Pai Proposes to Keep Current RF Limits, Establish Uniform Guidelines
Current RF limits for devices licensed by the FCC are safe and don’t need to be strengthened, the agency announced Thursday after years of study and in consultation with public health experts in the federal government. In March 2013, the…
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FCC released a Further NPRM asking about the commission’s RF exposure limits and policies. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is circulating for a vote a resolution of the inquiry from 2013, an order addressing the 2013 FNPRM, an NPRM seeking comment on how to determine compliance with the RF standard for high-frequency devices, and an order dealing with a few issues on which parties sought reconsideration, a senior official said. The Pai proposal would “establish a uniform set of guidelines for ensuring compliance with the limits regardless of the service or technology, replacing the Commission’s current inconsistent patchwork of service-specific rules,” said a news release. The FCC sets RF levels in consultation with the FDA and other agencies, said Julius Knapp, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology. “After a thorough review of the record and consultation with these agencies, we find it appropriate to maintain the existing radiofrequency limits, which are among the most stringent in the world for cell phones,” Knapp said. “We are pleased that the FCC continues to follow the guidance of expert scientific organizations and health agencies such as the FDA when it comes to RF and health,” a CTIA spokesperson said: “The scientific consensus is that there are no known health risks from all forms of RF energy at the low levels approved for every day consumer use.” The FCC needs to “bring those proceedings to a close,” emailed Joe Van Eaton, municipal lawyer at Best Best. His clients "have been asking the commission to do so for some time. We’ll wait and see whether the commission’s decision does that, and whether it is justified or not, and whether it is based on the latest data.” The issues go beyond exposure limits, he said: “We know that the small cells being placed in rights of way and on rooftops do have emissions that exceed the FCC limits within a certain distance of the antenna.”