coherer and demonstrated wireless transmission in 1895, before Marconi.
Plant electrification history: Nollet's mustard seeds, Gardini's shielded monastery garden (50–70% smaller harvests), Lemström, Brother Paulin's "géomagnétifère."
Bose disproved Pflüger's Law (the basis of electrical safety codes). Nerve conduction is altered by sub-microampere currents, and a rebound hypersensitivity follows.
Blackman (50 pA optimal for growth) and Murr (effects above one quadrillionth of an ampere). Bose's radio experiments at about 30 MHz changed growth within seconds. Bose's 1927 warning about "ceaseless waves of space-signalling."

§ 7. Acute Electrical Illness ▾

The telephone (1876), the dynamo, Edison's DC vs. Westinghouse/Tesla AC, the electric chair, electric railways. 1889 was the year electrification went global.
Influenza Is an Electrical Disease:
Solar-cycle links (Tapping 2001, Mygge's personal diary, the Maunder Minimum and the 1728 pandemic).
Hope-Simpson's 21 puzzles and Shope's latent-carrier theory.
The simultaneous worldwide onset in 1889 and ships struck at sea.
Neurological rather than respiratory symptoms; "insanity after influenza"; attacks on young adults; animals ill at the same time.
Household non-transmission; Jefferson's vaccine review.
The claim that no experiment has shown person-to-person transmission.

§ 8. Mystery on the Isle of Wight ▾

Marconi's first permanent station (1897). d'Arsonval found that smooth sine waves differ from waves full of "jerks and teeth" and that radio frequencies lower blood pressure.
Marconi's own health: fevers, suicidal depression, many heart attacks. His wife's ears began ringing at the Cape Breton station, and their infant died. Bystanders complained ("his waves made her feet tickle"). Queen Victoria died as a new transmitter fired up.
The Isle of Wight bee disease: 90% of bees lost by 1906.
1917–18: the US Navy radio build-out and bee deaths near the New Brunswick station.
The Spanish flu: its Navy and Signal Corps origins and the September 1918 surge. Firstenberg highlights:
hemorrhages and slowed blood clotting (Erskine & Knight treated with calcium lactate)
victims aged 18–40; fit people more at risk; pregnant women hit hard
slow heart rates after recovery, and hair loss
neurological symptoms including impaired hearing
masks and quarantine had no effect
Rosenau's failed transmission experiments on 100 volunteers
1957: the DEW, Mid-Canada and Pinetree radar lines, Texas Towers, tropospheric-scatter transmitters, White Alice. 1968: the IDCSP satellites.

§ 9. Earth's Electric Envelope ▾

A: the plasma universe, magnetosphere, ionosphere, the 130 V/m fair-weather field and the global circuit. The body's polarity (head positive, feet negative). Trees and rain.
B: Schumann resonances and the alpha and theta brain rhythms. König's reaction-time studies. Hamer (1965): the brain discriminates frequencies only at weak field strengths. Sferics, whistlers, dawn chorus. Reiter's 1-million-person statistics. Hamster hibernation in a Faraday cage. Wever's bunker experiments.
C: acupuncture as electrical circuitry. Nakatani, Voll, Hsiao-Tsung Lin, Becker's 1975 measurements (points about 5 mV higher than surrounding skin). Bong Han Kim's ducts and Darras's technetium tracer studies. The primo vascular system (Seoul National University, 2002–2015).
D: Siple Station VLF experiments. Signals are amplified about 1,000× in the magnetosphere and return carrying 60 Hz harmonics. Power-line harmonic radiation; weekend vs. weekday geomagnetic activity (Fraser-Smith); electron-slot drainage; shifting Schumann values.
E: Influenza. Six qualitative changes to earth's EM environment: power lines 1889, radio 1918, radar 1957, satellites 1968, then the wireless era and HAARP. The first four are paired with the 1889, 1918, 1957 and 1968 pandemics.

