FCC Asked To Reassess Cell Phone Radiation Guidelines 78
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.'"
Why would you want to raise the limit? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.)
Conservative standards are a bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org]
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.