The Pittsfield Cell Tower Case and the Battle Between Public Health, Federal Pre-emption and Corporate Power
13th August 2026
The recent legal judgment concerning a cell tower in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, provides one example of a much wider challenge facing communities around the world.
Residents had raised concerns about symptoms they associated with radiofrequency emissions from a nearby cell tower. The local Board of Health attempted to take action, but the matter ultimately reached the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which ruled that federal law pre-empted the Board’s order.
Importantly, the Court did not determine that the residents’ health concerns had been scientifically disproved. The central issue was whether the local authority had the legal power to act within the existing federal regulatory framework.
Susan Foster, our U.S. Advisor at the EM Radiation Research Trust, worked on this case with the attorney who represented residents in Pittsfield. She offers her perspective below on the significance of the case, the legal framework surrounding telecommunications in the United States, and why she believes it highlights the need for wider change.
Comments from Susan Foster in the United States:
I worked on this important case with the attorney who advocated for the residents in Pittsfield. A group of residents in a neighborhood named “Shacktown” has been fighting this tower for six years. The last four years, the case was taken up by attorney W. Scott McCollough of McCollough Law Firm in Texas. This was an important test case in the United States because we had a cluster of illness surrounding a Verizon tower that had been fully investigated by the Pittsfield Board of Health. Thousands of pages of science had been provided to the Board of Health which helped them determine that harms could indeed come from radiofrequency radiation (RFR) from the cell tower that was placed on the periphery of this neighborhood, some homes just 350′ (106 meters) away from a 115-foot macro tower (mast).
In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reigns supreme as the governing body that sets RF standards. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 (TCA) gives full authority under the legal term “preemption” to the federal government. This case was worth trying because for the last 30 years, no matter how sick residents become around a cell tower. No one has successfully been able to challenge the placement of a cell tower, nor challenge the telecommunications carriers based on illness that follows installation of the tower, because they are “preempted” by section 704 of the TCA. This act gives the authority to Congress to allow the FCC to set RF standards.
The FCC is a revolving door of telecommunications executives, attorneys and lobbyists. Harm has been proven in the shadow of many towers at a fraction of what the FCC currently allows. Yet as long as the tower is within FCC limits, because of the preemption issue it can continue to operate no matter how many people are sickened or how many deaths occur.
The Pittsfield case provided an opportunity for Attorney McCollough to challenge the assumption that the FCC reigned supreme in every case. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts gave plenary powers to the local boards of health back in 1799 when the famous Paul Revere established the regulations for the Boston Health Department. He reasoned that local boards of health have a better ability to assess what is going on at the local level than do the state and federal authorities. So the local Boards of Health in Massachusetts are stronger than a Board of Health in any other state in the U.S.
In spite of four deaths, nearly 20 people living around the tower becoming ill, multiple families being displaced with some of them sleeping in their cars at night to be away from their homes and in spite of the wildlife having left the neighborhood as soon as the tower was activated, the final judicial determination concluded these people had no rights. The Pittsfield Board of Health could not even insist Verizon come to the table to discuss potential mitigation. There are multiple things that could have been done to redirect the radiation away from the nearby residents, sending it over their heads to the mountains beyond.
It is well-documented there had not been a single health concern voiced to the city of Pittsfield until after the tower’s activation in the fall of 2020. The animals were the first to leave. In this wooded area in Pittsfield that wildlife included bears, deer, wild turkeys, fox, rabbits and birds of all kinds. They used to visit many of the yards daily. Yet almost instantly the wildlife sensed danger and disappeared. The residents were not so fortunate.
Many people are discouraged when they hear that the brave plaintiffs in this case were told they did not have a right to be in court, and further, because of the preemption issue under the Telecommunications Act, the Court said the Emergency Order (cease-and-desist) issued by the Board of Health to Verizon should not have been issued in the first place.
Opportunity often emerges out of abject disappointment. And so it will be with this case.
Policy in the United States must be changed. Telecommunications law restricting the rights of residents is the most Draconian I am aware of in the world when it comes to suppressing the will of the people and protecting their health. Looking at the Pittsfield cluster of neurological and immunological (cancer) cases, in order for health to be taken into consideration in the siting of a cell tower, or later for health to be taken into consideration when people are sickened and four of them die over the six years the tower has been operational, Congress would need to change the law. The telecommunications lobby is so powerful and so wealthy, they make generous contributions to nearly all, if at all, of the members of Congress. Plainly stated, telecom buys Congress’ votes. Telecom buys Congress’s silence when it comes to health. This is inhumane.
What this case illustrates so poignantly is the need to have a grassroots movement of people who are sick and tired of 5G cell towers showing up in their front yards, macro towers covering their homes with radiation, towers near their children’s schools, their places of work and their places of worship. We need a grassroots movement to demand change. Otherwise the U.S. is not a democracy. It is a corporatocracy – a political system where large corporations control government policy, laws and public life itself. Corporate profit takes priority over human life.
Here’s the irony of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision. The justices are placing all their faith in the FCC, yet the same attorney who argued before them on December 3, 2025, W. Scott McCollough, also argued on behalf of Environmental Health Trust and Children’s Health Defense when the two nonprofits sued the FCC in 2020 for failing to update the regulatory standards in what was then approximately 25 years. The two nonprofits brought the case because the FCC failed to take science that had been submitted to the Commission over a multi-year period into account before approving the rollout of 5G.
On August 13, 2021 – almost exactly 5 years ago – the second highest court in the land determined that all non-cancer-related standards set by the FCC had been set in an arbitrary and capricious manner. That means without the law or facts or both. The Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. remanded the standards to the FCC and asked them to show their “reasoned decision-making.” The FCC’s response: complete and total silence.
Knowledgeable attorneys believe the FCC – which essentially copied the ICNIRP guidelines – does not have the science to justify their extraordinarily high RF limits, and therefore they do nothing except keep the doors wide open for telecom to build out cell towers everywhere they can across this vast nation.
The justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court have put their full faith in the FCC. Yet the Commission has already been determined by a separate court to have set the majority of those standards in a manner that evades the law or truth or both.
It is time for the people to bring these truths to every member of Congress. It is time for people in every country around the world to let their leaders know they are tired of power being granted to corporate telecom as opposed to the will and well-being of the people they govern.
SUSAN FOSTER
Writer
U.S. Advisor EM Radiation Research Trust
Founder, Rocky Mountains for Safe Technology
Honorary Firefighter SDFD
Lyons CO 80540
susan.foster04@gmail.com
