By Devra Lee Davis, PhD, MPH
Last month, when the Federal Communications Commission reissued its unrevised, decades-old human exposure guidelines for radio frequency microwave (RF/MW) radiation, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t buy it. In a stinging rebuke, the Court held that the FCC demonstrated “a complete failure to respond to comments” submitted by Environmental Health Trust (EHT), Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and many others – regarding evidence of the adverse effects of RF microwave radiation from wireless devices and infrastructure, especially for children and the environment.
Despite this stunning reprimand of the FCC for failing to update its RF microwave radiation guidelines, California’s harried legislators have just passed bills effectively turning every streetlight and traffic signal into a 4G/5G Wireless Telecommunications Facility (WTF), banning local controls over where, when and these two-way microwave radiating devices are deployed.
The buck stops on the desk of newly affirmed Governor Gavin Newsom who can and must veto three bills: Senate Bill 556 from Sen. Dodd, Assembly Bill 537 from Asm. Quirk, and Senate Bill 378 from Sen. Gonzalez. Rather than overriding local control to force wireless radiation closer to humans than ever before, the Governor can insist, as has the reviewing Court, that it’s time for a reset.
For years, the courts have accorded federal regulatory agencies extraordinary deference, assuming competence lays behind their actions. In this instance, the judges balked. The Court determined that the FCC had utterly failed in its most basic duty to take a serious hard look at tens of thousands of pages of expert evidence submitted since 2013 when the FCC had asked the public to comment on its RF microwave radiation exposure guidelines. As the lawsuit brought by EHT and CHD noted, by peremptorily closing its 2013 inquiry in 2019, the FCC assumed that 20th-century guidelines could safely be applied to 21st-century WTFs.
The court emphatically did not agree. They found the FCC had failed to meet basic requirements to engage in “reasoned” decision-making. The judges expressed that over the past decade, we’ve seen a steady but growing stream of published evidence that current levels of RF microwave radiation have a broad range of biological impacts from damaging human sperm, causing immediate neurological harms, interfering with the ability of honeybees to pollinate, and affecting capacity of plants to grow. Undaunted by the complexity of the science, the court held that the FCC had failed in their responsibility to consider these latest findings.
Where does this leave us? The Governor should veto these overreaching bills, SB.556, AB.537 and SB 378 while we wait for the FCC to complete its environmental review of the effects of densifying the construction of Wireless Telecommunications Facilities (WTFs) and to promulgate new RF microwave radiation guidelines that consider the current published, peer-reviewed science.
SB 556 would allow new microwave radiating antennas to be installed on virtually every existing streetlight or traffic signal in the state. The bill overrides local zoning laws and severely limits control over when and where such so-called “small” Wireless Telecommunications Facilities (sWTFs) will be constructed.
AB 537 grants automatic approval for any application for a new wireless antenna not approved by a local authority within a short 60-day time frame. Considering that wireless companies routinely submit hundreds of applications at a time, this bill would pave the way for impossibly short windows for approval, especially for local governments with limited personnel and budgets burdened by the demands of COVID-19.
SB 378 allows Big Telecom companies to ignore local construction standards and then slice through city streets using so-called “micro-trenching” instead of the best practices of Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD), which does not slice through streets. When Google Fiber tried micro-trenching, it failed in Louisville, KY. Google pulled their fiber service out of Louisville and had to pay the city millions of dollars to fix their streets.
All three bills effectively speed up the deployment of hundreds of thousands of new wireless microwave-radiating 4G/5G antennas as close as a few feet from bedroom windows and schoolrooms throughout California. But where are the bills that protect our children? In Israel and France, antennas cannot be placed on schools. Not so in the Golden State.
The court specifically admonished the FCC for not considering science from the American Academy of Pediatrics and others that conclude that wireless radiation can be particularly harmful to children. Yet these pending bills put California’s 6 million schoolchildren in harm’s way.
Far from bridging the very real digital divide, expanding densified 4G/5G sWTFs only encourages a market share battle between Wireless Carriers, Cable Cos. and other Internet Service Providers, and will worsen the problems of the underserved who must choose between spending on telecommunications, medicine, or food.
The Governor must veto these three bills and, instead, promote wired fiber optic broadband services — the fastest, most affordable, and reliable internet connection available — to every home and business. Everyone is entitled to broadband access to the internet, but not at the expense of their health or their wallets.
Devra Lee Davis, PhD, MPH
Founder and President,
Environmental Health Trust
