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Sharesa
Price thought it was just another in a series of sinus infections. Her head and eyes hurt, and she was
vomiting. But then Price had a seizure, and a brain scan found something far more troubling.
"When
I got home, the phone was ringing. It was the doctor's office, and they told me, "Brace yourself.
Honey, you have a brain tumor." I was standing by the refrigerator, and I just collapsed, saying,
"No, no, no, it can't be a brain tumor," she recalled.
After her
diagnosis in 1999 and surgery to remove most of the tumor, Price started looking for answers. She became
convinced that exposure to radio-frequency radiation on the job, where she programmed cellphones for new
customers, had caused the tumor.
In May
2005, an administrative law judge who handles worker's compensation claims awarded her US$30,000- to pay her
medical bills and other expenses. Price may be the first person to convince a judge that her illness was
caused by radio-frequency radiation. The decision is unlikely to have widespread repercussions for the
cellphone industry, however, because the settlement was small.
Price's
customers at Advanced Communications Systems in northern California were doctors, firefighters, police departments
and security departments for casinos, and she loved her work. She used a cellphone several hours each day,
and the room in which she worked contained transmitters that emitted radio-frequency radiation, she said.
Price said
when she filed a workers compensation claim, her boss fired her, eliminating her health insurance. Then she
lost the case. The Native American single mother of two daughters was devastated. She turned to Tribal
Health, a government health agency for Native Americans, to get anti-seizure medication.
"If I
hadn't been Indian, I would have died," she said.
Her former
boss, Dave Bohlen, said that he did not fire Price, that she quit based on her doctor's advice that she not return
to work there. Bohlen said he dropped the insurance because she was no longer an employee. He called
her worker's comp case "frivolous" and said there was no proof her tumor was caused by working in his
small shop. "There's nothing harmful going on here," he said.
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After
Price recovered from brain surgery, she went to the Internet and found researchers studying the biological effects
of radio-frequency radiation, and got to know them.
"I
would call them up and say, 'You are absolutely dead on. If a rat could talk, this is what it would
say. I'm the human rat.' "
Price
couldn't find an attorney to take her case until she contacted Carl Hilliard, a semi-retired lawyer and president
of the Wireless Consumers Alliance, a California-based consumer advocacy group. Hilliard volunteered to
represent her "pro bono" and re-filed her workers comp case.
Hilliard
said his group has represented cellphone users in issues involving poor service, billing problems and
misrepresentations by cellphone service providers.
"We're
the ones who filed a case saying federal law does not pre-empt state law [on consumer issues] and won that case
four years ago," Hilliard said.
Hilliard
brought in Dr. Nachman Brautbar, an occupational toxicologist and clinical professor of medicine at the University
of Southern California School of Medicine, to review Price's medical records.
Brautbar
has been an expert witness in a number of high-profile cases, including the chromium poisonings from polluted
drinking water portrayed in the movie Erin Brockovich.
Brautbar
reviewed Price's case and wrote a report supporting her claim that the tumor was caused by exposure to
radio-frequency radiation.
"It's
not a money issue, suing the company, it's a health and safety issue," said Price, who speaks to school
assemblies and classes about the need to use a headset when talking on a cell phone. "We need to
explain to people that just like putting on condoms, you have to take this precautionary measure to make the
product be as safe as it can be."
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