About RF SAFE

Beyond bias: a three‑decade engineering mission to make wireless align with biology, not just convenience.

From a hospital room in the 1990s to Li‑Fi patents and the S4–Mito–Spin framework, RF SAFE has spent nearly 30 years turning grief, engineering, and data into practical tools, policy pressure, and public‑health advocacy.

Our Story What We Do Today

Who We Are

RF SAFE is not a marketing invention. It is a long‑running engineering and public‑health effort shaped by a single family tragedy and built over decades of work in antennas, mitigation tools, research synthesis, and policy.

A mission born from loss

In 1995, founder John R. Coates lost his first daughter, Angel Leigh, shortly after birth to a neural tube defect he believes was linked to prenatal RF exposure. In the mid‑1990s, wireless phones were still a novelty; EMF risk barely registered in consumer conversations.

Coates began working through the early RF literature: oxidative‑stress and developmental studies, older military and occupational reports, and emerging bioeffects papers that never reached the public. By 1998 he had founded RF SAFE with two simple promises:

That is not “bias.” It is what happens when a parent turns grief into a lifetime of work — the same way seat‑belt and drunk‑driving campaigns were built by people who buried children and refused to let it happen again.

A lifetime in engineering, pointed at one problem

Coates’ path into RF safety did not begin with advocacy; it began with engineering. In the early 1980s, before he was even old enough to drive, he enrolled in engineering studies at Tidewater Community College at age 15. That early start led to a career spent around circuits, antennas, and communication systems.

After Angel’s death, that engineering track and a parent’s urgency converged. Instead of treating EMF as an abstract risk, he treated it as a design problem:

RF SAFE is the result of that shift: a technical career redirected toward one goal — protecting children and families from unnecessary microwave radiation while still allowing modern communication to function.

History & Legacy: Beyond Bias

For nearly three decades, RF SAFE has mixed engineering, product design, research synthesis, and policy work. This is the story behind that work — and why “bias” is the wrong lens to view it through.

In the polarized world of electromagnetic field (EMF) safety, RF SAFE is often reduced to caricature. Because the organization combines advocacy, scientific synthesis, and practical products like training tools and phone cases, critics sometimes dismiss it as “biased” or “commercially motivated.”

That framing misses the point completely. RF SAFE was not born in a marketing department. It was born in a hospital room.

Over nearly three decades, RF SAFE has become one of the most fully integrated EMF‑safety efforts in the world: pushing technology forward, unifying mechanisms and evidence, and forcing policy to confront what the science already shows.

The accordions below walk through that legacy.

A mission born from loss, not marketing
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When wireless phones were still a novelty, there were no “anti‑radiation” products, and EMF risk was barely a footnote. After Angel’s death in 1995, Coates started reading the early RF literature: oxidative‑stress findings, developmental studies, and older military and occupational work that never made it into consumer discussions.

By 1998, he had founded RF SAFE with two clear goals:

  • Warn families about RF exposure, especially during pregnancy and early development.
  • Build practical tools that embodied the best mitigation physics available at the time.

From day one, RF SAFE’s products were not afterthoughts to a brand. They were the physical expression of a promise: if there is a safer way to design, use, or replace wireless systems, do it — and explain it.

When product designs turned out to be counter‑productive (for example, early laptop shields once Wi‑Fi moved the main RF burden into the lap), RF SAFE discontinued them rather than pretend they were still the right solution. When new network behaviour changed how devices radiated, designs and guidance were adjusted even when it cut against “shield everything” marketing.

The through‑line has always been the same: first principles over fashion.

Changing the rules: the Vortis Antenna & FCC reform
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One of RF SAFE’s early contributions was not a case or a shield at all, but an antenna.

In the late 1990s, Coates designed an interferometric array — the Vortis Antenna — to prove a point: that handset radiation patterns did not have to be “mushrooms” of uniform exposure around the user’s head.

