From September 21 to October 21, 2026, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) asked the public and scientists one question in many forms: what do we know, and what don't we know, about the health effects of wireless radiation?
The comment period is now closed. Thousands of people wrote in, and every submission is public. Here are the two I filed.
1. My submission: 11 research gaps
I'm a journalist, not a scientist, so I didn't try to argue the science. I used my comment to point HHS to the questions that, after ten years of reading the studies and interviewing the researchers, I see as the biggest ones nobody has answered.
My main point: our safety limits assume the only effect worth preventing is heating. If nothing is supposed to happen below that threshold, nobody funds research on what happens below it. So the gaps stay open while 5G, satellites and 6G roll out faster than anyone can study them.
The 11 gaps I named:
- Combined exposures (wireless radiation plus heavy metals, mold, pesticides and other toxins)
- Real-world exposure measurements
- Sleep
- The microbiome
- Antibiotic resistance, tested inside hospitals
- Pregnancy and prenatal exposure
- Fertility and phones carried in pockets
- Cancers in the parts of the body where we now carry our phones
- Earbuds and other devices worn on the head
- Cell towers near schools and hospitals
- Pollinators and insects
2. Dr. Dimitris Panagopoulos's submission
Dr. Panagopoulos is an EMF biophysicist at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. I interviewed him in 2024, and he gave me his written permission to file a comment with HHS on his behalf, using only his own published work.
His comment covers two points I think everyone should know. First, the signals from our phones and routers come as pulses repeated at extremely low frequencies, and his team recorded those pulses directly from a Wi-Fi router and from 4G and 5G phones. Second, in his lab, a 15-minute exposure to real phone emissions, about 136 times below the current international limit, damaged the chromosomes of human blood cells on its own and made the damage from gamma radiation worse.
You can also read my full interview with Dr. Panagopoulos, or see his comment on regulations.gov with the 11 papers he attached: HHS-OASH-2026-0397-3190.
Want to read the others?
Every public comment sent to HHS is on regulations.gov, docket HHS-OASH-2026-0397. Some come from parents and doctors, others from engineers and researchers who have studied this for decades.
