FCC Limits for Wireless Radiation Exposure Decades Out of Date, Experts Say
The Federal Communications Commission bases its safety limits for human exposure to wireless radiation on a handful of studies from the 1970s and 1980s with tiny sample sizes. Meanwhile, the agency continues to ignore a federal court mandate to review recent science and update its limits to protect children, animals and the environment.
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Editor’s note: This is the third in a three-part series examining key questions in the public debate on the safety of wireless radiation. Part 1 asked, How did the FDA arrive at its position on cellphones and cancer? Part 2 asked, What’s behind the rollout of 5G? Part 3 asks, What’s the science supporting the FCC’s current limits for human exposure to wireless radiation?
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) largely bases its radiofrequency (RF) radiation safety standard for humans on a handful of studies done in the 1970s and 1980s — well before most people started using cellphones.
And those studies used small sample sizes, according to Devra Davis, Ph.D., MPH, founder and president of Environmental Health Trust (EHT) and Theodora Scarato, EHT’s executive director.
The FCC in 1996 set the human exposure safety limits for wireless RF radiation which, in turn, are now used in the U.S. for all phones, wireless products and networks, including cell towers and 5G.
EHT is a nonprofit scientific research and education group focused on the effects of wireless radiation.
Davis and Scarato spoke with The Defender about the science the FCC used to set current human RF radiation exposure safety limits — and why these limits need to be changed.
Davis, a toxicologist and epidemiologist and author of more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, is also the founding director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the U.S. National Research Council at the National Academy of Sciences.
Davis said the FCC today “does not employ a single health expert,” and that it relied on “outdated studies of small numbers of experimental animals” which only focused on “how hot they needed to become (as measured by rectal probes) to stop seeking food.”
She added:
“Ignoring the two-year-old court ruling in EHT et al. v. FCC, the agency continues to set standards for human exposure limits based on outdated tests that only investigated what level of acute exposures for these small numbers of animals would cause them to stop seeking food when they were hungry and did not consider the possibility of long-term chronic impacts.”
EHT and other experts have submitted several thousand pages of more recent studies evaluating chronic effects on young children, on reproduction, the nervous system and the general environment, according to Davis.
Current safety limits ‘just outrageous’
In 1984, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was tasked with developing safety limits. In the early 1990s, the agency was investigating the possible carcinogenicity of electromagnetic fields (EMFs).
However, in the mid-1990s — just as the agency was poised to release its recommendations — the EPA’s efforts in this area were defunded and the agency in 2020 confirmed it did not have a “funded mandate for radiofrequency matters.”
The FCC in 1996 set RF radiation limits by adopting two recommendations, previously made by other organizations, both based on the amount of heat absorbed by the body from RF radiation sources using what’s called the specific absorption rate (SAR).
SAR is a measure in units of watts per kilogram of the rate at which electromagnetic energy from an external source, like a cellphone or cell tower, is converted into heat within biological matter.
The FCC on Aug. 1, 1996, adopted the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement’s (NCRP) recommended Maximum Permissible Exposure (MPE) limits “for field strength and power density for the transmitters operating at frequencies of 300 kHz to 100 GHz.”
“MPE is derived from SAR, so it is fundamentally a measure based on tissue heating and not on [other] biological effects, such as biochemical changes related to oxidative stress or DNA damage,” Scarato said.
NCRP’s MPE recommendation came from its 1986 report, which the EPA told the FCC in 1993 it should ask the NCRP to revise to “provide an updated, critical and comprehensive review of the biological effects on RF radiation and recommendations.”
However, the FCC didn’t follow the EPA’s advice, so the NCRP limits adopted by the FCC were not based on an up-to-date science review, Scarato said.
The same day the FCC adopted the NCRP’s MPE limits, it also adopted the SAR limits standard set by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) “for devices operating within close proximity to the body.”
The FCC used IEEE’s 1991 exposure limits standard, which was an updated version of the ANSI’s 1982 limits standard that ANSI later ratified. “These exposure limits were developed solely to avoid heating and became the foundation of the FCC’s standards for testing wireless radiating devices,” Davis said.
According to the IEEE guidelines, tissue heating — or “thermal effects” — was the only biological harm humans might suffer from RF radiation and those harms could only happen at a SAR level greater than 4.0 W/kg, as averaged over the whole body.
