For three decades, RF Safe has stood apart in the EMF safety conversation — not by selling the loudest fear, nor the shiniest “99% blocked!” gadget, but by insisting on one thing above all: uncompromising truth.
We don’t claim miracles from a phone case. We don’t pretend accessories solve systemic problems. We build products as learning tools, expose their own limitations, maintain the world’s most transparent research resources, and push for the only things that actually scale: updated policy and light-based technology that respects biology instead of overwhelming it.
This is the RF Safe mission in full — from our first handmade pregnancy belly band in 1998 to the patented Far-UVC Li-Fi systems of today.
Origins: A Promise Rooted in Curiosity and Conscience
RF Safe was founded in 1998 in Aspen, Colorado, by engineer and inventor John Coates. What began as a one-man quest to understand electromagnetic fields (EMF) and radiofrequency radiation (RFR) quickly evolved into a consistent, evidence-driven voice that has never wavered — even when it meant turning away easy sales.
Early products reflected real-world needs of the late 1990s: shielding for pregnant women working near industrial magnetic fields, full apparel lines, and the very first directional anti-radiation phone cases developed in partnership with Aegis Corporation. The debut consumer product was a pregnancy belly band that layered microwave shielding fabric with Mu-metal to block both RF and strong magnetic fields — a practical solution for vulnerable periods when every precaution mattered.
By the early 2000s, RF Safe had expanded into innovative AirTube headsets that kept the RF speaker physically away from the ear. In September 2002, the Wall Street Journal’s Gadget Review featured them as a legitimate radiation-aware innovation — national validation that the mission was resonating.
Engineering Wins That Changed Industry Standards
In 1998, Coates invented the Vortis™ directional antenna — a design that reduced unnecessary radiation toward the user’s head while maintaining network performance. At the time, the FCC’s “isotropic rule” (47 CFR § 24.232) forced every phone to radiate equally in all directions, prioritizing uniform coverage over user exposure. RF Safe’s advocacy and demonstration of the Vortis technology contributed directly to the FCC revisiting and ultimately relaxing that rule in 2003. That single policy shift enabled safer antenna designs across the entire industry and proved a core RF Safe principle: persistent, fact-based pressure on regulators can create meaningful change without banning technology.
Products as Laboratories — Not Revenue Machines
Every RF Safe product has been designed with the same first-principle question: What does the physics and biology actually allow us to achieve safely?
Mid-2010s brought one of the earliest commercial integrations of graphene into consumer RF shielding matrices — lightweight, highly conductive, and far less prone to the signal-interference problems that plague older metal-based designs. Again, the goal wasn’t market dominance; it was to learn, test, publish the limitations, and teach consumers what works and what creates new problems.
This philosophy reaches its clearest expression in today’s flagship product: the TruthCase™ (also known as QuantaCase®).
The TruthCase: The Only “Anti-Radiation” Case Engineered to Expose the Scam
Walk into any big-box store or scroll any marketplace and you’ll see cases promising “99% radiation blocked!” with thick metal plates, magnetic closures, and full-wrap designs. RF Safe has warned against these exact red flags since 1998.
Why? Because real lab physics shows that metal loops, detachable magnets, and unshielded speaker holes near antennas force the phone’s power-management software to ramp up transmit power — often increasing your actual exposure. The TruthCase does the opposite:
- Ultra-thin, antenna-aware construction so the phone never has to “shout louder.”
- Directional conductive flap that sits between you and the device — never a cage around the antennas.
- No gimmicks, no fake percentages.
- Built-in teacup-handle flip cover that naturally creates critical distance and doubles as a stand.
- Explicit instructions: Speakerphone or AirTube preferred. Get the phone out of your pocket the moment you arrive. The case is a temporary tool for when you must use it — never a license to increase usage.
We have never claimed a magic reduction number because the science doesn’t support it. The National Toxicology Program (NTP) found clear biological effects at the lowest SAR level tested (1.5 W/kg). The Ramazzini Institute showed tumors at 0.1 W/kg — over an order of magnitude lower. Responses are non-linear. Even 85–90% front-face reduction (what well-designed flip cases actually achieve in lab tests) does not magically create a proven-safe zone when biology can respond below thermal limits.
The TruthCase exists to teach three things simultaneously: biology, physics, and policy. It is deliberately designed to help make the case industry obsolete by showing what honest mitigation looks like — and why accessories alone will never be enough.
