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By Greg Lapin, N9GL
Chairman, ARRL RF Safety Committee
July 1, 2001
A bill pending in Missouri's Legislature could affect Amateur Radio operators. As a scientist, I find this bill disturbing since it starts out by misrepresenting the potential for RF energy to cause damage to children.
A bill recently was introduced in the House of Representatives of the State of Missouri that could affect every ham in that state. HB 999 reads:
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the state of Missouri, as follows:
Section A. Chapter 67, RSMo, is amended by adding thereto one new section, to be known as section 67.1228, to read as follows:
2. In addition to any other zoning or related ordinance, the governing body of any county, city, town or village shall, by order or ordinance, require any individual or business entity planning to install, construct or locate a telecommunication siting tower, or other facility or structure for the transmission of wireless communications or telephone service, in such county, city, town or village to notify all owners of record of property which is adjacent to, or within two thousand feet of, property on which the tower, facility or structure is to be located. The order or ordinance shall provide for the method of notifying affected owners of record, including the length of time notice shall be given before the start of construction on the tower, structure or facility and the opportunity for affected owners of record to require a public hearing by the county, city, town or village on the location of the tower, structure or facility.
Although this bill starts off by referring to cellular and PCS towers, the actual law, if passed in this form, would require everyone proposing to erect a tower for the purpose of transmitting RF energy to go to great lengths to make sure no one objects. Chances are, with the current hype and misinformation about RF Safety that is prevalent among the public, someone would object.
I am not a lawyer, but the Amateur community has some very fine lawyers who have been helping this cause for many years. While at Dayton recently, I spoke about this topic with Jim O'Connell, W9WU, an extremely knowledgeable and capable lawyer specializing in antenna law. Jim has helped many hams in the Chicago area get permission to erect towers after they had met resistance from local authorities. Jim spoke about the proposed Missouri bill in terms of wording and legal nuances that would make it possible for hams to avoid resistance when erecting towers in Missouri.
As a scientist, I find this bill disturbing since it starts out by misrepresenting the potential for RF energy to cause damage to children. Such wording is inflammatory and needlessly provocative. Perhaps a lawyer or lawmaker would disagree, since the text carefully avoids making any statement that could be construed as fact. Rather, it implies that the possibility exists that RF from a communications tower will be harmful to people over 2000 feet away. It is enough to scare people without actually lying to them.
FCC Preemption
What does the FCC have to say about state laws like this? For several years they have discussed federal preemption of state and local laws that attempt to regulate RF transmitters on the basis of environmental effects of RF emissions. Initially, in 1996 the FCC stated in their Report and Order (96-326) that they did not want to preempt the right of states and localities to ensure health and safety. In Section 332(c)(7)(B)(iv) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress specifically provided for federal preemption of state and local laws that are based on RF Safety and would affect cellular and PCS communications:
The FCC is obliged to support this preemption but stated that it would not extend that to other services. It did, however, leave the door open for FCC preemption should state or local regulation of RF transmitting facilities become sufficiently onerous. A year later, in its Second Memorandum Opinion and Order (97-303), the FCC affirmed its reluctance to preempt such regulations but then stated:
There have been cases where states and localities tried to circumvent the FCC's authority to regulate the RF Safety of its transmitting facilities by requiring excessive evidence that a transmitter did not exceed the applicable exposure limits. Imagine that you filled out the FCC-recommended forms to calculate the exposure to people from your station and found that you were well under the limits. Upon applying for zoning permission to put up your antenna your were told by your local zoning board that you had to convince them of the RF safety of your station by spending thousands of dollars to hire consultants with expensive RF measuring equipment.
The FCC enlisted the help of a committee of state and local regulators, forming the Local and State Government Advisory Committee (LSGAC). The LSGAC worked with the FCC to develop a document to explain the issues involved with RF safety to state and local lawmakers, in the hope that this information would be used to develop more reasonable laws. Their document provides a very good overview of the issues involved in making sure that a transmitting facility is safe to the people around it. A Local Government Official's Guide to Transmitting Antenna RF Emission Safety: Rules, Procedures, and Practical Guidance, is available on the FCC website. In addition, the LSGAC has attempted to help state and local authorities ascertain that an RF transmitting facility indeed complies with the FCC's environmental exposure regulations.
The LSGAC agreed with state and local regulators that they should be able to determine for themselves that a transmitting facility is in compliance with FCC regulated limits. The FCC took this under advisement, but placed a limit on what could be required. It set forth its standard for demonstration of compliance with exposure limits for personal communications facilities in Report and Order 00-408. The FCC feels that it is sufficient for a licensee to use any documentation submitted to it as proof of compliance for local zoning purposes.
Even though this ruling applies specifically to personal communications facilities, the principle should hold for all licensees who are asked to demonstrate that they meet FCC exposure limits. When you fill out your FCC-approved worksheets (such as those included in the ARRL book RF Safety and You) to determine your compliance with exposure regulations, be prepared to submit copies of those documents to local zoning officials if they request proof of compliance.
The FCC expects that educating local and state authorities about RF safety, as provided in the LSGAC guide, will resolve most of the issues that have prevented zoning approval of transmitting facilities. So far, this appears to be the case.
The State of Missouri is legally permitted to pass a law that regulates antenna structures (other than cellular and PCS towers) on the basis of RF-based health and safety concerns. However, if the law should prove to be too restrictive to the construction and operation of RF transmitting facilities, petitions to the FCC can lead to federal preemption of that law.
If I were a lawmaker, I would not like to have one of my laws preempted. It would be like being told that one of my designs couldn't work; it would be professionally embarrassing. It is likely that Missouri bill HB 999 will go through substantial revision, if it clears all the hurdles on the way to being made a law. You can check this bill's progress. Contact addresses for the authors also appear on that site, in case you wish to contact them and offer an opinion.
Editor's note: Greg Lapin, N9GL, started working in the RF safety world after spending many years first studying cardiac function imaging and then brain tumor kinetics. He serves as chairman of the ARRL RF safety Committee and as a member of the IEEE Committee on Man and Radiation. A former professor of Biomedical Engineering and Neurology at Northwestern University, Lapin now works as a consulting professional engineer in the electronics industry. He was first licensed while a teenager in 1969 and continues to be fascinated by virtually all aspects of Amateur Radio. One of his many interests is electronic design, and he is the author of Chapter 8, "Analog Signal Theory and Components" in The ARRL Handbook for Radio Amateurs. His non-ham interests include making things grow in his garden and serving as commissioner of the local children's softball league. At other times--when he is not working or helping his kids with their homework--you might find him with the local emergency services agency, climbing his tower, building a new QRP rig, playing with his APRS setup, responding to QSL cards, going off on a DXpedition, or trying to get that "new one." You can reach him by email at g.lapin@ieee.org.