At the time, the FCC’s isotropic rule effectively assumed a uniform pattern and treated more directional antennas with suspicion. The Vortis design:

  • Shaped emission patterns to reduce RF intensity toward the user’s head.
  • Improved compatibility with hearing aids and reduced interference.
  • Showed that smarter radiation patterns could improve both user safety and link efficiency.

That engineering work underpinned a successful petition that contributed to a 2003 FCC rule change acknowledging that new antenna technologies could be used to limit energy in sensitive directions while preserving performance.

That is what RF SAFE does at its best: take a technical idea, demonstrate it in hardware, and then force regulators to admit that safer designs are possible.

Early mitigation: maternity shields, air‑tube headsets & first‑gen cases
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In the 1990s and early 2000s, long before “EMF protection” was a marketing category, RF SAFE was quietly building and shipping products based on straightforward physics:

  • Pregnancy belly bands: shielded panels using amorphous metals and conductive fabrics, intended to reduce direct line‑of‑sight exposure to the abdomen as mobile and cordless phone use exploded.
  • Air‑tube headsets: replacing conductive wires near the head with acoustic tubing, reducing RF conduction up to the ear while preserving audio.
  • Directional phone cases: early “anti‑radiation” cases focused on orientation — putting a shield between the user and the handset — rather than blanket “blocks 99% of radiation” claims that ignored how phones respond to detuning or attenuation.

In each case, the pattern was the same:

  • Identify a specific exposure geometry (ear, pocket, lap, pregnancy).
  • Apply basic RF engineering (conductive deflection, distance, non‑conductive paths near the head).
  • Test, refine, and teach correct usage — not just sell a gadget.

RF SAFE did this decades before most competitors and often abandoned or redesigned products when network standards changed.

The “end‑game” vision: Li‑Fi with Bio‑Defense Mode
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Mitigation is not a long‑term solution if the underlying infrastructure remains biologically mismatched. Recognizing that RF‑based indoor networking (Wi‑Fi, small cells, dense 5G) would always mean microwave exposure in the same rooms where children sleep, learn, and heal, RF SAFE pushed toward something more fundamental: moving the payload off microwaves altogether.

In 2023, Coates was granted U.S. Patent US11700058B2, covering a wireless communication system using germicidal light frequencies — a next‑generation Li‑Fi architecture with a built‑in public‑health function.

Key concepts in that design include:

  • Far‑UVC light at carefully chosen wavelengths (e.g., ~219 nm), optimized to inactivate pathogens in air and on surfaces while remaining within emerging safety constraints for human skin and eyes.
  • High‑speed optical data transmission using modulated light to carry data, compatible with the broader Li‑Fi ecosystem (IEEE 802.11bb and successors).
  • A “Bio‑Defense Mode” where the same ceiling‑mounted units that carry data also continuously suppress airborne and surface pathogens in classrooms, clinics, and offices.

In practical terms, this technology is a pathway out of chronic indoor RF loading. Li‑Fi alone is a step forward. Li‑Fi with embedded bio‑defence is a blueprint for safer, cleaner, more resilient indoor environments.

Unifying the science: S4–Mito–Spin as a Rosetta Stone
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For decades, EMF research has looked “noisy”:

  • Some studies show tumors in rodents; others do not.
  • Some show fertility problems; others do not.
  • Some show immune shifts, oxidative stress, or behavioural changes; others are cleanly null.

Regulators leaned on that variability to say: “no consistent mechanism, no established harm.”

RF SAFE took a different approach: assume the biophysics is real, then map it carefully. The result is the S4–Mito–Spin framework, which says, in essence:

  • S4: Voltage sensors in ion channels (especially in heart, brain, endocrine, and immune cells) can “hear” weak, polarized, pulsed fields. Timing noise at S4 corrupts the electrical language those cells use.
  • Mito: Mitochondria and NADPH oxidases amplify that timing noise into bursts of oxidative stress. Tissues with lots of voltage sensors and lots of ROS engines — heart conduction fibres, cranial nerves and glia, Leydig and germ cells, selected immune populations — become hotspots.
  • Spin: In cells with few or no classical voltage‑gated channels or mitochondria, such as mature red blood cells, spin‑dependent radical‑pair chemistry in heme and flavin cofactors gives weak fields a second lever. That explains in‑vivo observations like rapid loss of red‑blood‑cell zeta potential and rouleaux formation after brief phone exposure.

