About
Arthur Firstenberg is a scientist, journalist and author who is part of a growing worldwide movement to bring attention to the most ignored threat to life on Earth. His book, The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life (AGB Press 2017, Chelsea Green 2020), is the first book to tell the history of electricity from an environmental point of view. The Cellular Phone Task Force, an organization he co-founded in 1996, provides a global clearinghouse for information about wireless technology’s harmful effects, and a support network for the millions of people injured by this technology.
Firstenberg is the Administrator and Co-author of the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space. To date, the Appeal has more than 300,000 signatures from 214 countries and territories, including 3,000 environmental organizations, 7,000 scientists, 4,300 medical doctors, 13,900 engineers and 1,500 beekeepers. Articles by Firstenberg or about his work have appeared in Mother Jones, The Ecologist, Earth Island Journal, Vegetarian Times, Village Voice, Utne Reader, Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, New York Daily News, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times and other newspapers and magazines. His work has been translated into 32 languages.
After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University with a B.A. in mathematics, he attended the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine from 1978 to 1982. Injury by
x-ray overdose cut short his medical career. For the past 41 years he has been a researcher, consultant and lecturer on the health and environmental effects of electromagnetic radiation.
Featured Work
The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life
Over the last 220 years, society has evolved a universal belief that electricity is ‘safe’ for humanity and the planet. Scientist and journalist Arthur Firstenberg disrupts this conviction by telling the story of electricity in a way it has never been told before—from an environmental point of view—by detailing the effects that this fundamental societal building block has had on our health and our planet.
In The Invisible Rainbow, Firstenberg traces the history of electricity from the early eighteenth century to the present, making a compelling case that many environmental problems, as well as the major diseases of industrialized civilization—heart disease, diabetes, and cancer—are related to electrical pollution.
