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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
In each case, the pattern was the same:
RF SAFE did this decades before most competitors and often abandoned or redesigned products when network standards changed.
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:
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.
For decades, EMF research has looked “noisy”:
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:
This framework:
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.
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 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:
This 1968 law requires HHS to:
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.
RF SAFE’s Clean Ether roadmap ties these threads together:
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™ (QuantaCase®) is where all of this becomes tangible. It is not just a case; it is:
TruthCase:
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.
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:
Over nearly thirty years, RF SAFE has:
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.
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.
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 toolsThe 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 archiveRF 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 hubTruthCase™, 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™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 EtherAn 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.
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.
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.
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