'Wi-Fi Refugees' Flock to Green Bank, West Virginia to Escape Tech

Green Bank, West Virginia (population: a few hundred), has become a haven for an unusual group of newcomers: people who describe themselves as allergic to modern technology. Dozens of Americans who say they suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) have moved to this tiny mountain town — because it sits in the middle of the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square-mile region where radio transmissions are heavily restricted to protect the Green Bank Observatory's radio telescopes. Cell phones are restricted, Wi-Fi is limited, and for people who blame their suffering on wireless signals, it's the quietest place in America.

The self-described "Wi-Fi refugees" report burning skin, heart palpitations, and severe headaches — symptoms they say made their daily lives unlivable everywhere else. They say in Green Bank they've finally found peace. (Daily Mail, March 2014)

What the science says

The World Health Organization's fact sheet on electromagnetic hypersensitivity is careful on two fronts: the symptoms EHS sufferers report are real and sometimes disabling, but well-conducted double-blind studies have found no scientific evidence linking those symptoms to electromagnetic field exposure. In other words, the suffering is genuine; the cause isn't what patients think it is. WHO recommends that treatment address the symptoms and underlying health conditions rather than reducing EMF exposure.

Sweden is the one country that formally recognizes the condition — as a functional impairment, meaning sufferers can receive support and accommodations, not as a medically established diagnosis caused by EMF.

Until the research community finds otherwise, EHS sits in a hard place: dismissed by many as imagination, endured as very real by those who live it. For the people of Green Bank, West Virginia, the debate matters less than the silence.