This framework:

  • Explains why heart and brain tumors appear where they do in NTP and Ramazzini bioassays.
  • Explains why male fertility and pregnancy‑rate impacts show up reliably in RF‑exposed animals.
  • Explains how red blood cells can respond quickly to real‑world EMF without mitochondria or S4 channels.
  • Explains why some carefully designed nulls in low‑density tissues and off‑window exposures are exactly what you would expect.

It also connects to therapy: the same kind of non‑thermal field‑channel‑mitochondria biology dismissed in safety debates is now being used deliberately in devices like TheraBionic P1, which modulate specific Ca²⁺ channels at low power to push liver cancer cells toward differentiation.

Policy: from procedural failure to a Clean Ether roadmap
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RF SAFE’s advocacy is not limited to “be cautious” blog posts. It is pointed directly at the legal and institutional failures that keep families unprotected.

Section 704 of the 1996 Telecom Act

Section 704 prevents local governments from denying cell‑tower placements solely on the basis of “environmental effects” of RF emissions if FCC limits are met. In practice, it has:

  • Pre‑empted communities and school districts from fully weighing health when deciding where and how to deploy infrastructure.
  • Locked the country into 1990s thermal‑only limits, even as evidence of non‑thermal biological effects accumulated.

Public Law 90‑602 (Electronic Product Radiation Control)

This 1968 law requires HHS to:

  • Run an ongoing electronic‑product radiation‑control program.
  • Conduct and fund research on non‑ionizing radiation from electronic products.
  • Develop and enforce performance standards where needed.

In the RF domain, that mandate has largely been ignored or allowed to atrophy. The NTP RF program, once a key piece of federal research, has been wound down with no clear successor. RF SAFE’s position is simple: HHS is not just allowed to act; it is required by law to act.

Clean Ether: a practical way forward

RF SAFE’s Clean Ether roadmap ties these threads together:

  • Move RF health oversight to agencies with biological and medical expertise, keeping the FCC focused on spectrum and engineering.
  • Enforce Public Law 90‑602 by restarting a robust RF research and standards program.
  • Repeal or repair Section 704 so communities can protect schools and neighborhoods.
  • Gradually migrate indoor high‑bandwidth traffic to light (Li‑Fi and wired), reserving microwaves for true mobility.

It is not anti‑technology. It is pro‑alignment: making sure the physical layer our devices live on matches what our biology can handle over a lifetime.

TruthCase™: RF SAFE’s mission in your hand
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TruthCase™ (QuantaCase®) is where all of this becomes tangible. It is not just a case; it is:

  • A training tool that uses physical design to enforce correct orientation and safer habits.
  • A physics‑first accessory that refuses metal loops, magnet plates, and unshielded ear‑side cut‑outs that can make exposure worse.
  • A conversation starter about S4–Mito–Spin, policy failures, and what real protection looks like.

TruthCase:

  • Keeps a verified conductive shield between you and the phone during calls and pocket carry.
  • Stays ultra‑thin and avoids nearby metal so the phone does not ramp up transmit power.
  • Uses a mesh‑shielded ear‑side opening instead of a big hole that leaks exactly where the head is most exposed.

In independent tests, flip cases can reduce RF from the face of the phone by 85–90% when used properly with the flap closed. RF SAFE’s packaging is unusual in this space for telling users the uncomfortable truth: you have to use the case correctly to get the benefit.

The “bias” myth — and what the legacy really is
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Calling RF SAFE “biased” because it sells mitigation tools alongside advocacy is like calling seat‑belt campaigners “biased” because they also install three‑point harnesses.

