San Francisco Regulates Phone Radiation Level Reporting
San Francisco, California, USA is known for many things. They have the Golden Gate Bridge, street trolleys, and play host to many of America’s big technology companies. Now, you can add the first US city to require that cell phone manufacturers publicly display the radiation outputs on their phones to that list.
On Wednesday, the San Francisco city board of supervisors voted 10-1 on a new law that makes cell phone makers post in stores the phone’s specific absorption rate (SAR), a measure of the amount of radio waves absorbed by the user’s body while on the cell phone.
Though it’s known that humans do absorb some radiation from using cell phones, scientists are still unsure if there is enough radiation to be harmful enough to cause health concerns, such as cancer. Some scientists believe they’ve produced studies that show a link, some believe they’ve disproved that link.
While the makers of the new San Francisco law would likely say that they’re not mandating that phones are made and sold below a certain radiation level, and therefore are just informing consumers, others have a different take.
CITA, the wireless association, says that: “Rather than inform, the ordinance will potentially mislead consumers with point-of-sale requirements suggesting that some phones are ‘safer’ than others, based on radio frequency emissions.” Fair point.
OUR TAKE
Far be it for us to say definitively if cell phone radiation is dangerous or not — scientists much more qualified than us are working on that as we speak. But without a solid answer that the radiation does cause health concerns, it seems silly to take such large precautions against certain phones.
Indeed, without full information, it’s hard for consumers to tell what SAR measures are, or what they really mean. In this case, it just seems like they’ve added another useless number into a cell phone buying process with too many of those in the first place. Now, these radiation level readings will be one more step between a buyer and finding the exact phone that is right for them.
At SE Telecom, we’re in the business of matching phones and systems to people and businesses. The more that gets in the way of providing great personal service to our customers, the worse.
This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 1:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
