Congress Has Failed to Fund EPA Research Into Biological Effects of RF Emissions on Human Health
Please see below an important document. It is a Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from September 8, 2000 penned by Whitney North Seymour, Jr. and Peter James Clines for a long list of petitioners. Seymour co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970.
It clarifies how decades ago, when FCC limits were set, the EPA was defunded from properly reviewing the science on harm from electromagnetic fields.
It is not that the laws we have are inadequate… it is that we literally have no laws and no agency with oversight when it comes to impacts to our flora and fauna- the environment.
“The real problem here is that the most recent FCC standards set in 1996, are still based on thermal effects, despite newer information coming from scientific sectors largely outside of the U.S. The current FCC standards were adopted from decades old research reviewed by the National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP Report No. 86, issued April 2, 1986), and from the American National Standards Institute (EEE Standard for Safety Levels with Respect to Human Exposure to Radio Frequency Electromagnetic Fields, 3kHz to 300 GHz, approved Sept. 26, 1991, with a cut-off date for scientific papers of December, 1985).”
“Both Professional agencies have a 5-to-7 year built-in time lag in their review process, and their respective RF committees are comprised almost entirely of physicists, engineers and bioelectromagnetics researchers — not professionals from the public health sector. In other words, dated, inappropriate research, reviewed by authorities from inappropriate professions, is being used to reach conclusions about public safety concerning radio frequency radiation. Why has there been no better up-dating of the FCC standards? The answer is obvious: because *25 Congress has not appropriated adequate funds to conduct nonthermal research by the key federal agency — EPA.”
“The Court’s reliance on the EPA was technically correct but substantively naive. What the Court did not realize was that Congress terminated funding for radiation research by EPA in 1996, and no staff has been available at EPA to conduct such research for the past five years.”
Research Update in 2020 Shows 5G is a Threat to the Environment
Several literature reviews warn that non-ionizing EMFs are an “emerging threat” to wildlife (Balmori 2015, Curachi 2013, Sivani 2012) and impacts to pollinators are documented in published studies (Favre 2011, Kumar et.al., 2011, Lazaro et al., 2016). This research is why the government of India tightened allowable radiofrequency radiation limits (Sivani 2012) . Field research has found years of exposure to cell tower radiation damages trees (Waldmann-Selsam, C., et al. 2016, Helmut 2016, Haggerty 2010) and plants (Halgamuge 2017, Pall 2016, Halgamuge and Davis 2019). Radiofrequency radiation has been found to affect the magnetic sense of invertebrates (including insects) (Tomanová and Vácha, 2016; Vácha et al., 2009) birds (Engels et al., 2014) and mammals (Malkemper et al., 2015). Furthermore research shows bees and pollinators could suffer serious impacts from the higher frequencies to be used in 5G as the higher frequencies resonate with their bodies resulting in up to 370% higher absorbed power.
Currently there is no U.S. Government-funded research program into the non-thermal biological effects of RF emissions to the environment. The EPA, which formerly conducted such research, lost all of its research funding in 1996, and has done nothing since. In July 2020 the Director of the Radiation Protection Division of the EPA Lee Ann B. Veal wrote Theodora Scarato Executive Director of EHT that the EPA had no funded mandate to regarding wireless radiofrequency matters and that they are not aware of any developed safety limits or research reviews related to impacts of wireless on birds bees and the environment. Read the letter. The EPA stated their last research review was their 1984 Report. The FCC confirmed in a USTTI webinar October 15, 2020 that their limits were for humans only.
Thus when companies state that proposed antennas are FCC compliant, this has no applicability to protections for bees, trees or the environment. As the scientific literature amply demonstrates, findings demonstrate the pressing need for a heavily-funded federal environmental- oriented research program and compliance with NEPA that considers impacts to wildlife from the increased radiofrequency radiation.
Read the Petition in full below:
[pdf-embedder url=”https://ehtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/Seymour-Cert-Petition-2000-1.pdf” title=”Seymour Cert Petition 2000 (1)”]