Scarato said the IEEE points to just three studies to support its belief that, “Here is how we know the heating level that is harmful from RF.” They included: a 1977 study involving eleven rats, a 1982 study involving five rhesus monkeys, one squirrel monkey and one rat, and a 1984 study involving five rhesus monkeys.
“These studies,” she said, “exposed tiny samples of animals to short durations of RF radiation — as in, 40 to 60 minutes — and did not look at the impact of chronic exposure to RF radiation.”
“Also, the RF radiation signals used in the experiments were not like current wireless signals, which are quite complex with modulation and pulsations, waveform characteristics understood to make them more bioactive,” Scarato added.
The temperature at which the rats and monkeys stopped pressing a food lever was the level identified as the “harmful” level of radiation, with the rationale being that the heat caused “behavioral disruption,” she explained.
“Then, arbitrary so-called ‘safety factors’ were used based on zero data quantifying what level would be needed to protect a child or adult with a medical condition,” Scarato said.
Scarato said many more recent studies with large sample sizes show evidence of harmful effects from RF radiation on adults and children at levels below a SAR of 4.0 W/kg.
But such studies are attacked — or “war-gamed” — by the telecommunication industry as unacceptable, she said.
“How is it acceptable for FCC officials to set safety limits based on studies of just a few animals performed decades before the modern-day cellphone even hit the market?” Scarato asked.
She continued:
“Can you imagine if someone said, ‘We did a study of 11 rats over four decades ago? They’d be like, ‘Come on!’ … Or a study with just one squirrel, five monkeys and a rat? And we used an exposure for under an hour.
“They would likely respond, ‘These studies are not valid to ensure safety.’
“If you go to the current IEEE standard, they list these antiquated studies as the basis for to their recommended safety limits.”
“The radiation limits do not protect against health effects from long-term exposure,” Scarato said. “It’s just outrageous.”
FCC limits ignore nonthermal, long-term effects
Davis and Scarato are not alone in criticizing the scientific basis of the FCC’s RF radiation safety limits.
Henry Lai, Ph.D. — a research professor in bioengineering at the University of Washington who has studied RF radiation for more than three decades — told The Defender:
“The FCC RFR-exposure guideline is based on one type of biological response, i.e., a particular behavioral effect in animals, whereas there are many reports on other biological effects of the radiation, such as genetic damage, free radical changes, etc.
“These effects have been shown to occur at intensities much lower than the FCC guideline recommendation. They are not included in the guideline setting.”
Lai said the FCC standard did not consider the effects of long-term exposure and from different forms of wireless radiation.
Additionally, the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF), a “consortium of scientists, doctors and related professionals” who study RF radiation, in an October 2022 peer-reviewed article argued the FCC’s limits were based on scant science and many erroneous assumptions.
The ICBE-EMF said “25 years of extensive research” showed the assumptions underlying the FCC’s limits were “invalid and continue to present a public health harm.”
The ICBE-EMF noted that the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection — the leading organization that sets international wireless radiation guidelines — set its standards around the same time as the FCC, using the same kind of antiquated studies and the same logic of using SAR as an appropriate means to measure the impact of RF radiation on the human body.
Citing more than 200 scientific studies, ICBE-EMF said:
“Adverse effects observed at exposures below the assumed threshold SAR include non-thermal induction of reactive oxygen species, DNA damage, cardiomyopathy, carcinogenicity, sperm damage, and neurological effects, including electromagnetic hypersensitivity.
“Also, multiple human studies have found statistically significant associations between RFR exposure and increased brain and thyroid cancer risk. …
“Consequently, these exposure limits, which are based on false suppositions, do not adequately protect workers, children, hypersensitive individuals, and the general population from short-term or long-term RFR exposures.”
No U.S. standard protecting against long-term RF exposure
Norbert Hankin — former head of the EPA’s radiation protection division — in a 2002 letter acknowledged that no federal agency had yet developed RF radiation limits concerning long-term exposure to levels below what causes tissue heating.
After Congress’ Government Accountability Office in 2012 published a report urging the FCC to reassess its guidelines, the FCC in 2013 published an inquiry to decide whether the guidelines should be reviewed.
