FCC Asked To Reassess Cell Phone Radiation Guidelines

An anonymous reader writes "A U.S. government report released on Tuesday says the Federal Communications Commission needs to update its guidelines for limiting cell phone radio-frequency exposure. The limit was set in 1996 to an exposure rate of 1.6 watts per kilogram, and has not been updated since. The report does not advocate in favor of any particular research, and actually points out that the limit could possibly be raised, but says the FCC's rules have not kept pace with recent studies on the subject one way or the other. An executive for The Wireless Association said, 'The FCC has been vigilant in its oversight in this area and has set safety standards to make sure that radio frequency fields from wireless phones remain at what it has determined are safe levels. The FCC's safety standards include a 50-fold safety factor and, as the FCC has noted, are the most conservative in the world.'"

Comments

Why would you want to raise the limit?

[Anonymous Coward]

RF power eats battery anyway and longer range just means bigger areas which share the bandwidth. At the same time technology improves and can make use of lower and lower signal levels. What is the point of raising a safety limit if there isn't even a technical benefit? (Wifi power limits for example are not even meant to be safety limits but to allow everyone a fair share of a scarce resource.)

Re:Why would you want to raise the limit?

[MrEricSir]

Of course there's a technical benefit -- more power means you can use the phone further from a tower. If you're in an area where coverage is scarce, wouldn't you trade a decrease in battery life for an increase in signal?

Re:Why would you want to raise the limit?

[jhoegl]

If the My balls are just fine at 1.6 watts per kilo, raise that higher and I might just father a mutant that can run through walls.
But dont blame me, blame the FCC.

Re:Why would you want to raise the limit?

[wierd_w]

I believe the implication of GP was to use lower signal thresholds, reduce number of people per tower, increase battery life, and build more infrastructure.

The issue you raise is exactly the inverse: be cheap bastards, waste energy needlessly, be pennywise and pound foolish, jam everybody from an extended service area onto a single shared network cell, and get shittier battery life.

Lt me think about that one for a moment..... nope, GP's idea is just all around better and more reasonable.

Re:Why would you want to raise the limit?

[Joce640k]

...and too much Gamma radiation might make you turn green and muscular.

Re:Why would you want to raise the limit?

[icebike]

RF power eats battery anyway and longer range just means bigger areas which share the bandwidth. At the same time technology improves and can make use of lower and lower signal levels. What is the point of raising a safety limit if there isn't even a technical benefit? (Wifi power limits for example are not even meant to be safety limits but to allow everyone a fair share of a scarce resource.)

The GAO doesn't want to raise the safety limit, they want to push them lower. (requiring lower emissions).

However, they couldn't find a shred of evidence to support that, and were forced to dedicate their entire first paragraph to saying exactly that. Still, the radio-phobic lobby group pressured them into releasing a report asking the FCC to do SOMETHING, anything, and "Won't somebody please think of the children??!!!?".

Yes, phones can get away with less power today, due to better signal processing, but that just pushes us back into the same problems we faced with range limited devices of the past. And, no, wifi power limits in phones are SPECIFICALLY to address (largely irrational) concerns about specific absorption of radio waves.

Every phone goes through Specific Absorption testing, on ALL bands that they emit, and they all pass the most stringent tests, because manufacturers dont' want to have yet another thing to worry about in country A as opposed to country B, so they design for the tightest standards.

Most people don't even hold their phone to their head anymore. This was the big boogy man of the past. So now they want to worry about the phone you carry in your pocket, no doubt because of a upswing in buttocks cancer.

There is just no evidence that anything at all should be done. Trace this to the source and you find people who insist they can sense wifi routers.

Re:Why would you want to raise the limit?

[Rakishi]

Yes because we know every part of the world is exactly identical with the same terrain, cell tower site availability, population density and cell phone usage. *rolls eyes*

I guess you want there to be fifty cell phone towers per person in the Alaskan wilderness, I wonder which cell tower builder you work for.

Re:Why would you want to raise the limit?

[LurkerXXX]

That might be good logic to you in NYC, but when you are in the vast majority of the actual Country, the midwest and western states do exist, contention for a tower in a large area isn't a real worry. The worry is getting signal when you are a long way from the nearest tower. And putting those towers up to service a handful of people isn't cheap.

Re:Why would you want to raise the limit?

[wierd_w]

In low density areas, high broadcast strength antennas and towers are sensible.

The trouble is that cellular companies want a one size fits all tower deployment plan, and want to put high energy towers in or near urban areas, resulting in the congestions that plaugue them, and cause them to argue for bandwidth caps.

The solution is to implement mixed bag deployment, but that increases logistical costs.

For an urban areas, which is what the GGP was explicitly referring to, many small towers at lower broadcast power make all the sense in the word.

The GP, arguing that it makes perfect sense technologically to raise power to get more people on fewer towers, over greater distances is either explicitly referring to completely rural roverage zones, or is an idiot.

For the sake of civility, I will assume the former.

Still, as a rural subscriber, I am happy with T-mobile's wifi hotspot support for android handsets. It also comes in really handy for office building deadzones and other service nightmare situations in ruban settings as well.

Clearly a hybrid solution is ideal.

Re:Why would you want to raise the limit?

[hawguy]

One tower per home is called WIFI. Look it up some time.

I looked it up, but my dictionary said femto-cell.

Re:Why would you want to raise the limit?

[dgatwood]

For an urban areas, which is what the GGP was explicitly referring to, many small towers at lower broadcast power make all the sense in the word.

