By Patricia Burke

Travelers riding west on Rt. 9 in Framingham may notice that the building up on the hill looks a little bit like a stereo. It does look like a stereo, because it is the world headquarters for the world-renowned acoustic engineering company Bose, and, it is called, simply, “the Hill.” Dr. Amar Bose founded Bose Corporation in 1964. The company designs and produces high-quality professional and consumer audio products.

Dr. Bose was a PhD graduate of M.I.T., where he was also an award-winning teacher for over 45 years. He never took Bose Corporation public, allowing the company free rein to invest in research, (including his work on automobile suspension systems, which reportedly took 24 years to complete. [1]) Among many of the quotes attributed to Bose – “I would have been fired a hundred times at a company run by M.B.A.’s. But I never went into business to make money. I went into business so that I could do interesting things that hadn’t been done before.” He also said, “If you think something is impossible, don’t disturb the person who is doing it!”

Twenty years ago, on June 4, 1998, a group of concerned residents in Wayland, Massachusetts called a special town meeting and proposed a 12-month moratorium for the placement of wireless communications facilities.

The town’s library houses the microfiche archives of the Wayland Town Crier and Tab’s newspaper’s coverage of the special town meeting.[2]

During one of the most talked about speeches of the night, Dr. Amar Bose, a Wayland resident and scientist known for his Framingham-based sound equipment company, Bose Corp., stood up to talk about the health effects of cell towers.”

Bose said that as a scientist he has become increasingly concerned about the possible adverse health effects or radiation emitted by wireless communications antennas. Bose told the crowd his company recently opted not to place communications towers on top of the Framingham facility because of possible adverse health effects on his employees.

Apparently, Bose’s testimony made an impact beyond Wayland. It was reported that when Roxborough residents were fighting the installation of towers associated with digital television.

Residents also seemed moved by a videotape showing Dr. Amar Bose, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founder of audio manufacturer Bose Corporation, testifying in favor of a moratorium on tower construction in Wayland, MA.

“I am now convinced that there is a real danger from electromagnetic radiation,” Bose says on the tape. “I do not believe today that anybody with good grounding in science can refute the credibility of some of the research papers I have seen.[3]

Peggy Patton was the main speaker, and she introduced Dr. Bose that night in Wayland nearly twenty years ago. She has been involved in countless campaigns to limit the placement of wireless towers and antennas, and was instrumental in establishing a wireless overlay district in Wayland, restricting tower placement to one location. She helped draft two wireless utility meter opt-out bills in Massachusetts, and has provided testimony for the Dept. of Public Utilities and the Massachusetts legislature. Patton also assisted Worcester residents opposing a 90-foot tower with 5 antennas in a residential area for the controversial National Grid smart meter pilot program.[4]

A three-time cancer survivor, Patton practices EMF-hygiene by minimizing her exposures and using hard-wired devices, and does not own a cellphone. But she has been forced by Eversource (formerly NStar) to accept a radio-frequency-emitting AMR electric meter. “I kicked them off my property twice, but they came back when I wasn’t home and installed a wireless meter.” She was recently involved in opposing a tower installation at the Wayland Rod & Gun Club. The town is now debating a $1.6M town meeting warrant article for wireless water meters and related antenna infrastructure, again raising health and environmental as well as privacy and cost concerns for technology that has never been tested for adverse health impacts, despite reported harm.

Nearly twenty years after the meeting where Dr. Bose played such an important role in Wayland’s negotiations with Omnipoint, Peggy said quietly, “He loved his cellphone and his other wireless devices…. but he was right there with us. He knew that these antennas did not belong where people lived and worked. He had to look at that tower near his house every day, and, I think it killed him.”

In Internet archives of quotes by Dr. Bose, his Wayland testimony concerning antennas is not included.[5] But he said, “No one ever won a chess game by betting on each move. Sometimes you have to move backward to get a step forward.”

Its time for the US to look back at section 704 of the Telecom Act of 1996, which is 30 years of out date and inapplicable to current exposures. Its time to look to ahead to the recent FCC decision to streamline the application process for 5G antennas, and then back again at the mounting health and environmental costs of overloading cities and towns with antennas.[6],[7],[8],[9]