If you squint at 1968, you can already see the outlines of today’s fight. A wave of “miracle” electronics had swept into homes, hospitals, and factories; injuries and scandals followed; the science was patchy and often late; and Washington kept finding itself in reaction mode. The Radiation Control for Health and Safety Act of 1968—Public Law 90-602—was Congress’s attempt to stop playing catch-up and build a standing, future-proof health program for all electronic product radiation, ionizing and non-ionizing alike.
The bill’s parents (and the cast around it)
The measure began life in the House as H.R. 10790, introduced June 13, 1967, in the 90th Congress. The prime mover was Rep. Paul G. Rogers (D-FL)—the “Mr. Health” of the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee—working closely with colleagues on the Public Health and Welfare Subcommittee. In the Senate, companion work proceeded under the Commerce Committee; Sen. E. L. “Bob” Bartlett (D-AK) is recorded introducing a Senate version (S. 2067) and helping shepherd hearings that drew the era’s top radiation scientists and federal health officials. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill on October 18, 1968 after the House passed it 382-0 and the Senate cleared it by voice vote. WikipediaCongress.gov+1
That roster matters, because it shows where the momentum came from: health-first legislators (Rogers/Bartlett), a pro-consumer White House, and a bench of career radiation experts—from the Surgeon General’s shop and the Bureau (later Center) of Radiological Health—who were tired of whack-a-mole responses to each new product scare. Senate and House hearings featured testimony from federal officials (e.g., Surgeon General William H. Stewart) and scientific heavyweights like Dr. Karl Z. Morgan of Oak Ridge and Lauriston S. Taylor of the National Council on Radiation Protection—names that show how squarely this was framed as a public-health standard-setting project, not a one-off fix. GovInfoGoogle Books
The proximate spark: a string of real-world shocks
By the mid-1960s, there was already a record of harm from electronic products:
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Consumer x-ray debacles (e.g., shoe-store fluoroscopes) and medical over-exposures had left a paper trail of burns, cataracts, and increased cancer risk in clinicians and patients.
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Then came the headline-grabber: color television sets leaking x-rays from high-voltage circuits. In 1967, General Electric agreed to modify 90,000 sets to address potential x-radiation—front-page evidence that voluntary self-policing was not enough.
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Microwave ovens and therapeutic diathermy needed consistent leakage standards; lasers (invented 1960) were already injuring eyes; radar/communications microwaves had a documented history of thermal injuries in workers.
When you thread those episodes together, the case for a permanent federal framework writes itself: set performance standards, do continuous research, and keep the rules current as the technology evolves. Wikipedia
Why the law is so broad (and still bites today)
Congress didn’t just target x-rays. It wrote a statute that covers “any ionizing or non-ionizing electromagnetic…radiation” emitted by electronic products, and it ordered the health department to “establish and carry out an electronic product radiation control program” and to “plan, conduct, coordinate, and support research.” That deliberate “shall” language is why the law still matters now that wireless RF has become ambient and cradle-to-grave. It wasn’t drafted for one device class or one decade—it was drafted to future-proof public health. Congress.govLegal Information Institute
How it moved through Congress
The House bill (H.R. 10790) was introduced in 1967, heard in the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, and sailed through the House on March 20, 1968. The Senate Commerce Committee then took it up, reported it out in July, and passed it on October 3, 1968 (in lieu of its own S. 2067). Conference adjustments followed, and President Johnson signed it October 18, 1968, making it Public Law 90-602, now codified primarily at 21 U.S.C. §§ 360hh–360ss (after later recodification into the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act). Congress.gov+1
The through-line: stop the amnesia
Read the legislative history and you see the pattern lawmakers were trying to break: new electronics → new exposures → late science → patchwork fixes. Their answer was not to run a single study or publish a single standard; it was to build an engine—a permanent program that keeps asking the next question as products and deployments change. That’s why the statute hard-codes both standards and research. It’s also why, when federally led RF research is paused today, critics call it more than a policy failure—they call it a breach of the original deal Congress made with the public in 1968.