New Environmental Health Trust Chief Wants Wireless Industry to Compete on RF Safety
New Environmental Health Trust (EHT) President Joe Sandri said he wants to popularize the idea that, similar to how cars are marketed based on their safety, wireless services and devices can be sold based on their safety in terms of RF exposure. Sandri was a longtime telecom executive who headed FiberTower, which was bought by AT&T, and IDT Spectrum, which Verizon ultimately absorbed. “I know a lot … from the perspective of an industry player,” he said. He was picked for the top job at EHT in August.
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In the 1970s, automakers “resisted competing on safety” and fought seat-belt laws, airbags, safety glass and other changes, Sandri said in an interview last week. Then, Volvo “broke from the pack” and started promoting vehicles as the safest on the road. “Their market share increased,” and other automakers followed. “Now your average new car has dozens of safety features,” he said. “Before, it was taboo to even talk about safety” in auto showrooms. “Then it became a major feature.”
The U.S. is at the point now where the wireless industry would be “irresponsible to not compete on safety,” Sandri said. But many devices and base stations in the U.S. don’t even comply with the FCC’s “very old, very outmoded standards,” he said. “That’s pretty bad.” Wireless companies could set themselves apart by offering RF-safe devices, he noted. “Why not be a leading country in competing on safety?” Mobile phone stores could offer displays of their safest devices, with RF safety ratings similar to crash safety ratings, he said.
In the final stages of the buildup to the Telecom Act of 1996, Congress stripped from the law money for the EPA to study RF safety, Sandri said. Other countries didn’t follow the U.S.’s lead, he said, and as a result, providers in Switzerland operate at about 3% of the power levels as those in the U.S. Other countries, including Italy, Australia, Russia and China, operate at about 10% of U.S. power levels, partly because their environmental agencies have studied RF safety, he said.
EHT recently petitioned the FCC, asking it to act on a 2021 remand from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit of the agency’s 2019 RF safety rules (see 2108130073). If the FCC doesn’t act, Sandri told us his group will file a petition for a writ of mandamus at the D.C. Circuit.
FCC officials seem to be making progress in understanding the risk from RF radiation, Sandri said. “I’m seeing a growing recognition that this has to be dealt with.” The agency looks only at thermal harm from RF exposure, not biological harm, he noted. That’s “way, way, way behind the science.” There are “a lot of obvious questions that the commission has not addressed in a wholesome, transparent, open manner, where there’s real dialogue,” he added. “It’s past time” to do so.
Few here are even asking why other countries have studied RF exposure levels, but not the U.S., Sandri said. “I believe that we can do well as a country by competing on safety.” Unlike the U.S., countries such as France, Australia and Israel track RF levels in urban areas, similar to how the U.S. tracks air quality, he said. “Other countries are way, way ahead of us.”
EHT also recently sent a letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Martin Makary, asking them to collaborate on RF safety (see 2508190049). Kennedy has raised concerns in the past (see 2306290051). A February executive order creating the Make America Healthy Again Commission calls for further study of electromagnetic radiation and its effect on chronic diseases affecting children, Sandri noted.