United States: How the FCC Shields Cellphone Companies From Safety Concerns: Investigative Report

Thank you to the Environmental Health Trust for this news.

Link to the ProPublica report:

https://www.propublica.org/article/fcc-5g-wireless-safety-cellphones-risk

JUST PUBLISHED! Investigative Report on the US Government and Wireless Radiation

Breaking News: ProPublica just published a major investigation into how the FCC is shielding wireless companies' issues regarding health, safety and the environment!    In the report, investigative journalist and senior reporter Peter Elkind covers everything from the Pittsfield Massachusetts Board of Health Order regarding the Verizon Cell Tower, the National Toxicology Program animal study finding cancer and DNA damage and how the U.S. FCC human exposure limits for cell phones, cell towers and wireless radiation are decades out of date.   Elkind interviews numerous experts, including those who used to work at the FCC and US government agencies, all of whom are cautioning that the science has linked exposure to harmful effects and safety is not assured.    “We’re really in the middle of a paradigm shift,” said Linda Birnbaum, who was director of the National Toxicology Program until 2019. It’s no longer right to assume cellphones are safe, she said. “Protective policy is needed today. We really don’t need more science to know that we should be reducing exposures.”   The article features the Environmental Health Trust et al. lawsuit against the FCC which found that "the FCC had failed to meet “even the low threshold of reasoned analysis” in finding that its limits “adequately protect against the harmful effects of exposure to radiofrequency radiation unrelated to cancer.”    The article also highlights EHT's database on international policy action and the Wyoming Governor Marc Gordon's letter to the FCC calling for "immediate action as directed by the courts to review the research and update any policies as necessary for the health and wellbeing of all citizens, including the most vulnerable, our children."  READ THE PROPUBLICA INVESTIGATION

Peter Elkind, senior reporter at ProPublica, is an award-winning investigative journalist. Elkind is co-author of the national bestseller The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron and he has written for The New York Times Magazine, newyorker.com, and The Washington Post, was an associate editor at Texas Monthly, and is a former editor of the Dallas Observer.   Elkind's work for Fortune, where he was a writer for twenty years, includes such in-depth pieces as "The trouble with Steve Jobs," about how the CEO of Apple concealed his bout with pancreatic cancer.