323. Safety Concerns Over Cell Tower Fast Track Plan

Introduction

0:00Hi, everybody. Sheryl Ackeson here. Welcome to another edition of the Sheryl Ackeson podcast.

0:12In today's podcast, the cell tower fast track plan. Theodora Scorato worries about the FCC's plans to fast track cell tower approval. She says you should be worried too. At Uber, every single driver is required to pass a thorough background check before they can start driving. That means any prospective driver goes through a multi-step screening process, checking for any impaired driving or criminal offenses. But the checks don't stop there. Every year, every Uber driver is background checked again, so the person picking you up

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Cell Tower Concerns

1:26I've gone from not understanding at all the health risks of cell phones, 5G, radiation, and all of that, to doing a lot of research for some stories on this very thing, then coming to understand that there is scandal here. There are concerns here, as with most public health risks involving giant corporations and their products and propaganda and non-profits who are actually bought and paid for by special interests and media control. Many times, as I've learned

2:00through research, there is much more than meets the eye. Important information that has been spun, subject to misinformation, subject to social media and other information control. Well, here's where you can get views that maybe are not too easy for you to find elsewhere, which is one of my goals, as always. To tell us about her concerns, Theodora Scorato is director of the wireless and EMF program at Environmental Health Sciences.

2:30In just a nutshell, what is Environmental Health Sciences? A scientific non-profit organization focused on environmental health, news policy, science, and championing, you know, common sense policy that protects people in the environment. And where does your funding come from? From grants and donations, not from industry.

3:01Okay. Can you, we'll dig in, but if you could give me just the 30,000 foot level view of what you think the issue is that we're here to talk about today, and if possible, in just a couple of sentences, and then we'll dig in. How would you describe it?

FCC Proposals

3:20The U.S. government is putting forward, both at the congressional and with the FCC, proposals to fast track cell towers in front of homes and schools, and strip away our ability, local government, both at the state and local government's ability to have meaningful input. Yet at the same time, our regulatory framework for managing the health risks of wireless and cell tower radiation is deficient, fragmented, and exemplifies the concept of

3:57regulatory gaps and regulatory capture because of heavy industry influence that has gone on for decades. Let's address some health risks off the top. I've covered this on full measure, and I want to let people know that before I knew anything about this, I kind of wondered about radiation. Many, many years ago, I read the warning that comes with a mobile phone, and it says, don't hold it up to your head, and I'm like, well, how else do we use it? But the industry has known

4:27for a long time that there are serious risks that come with radiation from phones, and then, of course, I started looking into 5G, which was never tested for safety or proven that it is safe before it was allowed to roll out. That's sort of a scandal of itself. But can you just discuss, we don't have to go into medical citations, I just want people to buy into the notion based on my research and maybe some of yours, that there are very well-established major health risks that come with different kinds of radiation and electricity that we're exposed to every day. Can you just give

5:02me a little bit of an overview regarding that? Sure. So the research on wireless, which is a non-ionizing kind of electromagnetic radiation indicates that safety is not assured, according to hundreds of scientists. So there are studies showing cancer, both human studies and experimental studies, genetic impacts, DNA damage, reproductive impacts like sperm damage, decreased testosterone, impact to fertility, nervous system impacts, impacts to brain development, altered brain metabolism,

5:38increased oxidative stress has been shown in the majority of studies. And that can lead to inflammation and also contribute to chronic disease, increased blood brain barrier permeability and synergistic effects as well have been reported. And so when you combine radio frequency wireless with other kinds of toxic exposures, there can be increased impact on the body. And you can go to the EMF scientist's appeal to see the names of hundreds of scientists who are calling for caution on this

6:16issue, as well as the International Commission for the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields. And I learned from reading the peer-reviewed published studies and talking to the preeminent experts in the field that just because you don't feel it perhaps day to day obviously doesn't mean it's not impacting you because as you mentioned with so many toxic exposures we have in our environment and our food and medicine and water and air, that addition, sort of some people call it the toxic overload of what these emissions

6:47can do can just make you tired. It can make you sick. It can make you feel a certain way that you would not attribute to that in addition to, as you said, cancer and brain disorders, depression, anxiety, and things like that. So what's going on on the landscape that's concerning to you? You're talking about the FCC. I saw an excerpt that you posted where they're discussing fast-tracking the approval of cell towers around the country. Tell me about that program and what's so concerning.