§ 10. Porphyrins and the Basis of Life ▾

Firstenberg's friend Bethany, who developed porphyria and lived without electricity. Sulfonal (1888) revealed porphyria. The birth of environmental medicine (Randolph, 1951), which was not taught at the author's medical school.
Heme synthesis and porphyria as a genetic sensitivity to pollution. Morton's MCS/EHS–porphyria work (5–10% prevalence). "Mauve factor."
Szent-Györgyi's 1941 call for a solid-state (semiconductor) biology, and those who followed: Lehmann, Eley, Arnold, Pethig (water "dopes" proteins), Ling, Pollack, Mae-Wan Ho, Sedlak, Ling Wei.
Porphyrins, the Nervous System, and the Environment:
Myelin porphyrins (coproporphyrin III and protoporphyrin complexed with zinc).
Becker: salamander charge maps, anesthesia by current, Schwann cells carrying healing currents. Sylvan Meryl Rose's electrical regeneration signals.
Soviet "electrosleep."
The Genoa finding that up to 90% of the brain's oxygen is consumed by myelin.
Terzuolo & Bullock's crayfish sensitivity.
The Zinc Connection:
Henry Peters's chelation results.
Zinc sources: tire dust, galvanized metal, dental fillings.
Zinc supplements that worsened child development in Bangladesh, and zinc in Alzheimer's.
Blood tests as a poor measure of zinc status.
Canaries in the Mine: EMFs "douse the flames of metabolism." Porphyria carriers have 36–39× the liver-cancer rate. The sensitive 5–10% are the warning ignored for 150 years.

§ 11. Irritable Heart ▾

Sudden cardiac deaths in athletes doubled in 1996. The Freiburger Appeal (about 3,000 physicians, 2002).
Firstenberg's 1996 involvement in a legal challenge to the FCC's industry-written exposure guidelines, and the Telecommunications Act.
Samuel Milham's electrification epidemiology. Paul Dudley White's puzzlement at rising coronary disease.
Delhi vs. Gurgaon. Ravnskov's The Cholesterol Myths: Firstenberg accepts that diet is not the root cause but disagrees with high-animal-fat prescriptions.
Leiden familial hypercholesterolemia; Michaels on historical fat intake; Morris's autopsy data (atheroma fell while heart disease rose).
The Philadelphia Zoo necropsies (1916–64).
Post-WWII radar and RF growth. Lockheed's 1955 Barron study. Soviet-bloc microwave clinics and the cardiac signs of radio wave sickness (Tyagin: only about 15% of exposed workers had normal EKGs).
Allan Frey: the radar-hearing discovery, the blood-brain barrier effect, and microwave pulses timed to the heartbeat causing arrhythmia in frog hearts at 0.6 µW/cm².
Mandel Cohen, Paul White and Stanley Cobb's 1941–46 study of neurocirculatory asthenia. Findings: poor oxygen use, doubled lactate, sensitivity to electric shock, not anxiety.
"Irritable heart" in the Civil War (Da Costa, telegraph lines), in WWI (radio; over 100,000 British discharges) and in WWII (radar).
CFS and ME naming. Cytochrome oxidase impairment across all these conditions. Bee metabolism under a phone.
US cardiovascular mortality tables 1850–2017. Rising prevalence masked by treatment. Heart failure and cardiac death in young people.

§ 12. The Transformation of Diabetes ▾

Edison and Bell, both electrical pioneers, became diabetic.
The historical rarity of diabetes (Hirsch; Rollo saw three cases in 23 years).
Sugar Blues and the sugar model. Firstenberg keeps sugar avoidance for prevention but says sugar cannot explain the epidemic.
American Indians, Brazil and Bhutan as natural experiments.
The metabolic mechanism: fat and glucose back up behind a slowed electron transport chain. Joslin's near-starvation treatment.
Insulin resistance and obese diabetics appear only in the late 19th century (Fothergill).
Diabetes Is Also a Disorder of Fat Metabolism: milky blood; Joslin's warning against high-fat diets for diabetics; Randle's glucose–fatty acid cycle; Kelley & Simoneau; the Pittsburgh finding that diet and exercise improved everything except electron-transport efficiency (still about half of normal); Patti & Corvera (2010).
Diabetes in Radio Wave Sickness: JPRS translations of Soviet studies (Sadchikova, Bartoníček, Klimková-Deutschová, Nikitina). Animal studies (Syngayevskaya, Belokrinitskiy, Navakatikian & Tomashevskaya). Finnish PET scans near a phone. Kaiser Permanente: mothers exposed to more than 2.5 mG in pregnancy had children six times more likely to be obese as teens.
Vital Statistics: the 1997 diagnosis spike; obesity tables and the 1980s personal computer.
Obesity in Wild and Domestic Animals: Allison et al. (2010), "Canaries in the Coal Mine": 24 of 24 animal populations gained weight.

