The Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Communications Commission are accepting comments until Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, about wireless radiation safety.

In 1996, before Google and the iPhone, the FCC set our current wireless exposure limits for smartphones, routers, smart meters, cordless phones, etc.

Those limits were created by testing eight rats and five monkeys for less than an hour. The assumption guiding the process was, if there is no heating of tissue, then the exposure is safe. Now, the majority of independent scientists are finding DNA damage, oxidative stress, behavior/attention issues, predisposition to neurodegenerative disease and carcinogenicity well below the “thermal threshold.”

What is the relationship between this one-hour test on animals and a classroom of middle school students connecting to a wireless router for 6-plus hours a day during a nine-month school year? Or for a pregnant woman sleeping on the other side of a bank of smart meters?

In 2021, a U.S. Court of Appeals found that the FCC’s decision not to review the outdated standards was “arbitrary and capricious” and ordered it to review the 11,000 pages of scientific evidence filed since 1996.

Now, six years later, this is a historic opportunity to build the record.

The Chicago Tribune published its own investigation in 2019 and found that some smartphones exceeded the 1996 safety limits (which are some of the most lenient in the world) when in contact with the body. The FCC then conducted its own tests at a 2-millimeter distance in 2022 with similar results and withheld its findings.

You can find guidance about submitting your comments on our western Massachusetts safe tech advocacy organization’s website: hilltownhealth.org.

Eventually there will be enough public pressure to force manufacturers to “compete on safety” the same way the auto industry was forced to do so in the 1980s following thousands of unnecessary automobile deaths.

In the meantime, if you are interested in reducing your child’s exposure in their school environment with a simple adjustment of router settings, another link can be found at hilltownhealth.org.

Jonathan Mirin, co-founder, Hilltown Health

Charlemont