Yes, RF SAFE sells products. Those products:

  • Were often first‑in‑class by decades.
  • Have been revised or discontinued when networks or evidence changed.
  • Are deliberately designed to teach and embody the underlying science, not to hide it.

Over nearly thirty years, RF SAFE has:

  • Helped push regulatory change on antenna design.
  • Pioneered early shields, air‑tube headsets, and orientation‑aware cases.
  • Developed a credible “end‑game” in advanced Li‑Fi with bio‑defence.
  • Synthesized a mechanistic framework (S4–Mito–Spin) that finally explains the pattern of EMF findings across tissues and nulls.
  • Championed a policy roadmap to bring law and oversight back into alignment with both the physics and the biology.

If that is bias, then it is the kind progress has always depended on: the refusal of one grieving parent, and then a community, to accept that convenience trumps truth.

RF SAFE’s legacy is not a catalog. It is a blueprint — technological, scientific, and legal — for a wireless world that finally takes life seriously.

What RF SAFE Does Today

RF SAFE is not just a story. It is an active, evolving platform: a research library, SAR tools, action hub, training products, and a roadmap for safer networks.

Global SAR comparison directory

RF SAFE maintains one of the world’s most comprehensive cell‑phone SAR comparison tools, allowing side‑by‑side evaluation of models, bands, and use‑scenarios so families can understand how different phones behave near the body.

Explore SAR tools
Research library: 4,000+ EMF studies

The RF SAFE research archive links to more than 4,000 peer‑reviewed EMF and RF‑bioeffects studies, with curated highlights around cancer, fertility, neurology, immunity, and oxidative stress — the backbone behind S4–Mito–Spin.

Browse research archive
Advocacy & Action Hub

RF SAFE supports letters, petitions, and ready‑to‑adapt language aimed at HHS, FCC, local councils, and school boards — pushing on Section 704, Public Law 90‑602, NTP funding, and “Clean Ether” reforms.

Visit news & action hub
TruthCase™ & training tools

TruthCase™, user‑guides, and red‑flag checklists are designed as behaviour‑shaping tools — teaching correct orientation, warning about gimmicks (metal loops, magnet stacks, thick wallets), and translating mechanism into day‑to‑day habits.

Meet TruthCase™
Future networks: Li‑Fi & Clean Ether

Beyond mitigation, RF SAFE is pushing toward light‑based networking and Clean Ether policies: Li‑Fi with Bio‑Defense Mode indoors, and biologically informed limits on the RF that remains.

Learn about Clean Ether

Founder: John R. Coates

An engineering life that started before the driver’s license, redirected toward one of the hardest design problems of our time: how to make wireless compatible with children’s biology.

Early engineering roots

Long before RF SAFE existed, John Coates was the kind of teenager who disassembled gadgets to see how they worked. In the early 1980s — before he was old enough to drive — he enrolled at Tidewater Community College at age 15 to begin formal engineering studies.

Those early years were spent on electronics, antennas, and communication systems: learning how to move information through space efficiently and reliably. Nothing about that trajectory predicted a career in EMF safety. That part came later.

From pure engineering to protective design

Angel Leigh’s death changed the direction, not the skill set. Instead of treating wireless solely as a bandwidth and coverage puzzle, Coates started asking a different question:

The answer became RF SAFE: a place where antenna design, mechanism mapping, SAR analysis, and public‑health law all intersect. The work is not neutral — it is consciously biased toward children, pregnant women, and future generations — but it is grounded in the same engineering discipline that began at Tidewater Community College when he was 15.

Today, Coates continues to apply that background to protecting children from unnecessary microwave radiation, advancing Li‑Fi and Clean Ether concepts, and refining tools like TruthCase™ so that physics, biology, and habit all pull in the same direction.

Contact RF SAFE

RF SAFE was established to raise awareness about EMF exposure and to push for safer, biologically informed wireless design. For more information or press inquiries, contact founder John Coates:

Phone: 727-610-1188

Address: 8134 122nd St, Seminole, FL 33772