Until you try to talk while riding in a car, on a bus, or on a train using a bunch of towers with coverage area comparable to that of Wi-Fi hotspots. Then, when those tiny cells have an overlap of only ten or fifteen feet and the tower handoff takes more than the hundred or so milliseconds available for such a quick handoff, suddenly your call drops every hundred feet instead of every ten miles. :-)

In practice, even if you do 90% of your service on lower-power frequencies with tiny cells, you'll almost certainly want at least a few frequencies at higher power that you can kick phones onto if you see too much doppler shift. Otherwise, reliability will suck. Hard.

Yea but...

[Narcocide]

AM radio causes cancer

Re:Does anyone hold phones to their heads anymore?

[ELCouz]

You still have the pocket problem... You don't want 200 watts of RF near your balls!
Don't forget most people put their phone in their pockets, some on them always at the same place! Sure, it's better to have skin cancer than brain one (debated I know) but still don't increase the RF limit just for the lack of towers (bad signal).

Why bother?

[Hatta]

No studies have shown that there is any danger from RF so there's no reason to lower the limit. Cell phones seem to work pretty well with the power level we have now, so there's no reason to raise it. Why not just leave well enough alone?

Re:Why bother?

[Misagon]

No, there have been studies that have shown that the kind of radiation that is used by some cell phone standards do indeed have non-thermal effects on brain cells in humans and rats, respectively.

It is just that people tend to look only for thermal effects and ionizing effects (mutating DNA, which can cause cancer) and that is what safety guidelines in Europe and the USA have been based on, so far. That is what is not enough.

Re:Why bother?

[Kennon]

Because somewhere there is a bureaucrat sitting around trying to justify his/her existence? As is the case with many government regulations.

Re:Why bother?

[thereitis]

A quick search turned up this: Cell Phone Hazards Part I and Part II.

TL;DR: the current standards are insufficient because they are not measuring all the right things.

Re:Why bother?

[plover]

That guy sure likes to sell books, doesn't he? And stirring up controversy about things like the "health risks" of 100 milliwatts of non-ionizing radiation sells books to people who are hypersensitive to scare stories.

He even "Rationalizes the Precautionary Principle", which is another way of saying "be scared because you're ignorant, not because there are actual facts." Here's the deal: if cell phones were even a measurable (not even minor, simply measurable) contributor to illness, there are billions of cellular users worldwide, so if there was any statistically detectable basis to these absurd claims, we'd be seeing very large piles of dead bodies.

I really like his "grounding" therapy: touch the ground and you will:
      " Prevent inflammation as well as assuage its physical symptoms
        Reduce or eliminate chronic pain
        Improve sleep
        Increase energy
        Thin blood and improve blood pressure and flow
        Relieve muscle tension and headaches
        Lessen hormonal and menstrual symptoms
        Dramatically speed healing and prevent bedsores
        Reduce or eliminate jet-lag
        Protect body against potentially health-disturbing environmental electromagnetic fields (EMF’s)
        Accelerate recovery from intense athletic activity; and
        Balance the autonomic nervous system (ANS) by decreasing sympathetic, and increasing parasympathetic, nervous activity."

The only things missing from his list are "improves humours & biles" and "clears thetans", and for those I expect he has a link to buy "Dr. Sinatra's Genuine Snake Oil Liniment and Elixir".

This guy is definitely not a crackpot. He's smart, and educated, and appears to be an author who wisely uses fear and psychology to sell books to the gullible. It's definitely in his best interest to have people afraid of cell phones, because those are the people who would buy his crap.

Re:Does anyone hold phones to their heads anymore?

[cpu6502]

Nobody around here uses their balls anyway. And the extra power could be useful when you're broadcasting from the basement. (ducking and running)

Conservative standards are a bad thing?

[CuteSteveJobs]

>The FCC's safety standards include a 50-fold safety factor and, as the FCC has noted, are the most conservative in the world.'

That's hardly a reason to change them. The reason America escaped the thalidomide epidemic was that it's drug approval standards were the safest in the world. FDA Reviewer Frances Oldham Kelsey who upheld those standards received the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service for not lowering those standards despite heavy pressure from drugmakers. She is the reason some readers still have their arms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Oldham_Kelsey

So don't just water down a standard just because "everyone else is doing it." Do it on hard evidence. That the FCC cites "everyone else is doing in" is a cause for concern.

Re:Conservative standards are a bad thing?

[the eric conspiracy]

> So don't just water down a standard just because "everyone else is doing it." Do it on hard evidence.

But that's not the issue here. There is plenty of hard evidence.

The issue here is neo-luddites and so on holding us hostage for no reason.

Loonies all

[cdrguru]

The problem is people do not understand. There is a substantial minority that believe electric power transmission lines are hazardous - not just when the wire breaks but living, playing, working or existing near one is a hazard. These people always know a friend of a friend that went to the doctor and was told they had cancer and it was because of electric power lines.

Such people show up at public comment sessions and pretty much mean that new transmission lines are NOT BUILT anywhere near them. Put five such people in a room and it is a done deal. The transmission line companies have no defense really - science and things like evidence are not a factor with public comment sessions. See why I think the new "smart grid" is a non-starter?

So, we have pseudo-doctors handing out diagnoses of RF Sensitivity and Environmental Sensitivity and such. There is pressure on insurance companies to pay on such claims. We now have a Congressman that wants to put warning stickers on every cell phone, thereby legitimizing this nonsense.

This is not going to end well. Would you like to live in a world where RF emissions were considered to be a cause of cancer and we were all protected by strong federal regulations against such things?