(CNSNews.com) – A grassroots group says local governments, not the U.S. government, should regulate telecommunications towers, which some people consider a threat to health and the environment.
The Coalition for Local Oversight of Utility Technologies (CLOUT) points to California, where the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted on June 2 to actively seek federal legislation that would repeal portions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Section 704 of the federal Telecommunications Act says state and local governments may not ban or restrict cell phone towers and other wireless facilities on the basis of health and environmental concerns.
But CLOUT insists that the health and environmental impacts of such towers should be a “legal, legitimate component of all deliberations involving their placement, construction, and modification.”
CLOUT says on its Web site that the proliferation of cell phone towers and other wireless facilities over the past 15 years “has had a dramatic effect on the American landscape,” including “reduction in property values, destruction of views, and adverse impacts on human health and the environment.”
In April, the European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution on Health Concerns Associated with Electromagnetic Fields, which says cell towers should not be placed near schools, places of worship, retirement homes, and health care institutions.
CLOUT wants the same thing to happen here, and it calls the recent vote in Los Angeles a “major step forward.”
"We finally have one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country willing to say 'enough is enough' and take a stand to change this situation," said Sally Hampton, a CLOUT member who organized the move against cell towers in Southern California.
The motions by Los Angeles County Supervisors Zen Yaroslavsky, Michael Antonovich and Mark Ridley-Thomas cited "ongoing debate within the scientific community and among governing bodies throughout the world regarding how thoroughly the long-term health effects of low-frequency electromagnetic and radio-frequency emissions are understood" and "questions...regarding how well the existing regulations established by the Federal Communications Commission protect more vulnerable populations such as school-aged children, and how well they protect against the cumulative effect of radio-frequency emissions on people who live or work in close proximity to multiple cellular facilities."
The Los Angeles Board of Supervisors on June 2 also passed a motion in support of federal legislation that would direct the FCC to “pursue a comprehensive global analysis of best practices and scientific evidence” to “adequately measure the health impacts of telecommunications towers.”
The FCC has established guidelines for wireless base stations, and the wireless industry says it has succeeded in creating and maintaining towers whose ground-level exposures are typically thousands of times less than the exposure limits adopted by the FCC.
According to the American Cancer Society, cell phone towers and cell phones are a relatively new technology, “and we do not yet have full information on health effects. In particular, not enough time has elapsed to permit epidemiologic studies."
According to the ACS Web site, "There are some theoretical reasons why cellular phone towers would not be expected to increase cancer risk, and animal studies of RF (radio frequency) have not suggested a risk of cancer. People who are concerned can ask for measurements of RF near cellular phone towers to be sure exposures do not exceed recommended limits.”