The State Comptroller's Report for 2014 deals, among other topics, with non-ionizing radiation in educational institutions
On 29.12.2014 Israel's State Comptroller, Justice (Ret.) Joseph Haim Shapira, published a report on the audit conducted on local authorities in 2014. Among other subjects, the report dealt with the way local authorities and private bodies operating educational institutions related to the issue of non-ionizing radiation in these institutions.
A government resolution placed direct responsibility for the safety of schoolchildren in official educational institutions on the local authorities. On the basis of this resolution, the Israeli Ministry of Education, through its Director General's circulars, defined the guidelines for the authorities regarding environmental safety in educational institutions. The State Comptroller investigated how the local authorities and private bodies dealt with non-ionizing radiation in these institutions. In this context, the State Comptroller pointed out that in 2012 the Ministry of Education had prepared a guidance list that detailed the tests that the local authorities and private bodies were to carry out at all educational institutions. One paragraph in the list dealt specifically with measuring radiation from cellular antennas, transformers and electric fields in the vicinity of educational institutions. However, the Israeli Ministry of Education had not instructed the local authorities and private bodies, through its Director General's circulars, to carry out measurement of radiation from sources of electricity at educational institutions.
The report also mentioned that the Israeli Ministry of Education had not carried out the recommendation to map out the educational institutions where classrooms were located close to electricity boards, as required by the Ministry's document "Adaptation of the educational system to the 21st Century; integration of communications equipment and computers in schools – health and environmental consequences."
In addition, the State Comptroller pointed out that threshold values for exposure to sources of non-ionizing radiation had not yet been defined in the regulations, as required by the Non-Ionizing Radiation Law.