The Superior Court of the District of Columbia today threw out six brain-cancer lawsuits against the mobile-phone industry, potentially removing a legal cloud that could have cost wireless carriers and manufacturers billions of dollars.
Judge Cheryl Long was unequivocal in her ruling, says RCR News.
“This is not a close question. This court has no discretion to allow the claims to proceed any further,” stated Long in the 69-page decision.
The decision to dismiss the suits was based on jurisdictional grounds, with Judge Cheryl Long agreeing with the wireless industry and the FCC that the complaints were pre-empted by federal law. The six suits have bounced between Superior Court and federal court since being filed several years ago. Today’s ruling was the biggest for the wireless industry since a 2002 federal court decision that tossed out an $800 million brain-cancer lawsuit against wireless companies because of inadequate scientific evidence.
The American Cancer Society has found no clear association between any electronic consumer products and cancer. The FCC requires wireless phones to have radiations levels no greater than 1.6 watts per kilogram.
Nonetheless, health concerns have been raised about cellular antenna masts.
- The Alaska Supreme Court affirmed a state ruling awarding an AT&T Inc. equipment installer total disability and medical benefits as a result of health problems tied to exposure to radio frequency radiation levels deemed to be slightly above those set by the Federal Communications Commission.
- The Tottenham area of London is considering the suspension of all wireless technology in its schools. The BBC’s Panorama investigations found radio frequency radiation levels worrisome
- Lakehead University in Ontario, banned wireless Internet on his campus. Lakehead’s decision affects 7,400 students, 1,600 professors and other staff at the university in the Northern Ontario city.
- Last year, RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, closed off the top two floors of its 17-story business school for a time because five employees working on its upper floors had been diagnosed with brain tumors in a single month, and seven since 1999. Cell phone towers had been placed on the building’s roof a decade earlier and, although there was no proven link between them and the tumors, university officials were taking no chances.
- San Francisco, home to more than 2,400 cell-phone antennas, has started a debate over plans to add 2,200 more WiFi nodes for a city-wide Earthlink/Google Wi-Fi network. On July 31, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors considered an appeal by the San Francisco Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union that the network proposal be put through an environmental review — a step that up to now has not been required for such telecommunications projects.
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