The Department of Interior charges that the FCC standards for cell phone radiation are outmoded and no longer applicable as they do not adequately protect wildlife.
The Director of the Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance of the United States Department of the Interior sent a letter to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in the Department of Commerce which addresses the Interior Department's concern that cell tower radiation has had negative impacts on the health of migratory birds and other wildlife.
The Interior Department accused the Federal government of employing outdated radiation standards set by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a federal agency with no expertise in health. The standards are no longer applicable because they control only for overheating and do not protect organisms from the adverse effects of exposure to the low-intensity radiation produced by cell phones and cell towers: "the electromagnetic radiation standards used by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) continue to be based on thermal heating, a criterion now nearly 30 years out of date and inapplicable today."
The Department criticized the Federal government's proposed procedures for placement and operation of communication towers, and called for "independent, third-party peer-reviewed studies" in the U.S. to examine the effects of cell tower radiation on "migratory birds and other trust species."
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