"I used to believe this was a lot of nonsense, right up until the point that I was a principle at a startup that was doing Layer-2 fixed wireless."
Wireless phone technology is the exception to the rule - most of these complaints have little basis in fact - the people making the complaints have no concept of the 1/r^2 or 1/r^3 relationship that dramatically drops the fields over distance.
But people putting cell phones to their ear and people standing next to transmitters are getting significant effects.
Ah, yes, the "Mommies Against Microwaves" contingent.
As you point out, the effects only manifest in relatively close proximity to the radiator. We are talking 50-100 feet in the worst cases at the power levels commonly used for consumer devices in the microwave spectrum. Not that this stops the nitwits who are deathly afraid of microwaves at any distance.
The only weird thing out of the whole experience is that I am one of those few people who can detect when they are in proximity to microwave sources because I am very familiar with the effects even when they are subtle. For example, many WiFi units have a very subtle effect that most people probably would not notice unless they are familiar with the more extreme cases. Some of our field techs could actually identify the manufacturer of an unknown radiator with a moderate amount of reliability when they came near its field. Too much time immersed in it I guess.