Despite thousands of pages of scientific evidence of biological effects from RF radiation submitted to the inquiry docket by the scientific community and comments from hundreds of people who believe RF radiation exposure made them sick, the FCC in Dec. 2019 closed the inquiry, saying:
“We resolve a Notice of Inquiry that sought public input on, among other issues, whether the Commission should amend its existing RF emission exposure limits.
“After reviewing the extensive record submitted in response to that inquiry, we find no appropriate basis for and thus decline to propose amendments to our existing limits at this time.”
Court orders FCC to address RF impacts on kids and the environment
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) challenged the agency’s decision in a lawsuit filed Feb. 2, 2020.
Erica Rosenberg, an attorney with over 30 years of experience who formerly worked in the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, also disagreed with the FCC’s decision. She told The Defender:
“It is hard to make sense of the agency’s not revising the standard when 20-plus years of ‘new’ data was before it and in that same time period, wireless infrastructure and use had increased considerably.”
CHD’s suit was consolidated with similar cases brought by EHT and Consumers for Safe Cell Phones. CHD won the historic case. On Aug. 13, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled the FCC failed to consider the non-cancer evidence regarding adverse health effects of wireless technology when it decided that its 1996 radiofrequency emission guidelines protect the public’s health.
The panel majority said the FCC must also:
“(ii) address the impacts of RF radiation on children, the health implications of long-term exposure to RF radiation, the ubiquity of wireless devices, and other technological developments that have occurred since the Commission last updated its guidelines, and
“(iii) address the impacts of RF radiation on the environment.”
Yet two years later, the FCC still has not complied with the court’s order despite an April 2023 petition from CHD that threatened further legal action.
‘We have a long over-due obligation to consider potential consequences to other species from our current unchecked technophoria’
The impact of RF radiation on the environment and wildlife is an especially dire situation, according to RF radiation researchers, including Lai.
Lai in 2021 joined with B. Blake Levitt, a science journalist who researched the biological effects of RF radiation since the late 1970s, and Albert Manville, Ph.D., a John Hopkins University senior lecturer in energy policy and environmental studies who previously served as senior wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for 17 years, to publish what’s known as the “Trilogy.”
The Trilogy is an extensive review — broken up into part 1, part 2 and part 3 — of the scientific literature documenting the plethora of negative effects from RF radiation on wildlife and plants.
Lai and colleagues said in a 2022 article:
“We have a long overdue obligation to consider potential consequences to other species from our current unchecked technophoria — an obligation we have thus far not considered before species go extinct … the evidence requiring action is clear.”
RF regulators must listen to biologists, not just engineers and physicists
Levitt, Lai and Manville said that since the 1940s, it’s largely been engineers and physicists who have created the protocols for research on RF radiation and human health upon which RF radiation regulations rely — and this must change.
What is needed is to reintegrate biology — “which studies whole dynamic living systems” — with physics and engineering, “that focus on how to create and make technology work.”
They said:
“Electromagnetism is fundamental to life — indeed all living things function with biological microcurrent without which life would not exist … Yet biologists have consistently been left out of full participation in safety and environmental issues in anything other than cursory inclusion.”
They also said biologists must speak up to get their voices heard. “The physics/engineering disciplines have had the subject to themselves for decades and are somewhat territorial about it.”
Engineers and physicists tend to focus on linear cause-effect models in both technology design and exposure standards setting.
“They tend be less interested in the confounding complexities of biology which are mostly nonlinear and unpredictable,” Levitt, Lai and Manville said.
RF radiation a form of ‘energetic air pollution’
Levitt, Lai and Manville call RF radiation “a form of energetic air pollution and should be regulated as such.”
U.S. law defines air pollution as, “Any air pollution agent or combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical, biological, radioactive (including source material, special nuclear material, and byproduct material) substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air.”
Levitt, Lai and Manville said:
“Unlike classic chemical toxicology pollutants in which a culprit can typically be identified and quantified, RFR may function as a ‘process’ pollutant in the air not unlike how endocrine dysruptors [sic] function in food and water in which the stressor causes a cascade of unpredictable systemic effects.”
Regulatory agencies should set “long-term chronic low-level” RF/EMF exposure guidelines for not only humans but wildlife, they said, and develop mitigation strategies where feasible.
“Full environmental reviews should be conducted prior to the licensing/buildout of major new technologies like 5G,” they added, “and environmental laws/regulations should be strictly enforced.”
