June 14, 2005

The Supreme Court yesterday declined to consider the appeal of an environmental advocacy group that sued to force the FCC to study possible health effects of mobile-phone tower emissions.

The EMR Network argued FCC radio-frequency radiation guidelines do not take into account recent research findings and fail to distinguish among children, elderly and ill individuals insofar as exposure limits.

The agency's RF standard was upheld by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2000. The 1996 standard is being revised.

The high court's action comes as a handful of health-related lawsuits against the mobile-phone industry have been resuscitated after being returned to various state courts around the country.

Meantime, a long-running lawsuit in Illinois dealing with the privacy of individuals involved in a cell-phone health epidemiology study appears to have ended, with the plaintiff deciding not to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the state supreme court's latest rejection of the case.

Source: RCR News