WASHINGTON-Uncertainty about compliance with the new, hybrid radio frequency radiation exposure standard and growing concern with the struggling industry-funded bioeffects research program could invite unforeseen legal and operational problems for the wireless telecommunications industry.
“There’s no guidance on compliance. They need definitions,” said Ronald Petersen, manager of non-ionizing radiation product safety at Lucent Technologies Inc.
Robert Cleveland, a scientist at the Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Engineering and Technology who led the development of stricter RF safety guidelines, disagrees. He said critics, like Petersen, are being picky. Cleveland explained that the agency will clarify compliance procedures in a bulletin that will be issued in November after industry input is collected.
Under the new telecommunications law, local and state government agencies cannot block antenna siting on safety and environmental grounds if wireless facilities comply with FCC radio frequency emission guidelines. But with the perception that compliance guidelines are vague and confusing, not to mention the upheaval created by overhauling the RF safety standard itself, the potential for disagreement between carriers and local zoning boards remains.
The RF issue involves more than compliance guidelines, however.
Today, there is no universally accepted technique for calculating whether pocket telephones, pagers and other wireless devices meet or exceed new RF guidelines that combine exposure limits recommended by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Management in 1986 and those crafted and embraced by the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers and American National Standards Institute in 1992.
Wireless Technology Research L.L.C., which was contracted by the cellular industry three years ago to oversee a five-year, $25 million study on possible health risks from pocket telephones, canceled two major contracts for improving RF exposure testing due to a lack of funds several months ago.
Lucent recently decided to fund research itself, bypassing WTR and the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
Professor Om P. Gandhi, director of a new RF wireless device testing center at the University of Utah and a noted expert in the field, found that three 800 MHz cellular phones in a new study exceeded RF safety guidelines.
“There are potentially telephones out there that do not meet FCC guidelines,” said Gandhi.
The WTR program, headed by epidemiologist Dr. George Carlo, has been beset with fiscal and management problems. Very little new research data has been produced in nearly three and a half years, prompting concern that lingering scientific uncertainty about RF bioeffects will continue to make carriers and manufacturers vulnerable to health-related lawsuits.
Even worse, some say, is the prospect that the public may become suspicious of industry and government motives if WTR fails to deliver on its research agenda at the end of five years.
While research to date has not conclusively linked pocket phones to cancer or other diseases, as a handful of lawsuits have claimed in recent years, the Environmental Protection Agency has not ruled out RF as a potential carcinogen in terms of long-term, low-level exposure.
“I’m not pleased … We’d like to see it [WTR research] move faster,” said Elizabeth Jacobson, deputy director for science at the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health.
Jacobson, on the other hand, said she sees a unique opportunity to broaden the scientific body of knowledge on RF bioeffects and wants WTR to succeed.
The EPA argued the 1992 IEEE-ANSI standard does not adequately protect workers and the public and urged the FCC to incorporate NCRP guidelines into the new standard. The two guidelines are quite similar up to 1.5 GHz, where NCRP begins to be more protective.
The wireless telecommunications industry vigorously supported the FCC’s proposal three years ago to replace the 1982 IEEE-ANSI standard with an updated version of that guideline. Three of the four FCC commissioners up until recently backed 1992 IEEE-ANSI, with FCC Chairman Reed Hundt favoring a hybrid approach from the start.
But once CTIA, AT&T Corp., Motorola Inc. and other wireless advocates dropped their opposition to the hybrid standard in exchange for getting the FCC to assure the public that their products are safe, the three commissioners reluctantly joined Hundt. It is said, too, that the wireless industry was promised that EPA would keep a low profile on RF exposure issues if the hybrid were adopted.
The Electromagnetic Energy Association is expected to seek reconsideration of the FCC RF ruling early next month. The issue is a prickly one for EEA, whose board includes AT&T and Motorola-which withdrew opposition to the hybrid standard-and Raytheon Co., a strong support of ’92 IEEE-ANSI.
Raytheon is considering its own challenge of the Aug. 2 FCC ruling.
In addition to Raytheon and the satellite industry, the Pentagon is angered about the new RF hybrid standard. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which oversees federal government spectrum, has suggested it is likely to adopt the new hybrid standard for the Department of Defense and other government agencies.
Any legal challenges in court are expected to claim FCC administrative procedures were violated because the public and industry were not given the opportunity to comment on the hybrid RF standard that superseded the original 1992 IEEE-ANSI proposal. Another argument could be that the new RF hybrid standard does not adhere to the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act of 1995, requiring “all Federal agencies and departments … to use technical standards that are developed or adopted by voluntary consensus standards bodies.”
