Theodora Scarato

https://hibr.nih.gov/member/theodora-scarato

Theodora Scarato MSW is Director of the Wireless and EMF Program at Environmental Health Sciences (EHS) and a nationally recognized expert in environmental health policy related to cell towers, wireless radiation, and electromagnetic fields (EMF). She has co-authored several scientific papers on EMF, health, and best practice building strategies to mitigate risk. She also serves as a Special Expert to the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF) a multi-disciplinary international consortium of scientists, doctors and researchers with expertise in the biological and health effects of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields. 

Scarato served as a lead technical expert in a major federal legal case against the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in which the agency was ordered to review the evidence it had ignored regarding health and environmental impacts, to ensure U.S. regulations for wireless exposure were adequate.  

Her 2025 paper, “U.S. policy on wireless technologies and public health protection: regulatory gaps and proposed reforms,” is a foundational paper on how and why U.S. policy on cell towers and cell phone radiation is inadequately protective. 

She also co-authored a review paper with U.S. experts on the impacts to wildlife and habitat entitled Flora and fauna—How nonhuman species interact with natural and man-made EMF at ecosystem levels and public policy recommendations which documents how all nations’ regulations are focused almost exclusively on protecting humans, while ignoring nonhuman species and their habitats.  

Additional highlights of her professional activities include helping to organize the 2019 EMF medical conference, the first exclusively designed to train medical and professionals. 

Her work was instrumental in the Maryland State Children’s Environmental Health Protection Advisory Council addressing radio frequency in classrooms and issuing guidance on how to reduce EMF.  She has presented at numerous U.S. and international conferences as well as at the National Institutes of Health, the New Hampshire State 5G Commission, the National Spectrum Management Association and the American Public Health Association.

Full Bio at Environmental Health Sciences 

Stay updated with her work via LinkedIn and Substack. 

Stay connected via the Environmental Health Sciences newsletter.