§ 13. Cancer and the Starvation of Life ▾

Vatican Radio: Cardinal Tucci's conviction upheld in 2011. Children living 6–12 km from the antennas had 8× the rate of leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma.
Otto Warburg's discoveries, his 1954 call to restrict known carcinogens, and his organic lifestyle. Goldblatt & Cameron turned cells cancerous with repeated oxygen deprivation; Goldhaber's pore-size experiments; Burk; the oncogene era; the revival of the Warburg effect through HIF research.
Diabetes and Cancer: Maynard (1910) suspected electricity as a common cause; the 2009 ADA/ACS consensus that the two occur together.
Cancer in Animals: Philadelphia Zoo tumors, e.g. bears 7.8% → 47%.
Vital Statistics:
England, and Fellingsbro parish, before and after the telegraph.
A 1900 world league table of cancer rates.
1914: two cancer deaths among 63,000 American Indians on unelectrified reservations.
The 1920–21 rise with AM radio.
Lung, breast and prostate cancer rising; lung cancer in never-smokers.
Hallberg & Johansson's Swedish trend breaks and melanoma analysis.
Elihu Richter's 47 occupational cases, some developing cancer within months.
Nevada and Hoover Dam.
Brain tumors and phones:
Charlie Teo: telecom companies deny researchers data access; about one-third of his patients' tumors sit near the ear.
Firstenberg's critique of the Danish cohort study, and the refusal of his data request.
Noel Kaufmann's tumor under the ear where he held a cordless phone.
Registry under-reporting in Sweden, Finland, SEER and the VA; Calgary's 30% one-year rise.
Hardell's cell and cordless phone results.
Transmission-tower studies: Morton, Hawaii, Hocking, Dolk, Cherry, Wolf, Eger, Dode.

§ 14. Suspended Animation ▾

Beard noticed that neurasthenes live longer.
Calorie restriction in animals from single-celled organisms to rhesus monkeys, and Okinawa. Rubner's and Pearl's "rate of living." Temperature, hibernation and bats.
The electron transport chain as life's engine. EMFs slow it the way calorie restriction does, but by starving cells of oxygen rather than calories. The result is more cancer, diabetes and heart disease together with longer life.
Experiments where exposure extended life despite harm: electric shock, 800 MHz at Los Alamos, Süsskind's microwave mice, the Chou & Guy PAVE PAWS study, fibroblasts, low-dose ionizing radiation (Sohal & Allen, Carlson & Jackson, Lorenz).
Maximum age at death in Sweden rose faster from 1969, the year color and UHF TV arrived. Kannisto's centenarian counts. Kagawa: "extended life expectancy but increased diseases."