Build America Proposal

7:18That's right. So Brendan Carr, who's the current chair of the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, has a proposal called Build America, which would, as you said, fast-track cell tower networks across the country, cellular networks, by eliminating what they call barriers to deployment. But those barriers are really communities who want to have safeguards, guardrails, or just common sense setbacks. So that a cell tower won't be directly in your right of way. There needs to be some, gosh,

7:58some communities have setbacks of hundreds of feats for cell towers from homes or schools. And this would actually strip away the majority of the protections that your local city, town, county has related to where a cell tower goes, and also how meaningful your input can be on the matter. Right now, we already have a situation where people will find out that a 5G tower will be placed very close to their home,

8:29and they're told that their hands are tied. And that's because a few years ago, the FCC passed similar fast-track rules, but they were for 5G small cells, meaning those towers that only go up about 30 feet. So they're the short ones. They might be on your utility pole, mounted on buildings, or these new short little poles. Now we're talking about macro towers. Those, you know, they can be 80 feet, 90 feet, 150 feet or more. People might be interested that there's a whole group of people

9:03who believe, and I believe them based on the research and interviews I've done, that they are acutely impacted by EMF, 5G, in some cases electricity, where they will feel it when they walk into a room. And on an upcoming edition of Full Measure, I went to West Virginia. You're probably familiar with, I think it's the only radio wave-free zone in the country because it interferes with a telescope. So in the 1950s, they outlawed these kind of radio waves that some people

9:33find sickening. So people are moving out there now into West Virginia, including a woman who was told that a tower was going up. I believe it was a 5G tower right in front of her house and that she had no say-so in it. So she just decided to get out because she's very sick when she's around this stuff. And yeah, that's what it can do. Do you allege that industry has lobbied to get this, you know, done quickly or to get these rules loosened or lifted so that they can just expand and make money? I think the government would probably say they're doing, they're trying to get better

10:06access and better signals to more of America. Well, we know that the wireless industry has been lobbying on this for years. This is the industry wishlist that is coming true. It is a dream come true for industry to deal with these regulatory roadblocks, as I might call them, because when they want to put a cell tower up somewhere, there generally is opposition if it's really close to a home or a school, because people say, wait, is this safe? And there's a Harvard report called

10:42Captured Agency. It was published in 2015. And it talked about how the wireless industry is using the tactics of big tobacco in terms of undue influence at every level. So they fund science that more often shows effects. They lobby policymakers, which have put forward for the last decade, regulatory proposals to fast track, streamline cell towers and wireless infrastructure at various levels. This is kind of

11:17the, this is the end of the road. I mean, this is like the final fabulous moment for industry in terms of fast tracking speed over safety. What's interesting is that there is a facet of the Trump administration under HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who I suppose would be informed on this risk and issue and heightened to it or, you know, aware of it and maybe worried about it or concerned about it. But then there's another

11:47facet of the Trump administration that's actually the body that's in charge, the FCC of these rules and regulations. What do you make of that? The fact that you may have a friendly ear somewhere up there, just maybe not in the right place. Yeah, I think it's going to be really interesting to see what happens because right now the head of the FCC is Brendan Carr, who formerly, you know, worked for the lawyers who represented the wireless industry against San Francisco when they tried to pass their

12:21cell phone right to know act. And there's that, that revolving door is so evident because the prior chair of the FCC, Ajit Pai, now has gone on to lead the head of the, the cellular telecommunications and industry association, the CTIA, replacing a former FCC commissioner who also left the FCC and then went to the CTIA to lead the CTIA. So there's this revolving door at the FCC. And I really can't say I know what is going to happen here because they really are not in alignment. And

12:57the FCC is moving forward. I mean, it's not just the Federal Communications Commission, but the House also has proposals to strip away the local control. They're really comparable proposals in both places. And people should understand, as I've tried to report, as I've learned, much of what our Congress does today, when a bill comes forward, comes forward quickly, and it's not really something

13:28that people are clamoring for. This is bought and paid for by industry, which contributes to the parties and or the party leadership, both parties, in order for their agenda to be passed. They write the bills. In other words, the members of Congress no longer, and their staff typically write these bills that are passed into law. They're written by the industries that are going to benefit in clever ways sometimes where we can't really tell exactly why they've crafted the language a certain way. But it's, it's really a scandal that some of the things that are most important to us

13:59never reach the agenda. And yet some of these other things swiftly get a bill written and introduced. And before you know it, you know, there's action, action, action in Washington, DC. But I almost think it's, it's a positive thing. I guess it depends on what you're looking at, but that everybody's not in lockstep in this administration. It's kind of unusual. I remember Trump saying to Kennedy, when they were talking about working together, that they don't agree on a lot of stuff, but that that's okay. But at least it allows different voices to, to be hopefully potentially heard.

