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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.'"
AM radio causes cancer
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
>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.
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?