§ 15. You mean you can hear electricity? ▾

The Santa Barbara case (1962):
Clarence Wieske showed a woman was hearing electromagnetic fields carried on wiring, phone lines and pipes. She heard sound from a search coil that emitted no acoustic noise.
Grounding appliances helped a little.
Phone-line filters, an isolation transformer and non-conductive pipe sections made the noise bearable.
Wieske predicted such complaints would become common.
Building-biology consultants.
Firstenberg's claim about tinnitus:
About 80 million Americans hear "ringing in the ears."
Most of them do not have classic tinnitus (internal, one-sided, with hearing loss).
Instead they hear ambient electricity in both ears, at the top of their range, with normal hearing.
History of electrical hearing:
Le Roy (1755); Volta; Grapengiesser's patients (teakettle hiss, bells, nightingales); Ritter's tone; Merzdorff's 1801 galvanic treatment of tinnitus.
Brenner (1868): 7 volts in the ear gave an average person a "dinner bell" tone, with huge individual differences and "acoustic nerve hyperaesthesia."
Tousey (1921); Eichhorn's radio electrode.
20th-century electrophonic research:
Stevens's three mechanisms (middle ear, hair cells, auditory nerve).
Frey's microwave hearing, which Firstenberg thinks is not the main modern culprit.
Salomon & Starr: 3 µA near the cochlea is audible.
Flanagan's Neurophone.
Puharich & Lawrence's ultrasonic-carrier "transdermal electrostimulation": extended hearing to 18–25 kHz; profoundly deaf subjects heard and understood speech; deafened dogs still responded.
Skinner, Hoshiko, and Johnson (2 µA / 2 µW audible).
Moxon's cat studies.
After that, funding went to cochlear implants.
The Electromodel of the Ear:
Pohlman's and Naftalin's critique of Helmholtz's mechanical model.
A piezoelectric, semiconducting tectorial membrane.
George Offutt's hair-cells-as-electroreceptors model (fish lagena, otoliths, lateral line, ampullae of Lorenzini).
Piezoelectric outer hair cells (1 pA response). Andrew Bell's surface-acoustic-wave model.
Current needed to trigger hearing: about 1 mA in the ear canal, about 1 µA in cochlear fluid, 1 pA at a hair cell. Radio waves and fields induce currents directly inside the cochlea.
Hearing Ultrasound:
Lenhardt: bone-conducted ultrasound up to 150–225 kHz is heard by most people, including many deaf people. Speech carried on ultrasound is understood.
Deatherage's sonar experience. The saccule (Tait's "Is all hearing cochlear?", VEMP testing).
Five arguments that EM energy at about 20–225 kHz is what torments people: tinnitus heard at the top pitch; Puharich's results; piezoelectric structures in the ear; induced current rises with frequency (about 1,000× more at 50 kHz than at 50 Hz); ultrasonic hearing thresholds.
Estimated thresholds: about 1 µG or about 10 mV/m at 20 kHz (WHO charts), and possibly far less (Roland-Mieszkowski).
Sources of electrical sound:
Dave Stetzer's "dirty power" testimony (dairy cows).
Firstenberg's own case: he has heard a 17 kHz tone since a transistor TV in the 1960s, and has found no silence anywhere since about 1996, not in a cave or in the Green Bank radio-quiet zone.
Low-frequency Hum: submarine VLF stations (Cutler, Jim Creek, TACAMO planes, 50 Hz coding) and LORAN-C. His own Hum near the Middletown tower; the Taos Hum and the South Central chain; the British Hum tracking Norwegian Sea stations; Hum reports stopping when European LORAN shut down on 1 January 2016; eLORAN plans.
Other sources: WWVB-type time signals (60 kHz); CFL electronic ballasts (20–60 kHz, with microwave emissions allowed by the FCC); LED switch-mode supplies; GSM, UMTS and LTE modulation frequencies (e.g. 217 Hz, 33,850 Hz, 270,833 Hz, and 15 kHz subcarriers).
Phones put more of their energy into low-frequency components than towers do, which Firstenberg links to tinnitus in phone users. A Vienna ENT-clinic study led by Michael Kundi found more tinnitus, often in both ears, among cell-phone users, rising with minutes of use.
Infrared remote controls (30–60 kHz pulses); computer switch-mode supplies (a test: an AM radio at about 530 kHz held near a device picks up its interference); dimmer switches; power-line harmonics and Power Line Communications; smart meters (FCC 10–490 kHz; wireless mesh meters transmitting up to 240,000 times a day and linked to reports of shrill ringing).
Tinnitus today:
US surveys: 17% (1982) → 22% (1996) → 25% (1999–2004), while hearing loss declined.
Kochkin: 44% of people with ringing ears report normal hearing.
The Beaver Dam cohort: tinnitus up about 50%.
Kajsa-Mia Holgers's Göteborg 7-year-olds: 12% (1997) → 42% nine years later. About half of 13–16-year-olds report tinnitus, 14% hear it daily.

