Part 1: The Scrubbing — OHA Investigation Summary

In February 2026, the SB 283 wireless radiation report, a six-page FAQ, and years of Radiation Advisory Committee minutes disappeared from OHA's website.
- No notice, no redirect — just a 404 error where the report had loaded days before.
- Some of the removed Radiation Advisory Committee minutes had been posted online since 2008 — over a decade of public records, gone overnight.
The timing: days earlier, activist David Morrison had begun handing legislators a flyer about the report at the State Capitol, charging that OHA had withheld a damning first draft from a public records request.
- In 2020, OHA's lead author had deleted pages of evidence of harm from the report before publication. When a citizen requested all drafts, OHA sent four — and withheld the first, the one that still contained the deleted findings.
- Morrison's flyer declared "OHA committed a felony." The substance of the charge holds, though the applicable statute — tampering with public records under ORS 162.305 — is a Class A misdemeanor, not a felony.
The report survived only in two places OHA does not run.
- A shared OHA/ODHS publications repository maintained by a separate Shared Services office.
- The State Library of Oregon's digital archive, preserved under the Oregon Documents Depository Program.
The boundary was too clean to be an accident.
- What OHA's Radiation Protection Services program controlled is gone. What lived on systems it didn't run survived.
- OHA's own search index was left behind: search the site for "Senate Bill 283" and you still get hits — they 404 when clicked. The metadata was left when the files were pulled.
OHA attributed the disappearance to a web policy barring old content — dated the same day the disappearance was discovered.
- Other OHA divisions still have their 2019 documents online. Only radiation-related documents were removed.

Senate Bill 283 (2019) had ordered OHA to review the science on wireless radiation in schools using only independently funded studies.
- First law of its kind in the country, passed unanimously in the Senate and 50–8 in the House.
- If OHA found harm, the state Department of Education was required to act. A finding of harm would have set a national precedent.
- OHA released the report at 5 p.m. on New Year's Eve 2020 and concluded the evidence was "insufficient." Scientists worldwide noticed important studies had been left out.
The underlying concern is not fringe.
- The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends limiting children's exposure and has pressed the federal government to tighten its limits, on the grounds that children's thinner skulls absorb more radiation than adults'.
- California's Department of Public Health has named children as potentially more at risk. France wrote the precaution into national law, switching WiFi off in primary-school classrooms when not in use.
A withheld first draft showed that findings of harm had been methodically stripped in two waves.
- First wave: Lead author Ali K. Hamade deleted categorical findings of harm as tracked changes. One cut passage: "All studies that investigated the reproductive system found a negative association with RFR exposure … EMF exposure is related to higher miscarriage and unexplained spontaneous abortion."
- Second wave: Senior administrator Andre Ourso left two margin notes. Beside a study showing children's brain-tumor risk rising with length of phone subscription (from carrier records, not recall), he asked for a disclaimer. The next draft supplied one — citing recall bias and lack of exposure-response relationship, both contradicted by the study itself. Beside a study flagged as industry-funded, he noted they might get questions. The funding disclosure was then deleted.
- The same untracked draft excluded all animal and in vitro studies, cut a paper recommending wired devices in schools, and added the reassuring conclusion for the first time. The deletions came first; the conclusion they made defensible came last.
The report's own appendix data contradicts its conclusion.
- The first draft's tally of studies finding harm was cut from the text, but per-study determinations survived in the appendix.
- Re-summed: 84 studies finding adverse effects vs. 82 finding none (85 vs. 81 after correcting a miscoded study). "Insufficient evidence" was a characterization the data did not support.

No office in Oregon could act on the removal.
- State Archives: not a records problem if a copy exists on an internal drive.
- Ethics Commission: not a meetings problem.
- Public Records Advocate: file a request, then take it to DOJ.
- ORS 162.305 makes it a crime to knowingly conceal or remove a public record — and the conduct fit the statute. But DOJ, the destination every office named, is OHA's own lawyer.
What Oregon lacks is not a statute but a process.
- The grievance clock runs from the act, not its discovery. A removal built to go unseen is effectively unchallengeable by the time anyone sees it.
- Three regulators. Three referrals. All roads lead to the agency's own lawyer.

The Scrubbing

Explore the evidence

The Removal Record

Inside the Drafts

The Investigation Timeline

OHA's Response