To our elected and appointed officials and the big business Non-Governmental Organizations tasked with making decisions regarding technology across the beautiful State of Virginia on our behalf:

We, the people of Virginia, do not consent to this involuntary exposure of 5G blanketed wireless radiation and we believe current and future generations of Virginians deserve to be protected.

Thousands of peer reviewed research studies show the negative health effects of radiation from wireless technologies. As such, 5G Next Generation and beyond (5G+) wireless technology poses significant risks to humans — especially young children — animals and the environment. (www.BioInitiative.org) Yet, 5G+ has never been required to be safety tested for mmWave phased array health effects by you or the industries implementing this technology, and thus constitutes a human experiment without consent.

5G+ builds on existing 3G and 4G/LTE infrastructure but is categorically different. One aspect of it involves newly deployed small cell antennas and wireless telecommunication facilities (WTF’s) that will blanket residential neighborhoods (every few houses), using infrastructure in the public ROW’s, while emitting toxic levels of extremely high frequency (millimeter wave) wireless radiation never before used for broadband internet or cell phones. It involves millions of new 5G+ base stations clustered closer to the ground — closer to homes and schools — and 40,000+ new transmitting satellites in near orbit. (www.5GSpaceAppeal.org/the-appeal)

Additionally, there are a host of other major concerns regarding this layered 5G+ equipment going up in our Virginia communities which are specific to our state:

• Facilities/towers are being placed on public school properties and other publicly owned county lands, privately owned lands, and homeowners’ and neighborhood right-of-ways (ROWs); many without informed consent.
• No safeguards or accountability for protecting our children, who are the most vulnerable part of our population and at the most risk from wireless technology exposure.
• No sufficient state-based financial audits to vet both the real and hidden costs to the homeowners/taxpayers versus the benefits to the counties and state was performed.
• No Environmental Impact Reports are completed prior to placing towers, even when those WTF’s are not categorically excluded from review.
• No risk analysis is completed, which completely disregards homeowners’ imputed indemnification of telecom liabilities, the lack of insurability of Wireless Telecommunication Facilities (WTFs), and landowner property depreciation of approximately 20% if a WTF is placed in their right-of-way.
• This 5G+ roll out is a violation of consumer rights’ to affordable and safe telecom technology, as it transfers the financial risks and other well-known, yet unresolved, 5G+ safety risks to the landowner without consent.
• Plans for smart cities and counties in Virginia do not provide considerations for Electromagnetic Sensitive (EMS) and Electromagnetic Hypersensitive (EHS) people under the Americans Disabilities Act or Fair Housing Act, which will make it nearly impossible for individuals who are EHS to conduct business in or around public entities.
• 5G+ millimeter wave technology has not been required to be safety-tested by the state of Virginia prior to the accelerated rollout.
• Virginian officials have deliberately further deregulated broadband Internet services in the past several years to remove any and all public safety failsafes that would protect consumers rights against unwarranted mmWave technology that does not further the interests of the public, but endangers it.
• As the plans currently stand, the counties will remove all data privacy by handing over resident’s public and private information they collect to five Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority (VIPA) statewide Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) who will correlate this data with specific behaviors to create subjective individual or county “equity scores.” In this model and without proper regulation, NGOs gain complete control over what happens to our data and how it is used and will acquire immunity from both liability and accountability for any consequences of their actions . This is a transfer of real power to NGOs and all the protections that come with electing our public officials are being quietly removed.

The state of VA must establish jurisdiction by creating urgent legislation to oversee these serious public safety issues to protect our local communities and children. It must establish a statewide process immediately to monitor, measure and enforce RF and microwave radiation emissions’ compliance to the FCC maximum permissible exposure safety limit standard and cease and desist from giving Telecoms a free ride. As elected government officials, you have a duty to protect and are not pre-empted from this duty.

Despite all of this and more – Governor Northam, State Legislators and Council Members, County, City, Board of Education Officials and Non-Governmental Organizations such as the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) and the Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority (VIPA) continue to implement legislation and/or allow and push for streamlined deployment of layered 5G+ WTFs within our communities across the state.

We respectfully demand that elected and appointed officials and organizations spanning the state of Virginia address the concerns in this petition and act on our behalf to ensure this 5G fifth generation (5G+) technology is operating safely and responsibly at or below the maximum permissible exposure limit (MPEL) for humans. Until 5G+ has been pre-market tested to be safe and a state process initiated to regulate/cap its radiation emissions and what frequencies can be used, we demand a HALT to small cell deployment.

In order to accomplish the above, we request an emergency joint task force consisting of stake holders in all areas (ie. government, non-government, and consumer) be formed to demonstrate to the people of our state that the telecom wireless providers are in compliance and maintaining compliance with the FCC MPEL.

We look forward to more accountability and transparency on this issue to protect the public’s interest in safe and responsible technology.

Sincerely,

Virginians for Safe Technology and the undersigned Virginia citizens

You can find the petition here.