14:34Well, I guess we'll see what happens. I guess we will see what happens. I mean, one of the important thing is that the RFCC limits have not been updated since 1996. In fact, they were set then they remain unchanged since then. And so we're moving forward fast tracking cell towers while we have a regulatory, quote, safety standards, I wouldn't call it, they're not even safety standards, actually their, their human exposure limits that people refer to as safety standards, but they

15:07were actually never developed by the EPA. And isn't it funny that, you know, you would think when it comes to human health, we would always err on the side of proof and safety, but because of industry influence, it's the opposite. They basically say, well, prove it's not safe. And no one's going to do that study because the study has to be funded usually by the industry. So they're not going to fund a study proven it's not safe. And, um, I remember with 5g, we covered the story where the, uh, it was the EPA, whatever the regulatory agency was told the 5g industry, Verizon and so on to come up with

15:43studies showing it safe. And they were rolling it out and they appeared before Congress and Congress at members of Congress asked each leader in the field, have you done those studies? And each one said, no. Well, first of all, I don't think they should be doing their own studies on safety, but second of all, they hadn't moved forward and done any of them. And then we're still allowed to move forward. The members of Congress exposed that they hadn't done the studies and yet didn't stop them from, you know, going ahead and advancing. Right. We don't have pre-market safety testing for wireless technologies, period, just period there. So new technologies can be brought to market and it rests

16:21on our, an assumption that because it is non-ionizing, um, heat is the only harm. So we do have standards or I'm sorry, human exposure limits, I should say limits for what's allowed that are actually based on the small animal studies, meaning small and that they were small animals and small samples under 10, uh, rats and mice and monkeys from the 1970s and 1980s era laboratory experimental

16:52setups. And they were exposed to this radiation for under an hour to microwaves, which is wireless frequencies for under an hour. And then the level at which they stopped pressing a lever for food was considered the level of adverse effect. Like, Oh, okay, this is it. And from that number, they used arbitrary, um, so-called safety factors, not based on actual science of how children might

17:24be impacted by this radiation or people who are medically vulnerable or just the American public or any public. And they dropped it down. And that's what our limits are based on. It's not based on actually looking at all of the science and doing a risk assessment and developing safety margins that are understood to be truly protective based on scientific analysis.

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Call to Action

19:15What would you like people to do when it comes to the FCC's fast tracking wireless?

19:25Well, there's a lot that people can do here. So right now, the record is closed for the FCC cell tower fast track proposal, which is 25276. However, you still can file an ex parte into the record. But more importantly, we recommend that people go to their elected officials, their mayors, their council, talk to them about this issue and have them write letters and request that the FCC first

19:58ensure that the limits that we have are safe for what we're allowed to be exposed to for cell tower radiation. So I was part of a lawsuit against the FCC. And in 2021, the DC circuit determined that the FCC had acted arbitrarily and capricious in its decision to not to update those limits, but instead to just maintain these outdated 1996 limits. And they still haven't acted on the court mandate, which is to

20:32address children's vulnerability, long term exposure, wildlife impacts, how technology has changed since 1996. And we are recommending at Environmental Health Sciences and many other organizations to first address these limits that we have for what's allowed before we go fast tracking deployment into our communities near our homes and schools and workplaces. Well, thank you for bringing this attention to light. And people can find out about the other

21:04side by going to FCC.gov. They argue that, by the way, 6G, the next generation of wireless is coming soon. Also, I'm sure not widely tested before the rollout. But they argue that this Build America agenda is to drive growth and opportunity through high speed internet deployment, freeing up spectrum, cutting red tape, advancing national security and public safety, strengthening America's workforce. That's their view of, you know, making progress to update from old networks and to help people and

21:40be interesting to see what happens. We'll continue to follow it. Thank you so much for having me. And I would add the paper that I published on this issue is U.S. Policy on Wireless Technologies and Health, Regulatory Gaps and Proposed Reforms. And it's in frontiers in public health. And I detail not only how our limits are outdated and based on heating only, not on long-term impacts, but also how we have no pre-market safety testing, no measuring and monitoring for what the levels are, no accessible information, and how the government has actually withheld tests showing

22:16that there can be levels which exceed their limits when phones are in body contact. And it's all detailed, as well as the long history of how the United States tried numerous times via the EPA to actually set safety standards, but they were continuously defunded on the issue. And I think it sheds light into how we are where we are right now. Good information. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

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