The Science Backbone: Transparency No One Else Matches
RF Safe maintains two of the most comprehensive public resources in the field:
- 6,572 peer-reviewed studies categorized and searchable — with roughly 60.8% showing biological interaction (harm, mixed, or even beneficial effects — all proving non-thermal responsiveness exists).
- The only public side-by-side database of 120 modern, actively certified phones across all six FCC SAR test positions.
These aren’t marketing tools. They are accountability tools. Parents, researchers, and policymakers can see the raw data themselves.
The S4-Mito-Spin Framework: Understanding How RF Interacts With Living Systems
At the cellular level, RF doesn’t need to heat tissue to matter. Our synthesis — Signal → Stress → Spin → Shift — maps the cascade:
- Signal: RF modulates voltage-gated calcium channels and membrane potentials.
- Stress: Triggers oxidative signaling (ROS) without measurable temperature rise.
- Spin: Disrupts mitochondrial electron transport chain dynamics.
- Shift: Leads to downstream metabolic, hormonal, hypothalamic, and developmental changes (insulin dynamics, sleep architecture, appetite set-points, etc.).
This framework explains why independent studies show shifts in pancreatic insulin secretion, hypothalamic neuron development in offspring, sleep EEG changes, and oxidative balance — all at non-thermal levels. It is why thermal-only guidelines (built around 1996-era heating thresholds) are incomplete by design.
The Policy Reality and the Clean Ether Vision
Section 704 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act still prevents local communities from considering health when siting towers that meet outdated FCC limits. Children — with thinner skulls, higher absorption in some tissues, longer lifetime exposure, and rapid developmental windows — face a fundamentally different risk profile than the adult models used to set those limits.
RF Safe’s position has never been “ban wireless.” It is “mature wireless.”
The roadmap is clear:
- Policy first: Pass the Clean Ether Act — biologically based limits that include non-thermal mechanisms, pre-market developmental testing, “as low as reasonably achievable” (ALARA) for children, repeal of Section 704 preemption, and mandatory wired options in schools.
- Technology second: Fiber backbones + Li-Fi (light-based wireless) indoors where feasible. Light is life’s native spectrum. It does not penetrate walls unnecessarily, adds zero ambient RF density, and can deliver gigabit speeds in controlled environments.
John Coates holds U.S. Patent US11700058B2 (granted 2023) for an advanced Far-UVC Li-Fi system with built-in bio-defense mode — 219 nm germicidal light that transmits data at high speed while continuously disinfecting air and surfaces even with people present. This is not science fiction. It is the next engineering leap: connectivity that actively protects rather than burdens biology.
Why RF Safe Still Makes Products After 30 Years
If every manufacturer had followed our first-principle designs — directional shielding, no antenna interference, honest limitations — we would have stopped making cases long ago. The fact that we still produce the TruthCase is evidence that the broader market still hasn’t internalized the physics.
Products are bridges, not destinations. They reduce exposure today while we fight for the systemic changes that will make them far less necessary tomorrow.
A Call That Has Never Changed
Distance > dose. Speakerphone or AirTube preferred. Airplane mode at night. Devices out of pockets and beds. Policy pressure and Li-Fi deployment where practical.
RF Safe has delivered the same evidence-based message since 1998 — through changing administrations, evolving technologies, and shifting public awareness. We have never sold snake oil. We have never hidden limitations. We have never put profit ahead of principle.
That consistency is why parents, researchers, and forward-thinking policymakers keep turning to RF Safe when they want the unvarnished truth.
The Microwave Age was an extraordinary engineering achievement. The Light Age — higher fidelity, lower biological burden, policy aligned with living systems — is the necessary next chapter.
The ether is not an industrial waste dump. It is the medium in which our children’s developing biology must operate for decades to come.
Demand the Clean Ether Act. Demand wired classrooms. Demand Li-Fi compatibility indoors. Demand transparency from regulators and industry alike.
RF Safe will keep providing the tools, the data, and the honest advocacy until that future is reality.
Making the Invisible Visible Since 1998 https://rfsafe.com TruthCase™ • Research Databases • Clean Ether Advocacy
Share this with every parent, teacher, school board member, and elected official who believes technology should serve humanity — not the other way around.
The science is here. The solutions exist. The only missing ingredient is political will.
Let’s supply it — together.