§ 16. Bees, Birds, Trees, and Humans ▾

Balmori (Valladolid):
A school playground under about 60 antennas had five leukemia/lymphoma cases, and the AVAATE association formed.
Stork breeding near masts; sparrow density vs. field strength.
Kestrels, magpies and park birds disappeared.
House-sparrow collapse in European cities, e.g. Kensington Gardens: 2,603 (1925) → 4 (2002), now ringed by 26 antenna sites. Kerala (Pattazhy).
Magras & Xenos quail and chicken embryos. Racing pigeons (1930s radio; 1995–98 losses; the Iridium launch in September 1998). Feathers as microwave antennas (Tanner, Romero-Sierra, Bigu del Blanco). Keeton's magnetic homing.
Radio-tagging animals: GPS and RFID on pigeons; the National Park Service warning (2002). Moose calves with transmitter ear tags had 68% mortality vs. about 10%. Skewed sex ratios in voles. A 2003 review of 836 tagging studies.
Migratory Birds: Oldenburg robins oriented only inside grounded aluminum shielding; the disturbance came from sources below 20 MHz.
Amphibians: deformed and vanishing frogs. Balmori's tadpoles (90% vs. 4% mortality). Moscow embryos malformed next to a personal computer.
Insects:
Alexander Chan's school project: wingless fruit flies.
Panagopoulos: offspring cut, egg-cell DNA fragmented, "intensity windows" where holding the phone farther away did more damage. Cordless phone, Wi-Fi, baby monitor, microwave oven and Bluetooth devices all reduced offspring.
Cammaerts's ants, including a switched-off phone with its battery in, DECT phones and a Wi-Fi router.
Panagopoulos's warning that microwave exposure may be the most intense modern environmental stressor.
Colony Collapse Disorder:
Ruzicka's observations near antennas.
Isle of Wight disease; the Nosema and tracheal-mite theories, which Bailey disproved; "disappearing disease"; the 1996 and 2002–03 losses.
The Pettis study found no infectious cause.
Bumblebee declines.
Termite and bee electrical signaling (Günther Becker, Ulrich Warnke).
Cell phones placed inside hives: Sharma & Kumar, Favre (swarm "piping"), Pattazhy.
The 3G rollout. Warnke's HAARP hypothesis for the 2006–07 collapse.
The Path Into the Dying Forest:
Volkrodt: trees as antennas, soil acidification by induced currents, dieback in line of sight of radar.
West German forest damage 1982–84 and recovery after the Cold War.
Skrunda (Latvia radar): children's memory and reaction times, fewer boys, cow chromosome damage, halved pine growth rings, duckweed.
Konstantynów (Polish 2 MW mast): residents' cortisol, thyroid and electrolyte abnormalities normalized after the tower fell in 1991; spiderwort mutations.
Schwarzenburg (Swiss shortwave): sleep disturbance 3.5× within 900 m; cow and human melatonin rebounded when the transmitter was off; the station closed in 1998.
Dying cedars; Alaska yellow cedar and early naval radio; Amazon mortality and SIVAM (2002).
Katie Haggerty's shielded aspens; Colorado aspen decline and the statewide digital trunked radio system.

