GREEN BANK, WV (WUSA9) — When cell phones first hit the U.S. market in the mid-eighties, there were only a few thousand subscribers. Today, there’s more cell phones in this country than there are people: 322 million subscribers. On top of that, 20-million Americans now use wireless-enabled laptops, tablets, and modems, and that number has jumped 50% in just two years, according to The Wireless Association.
The invisible electromagnetic radiation that these wireless devices emit are all around us, and most of us can’t get enough. But a growing number of people are moving to Green Bank, West Virginia to get away from it.
“To come to Green Bank, it’s leaving the shopping malls, the theaters, the cultural events. Here, I don’t have my family, I don’t have my friends. But at least now I have some hope and a future,” said Diane Schou, a Green Bank resident.
Schou is one of about thirty “wireless refugees” now living in Green Bank, and three agreed to meet with me at Schou’s home.