§ 17. In the Land of the Blind ▾

Headaches from phones: about a quarter of Norwegian users who spent over an hour a day (1996); about two-thirds of heavy Ukrainian student users (2010). Brundtland's office ban.
Why Firstenberg rejects the name "electromagnetic hypersensitivity": "we are all being electrocuted to a greater or lesser extent."
His collapse after Omnipoint's November 1996 NYC launch, the hundreds of responses to his newspaper ad, and nurse Janet Ostrowski's "viral syndrome" patients. The Cellular Phone Task Force and No Place To Hide.
Profiles:
Dafna Tachover: a lawyer injured by her laptop and phone, now isolated in a rural cabin.
Olle Johansson: screen dermatitis research, loss of funding, sabotage.
Erica Mallery-Blythe: a physician with facial flushing and pain after phone calls and "cooking" legs under a Wi-Fi laptop; relief in a signal-free campground.
Yury Grigoriev: children as the group at greatest risk.
Headlines Firstenberg cites:
ADHD in children; glaucoma with heavy computer use; eczema; cataracts in rabbits; childhood asthma.
Hearing loss from phone use: Turkey, Chandigarh, Kuala Lumpur, and Mumbai (10 minutes a day). A single exposure caused temporary loss (Southampton).
Salford's rat studies: blood-brain barrier leakage within 2 minutes, and more leakage at 1,000× lower power. Neuron damage after a single 2-hour exposure. Memory deficits.
Turkish studies: hippocampus, offspring and spinal-cord myelin effects.
2020-edition additions:
The Blue Cross Blue Shield millennials report.
Strokes in young adults (Denmark: +50%, TIAs tripled).
Breast cancer under phones carried in bras; hip replacements; colon and prostate cancer in young adults; sperm counts.
Cincinnati preschool white-matter findings.
The Mount Nardi wildlife exodus with 3G/4G.
Global insect declines.
5G and the Internet of Things.
Iridium in September 1998: Firstenberg's survey (86% of electrically sensitive respondents ill that day) and CDC weekly deaths. The Globalstar and Iridium relaunches; Kentucky foal losses.
Satellite mega-constellations (SpaceX 42,000; OneWeb; Telesat; Amazon; Lynk) in the ionosphere and the global circuit.
Ross Adey and Neil Cherry: "the safe level of exposure is zero." Advocacy groups: IEMFA, GUARDS, the 2019 International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space.
Tetsuharu Shinjyo's Okinawa building study: chronic fatigue, nosebleeds and eye problems resolved within 5 months of rooftop antennas being removed.
The closing call: normalize asking neighbors to turn off phones and Wi-Fi.

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Practical Takeaways

What to actually do with this

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Headphones, earbuds and headsets are never discussedThe book never compares wired headsets, speakerphone or Bluetooth earbuds with holding a phone to the ear. Its only Bluetooth data point is from fruit flies: in Panagopoulos's work, several Bluetooth devices reduced offspring by up to 30%, alongside cordless phones and Wi-Fi routers. Two findings cut against assuming that distance or low power makes wireless devices harmless. Panagopoulos's flies were harmed more with the phone a foot away. Salford's rats showed more blood-brain barrier damage at 1,000× lower power, roughly the equivalent of keeping a phone several feet from the head. Firstenberg reports these as evidence of "intensity windows," not as advice. The book's own stance is avoidance, not mitigation.

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Phones at the head, and cordless (DECT) phones, are where the book is most specificIt covers:

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When a sound is heard in both ears at a very high pitch with otherwise normal hearing,Firstenberg would ask whether it comes from electrical sources. Examples: it gets louder when devices are plugged in and quieter during a power cut. The practical tools he describes:

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Distance and shielding worked in the studies he reports, but they are experiments, not prescriptions

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Diet: Firstenberg's positions differ from several other titles in this libraryHe holds that, in today's electrified world, a lower-fat diet reduces arterial damage. He is a long-time vegetarian himself. He says Joslin warned diabetics against high-fat diets, that avoiding refined sugar still helps prevent diabetes, and that calorie restriction is the one proven way to extend life. He also argues that zinc overload is common in porphyria-prone people, that blood zinc tests mislead, and that long-term intake above about 20 mg a day may be toxic. These are the author's claims, drawn largely from Henry Peters and a few trials.

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Where he places phones on the bodyHe links phones in bras to breast cancer directly beneath them, and hip-pocket phones to hip replacements and pelvic cancers. These are the author's associations, not established findings.

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Reading noteMuch of the evidence is historical correlation, often the author's own correlation charts; the rest is Soviet-era literature, small or unreplicated studies, and testimony. Several core claims run directly against mainstream medicine:

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The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life

Overview

Key Ideas

Contents

Practical Takeaways

See Also