“Best” and “Worst” Radiation Level Cell Phones Ranked
September 25th, 2009
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Recently a story has been making the rounds that the “Environmental Working Group” has released a guide to which cell phones are the “best” and “worst” in terms of RF emissions. Of course the “best” would be those with the lowest and the “worst” would be those with the highest. Never mind that there’s no evidence that the emissions are actually dangerous in any way shape or form, apparently it’s still important to some to limit their exposure, just in case. Of course, if it turns out that low exposure is actually dangerous, well then they’re screwed, aren’t they?
The reason that groups like the Environmental Working Group come out with these kind of lists and reports is simply to get media coverage. The emissions by cell phones are no secret, in the United States, the FCC does a very comprehensive series of tests on all cell phones on the market, including the SAR to a human tissue stimulant. These reports are a matter of public record. Outside the US, the respective agencies of other countries do similar tests and issue similar reports as well as assuring compliance with the (extremely conservative) exposure standards.
It seems to have worked, because the story has made its way into the mainstream press.
Via ABC News (The American one, not the Australian one):
The Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, thinks you should know. To make things easy, this week the group released a list ranking more than 1,000 cell phones according to the radiation levels they emit.
Questions regarding health risks associated with cell phone radiation have persisted for years. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has stated that scientific evidence does not indicate negative health outcomes from exposure to radio frequency energy from cell phones.
But the Environmental Working Group disagrees.
“We would like to be able to say that cell phones are safe,” Olga Naidenko, EWG senior scientist and lead author of the study, said in a statement. “But we can’t. The most recent science, while not conclusive, raises serious issues about the cancer risk of cell phone use that must be addressed through further research. In the meantime, consumers can take steps to reduce exposure.”
The watchdog group created the list based on technical data provided by the manufacturers. The full list can be viewed here.
But check below to see if your phone made the list of the 10 best phones — or the 10 worst.
Despite this list,when I go to get a new cell phone, I’ll be considering the features it has, the price, the carriers that support it and other factors that impact usability and economy. I will NOT be considering the radiation exposure. There are a few things I’d like to point out before anyone goes nuts about looking for a “low radiation” phone.
- There is no evidence that there is any reason to be concerned over low level RF exposure
- All mobile phones conform to the standards for human exposure – standards which are generally less than 50 times lower than the level at which any biological effects are observed
- The current generation of mobile phones generally produce signifficantly less RF energy than those from a few years ago. The fact that all networks are fully digital means far less power is needed than back in the late 1990’s, when analog service still composed much of the infrastructure. Advancements in modulation, DSP’s and improvements in service coverage have also reduced the power requirements. Modern phones do not always operate at the maximum power level, as previous generations did, rather they communicate with the network and adjust their power to the minimum transmission power needed for adequate reception. This is not done for health reasons, but rather to reduce battery drain and the possibility of signal cross-talk to other cells, which can increase the signal to noise ratio.
- The SAR is always considerably lower than that of devices like five-watt CB radios, high power UHF/VHF two way radios and other such devices, which have been used by many for decades with no ill effects.
- A “low radiation” cell phone is very likely to simply have lower maximum RF transmission power than other phones. This could effect the quality of service, especially in areas where service coverage is less than optimal.
A quick glance at the Environmental Working Group’s website should make it clear what kind of group this is. While they do have some information on legitimate enviornmental safety concerns like asbestos and PCB’s, it is also clear that the group’s primary focus is on the various sensational and overblown subjects like bisphenol A or nuclear waste. It even has a section on the dangers of water fluoridation.
Despite getting the attention of the media, this “report” should not get anyone’s attention. It’s a pretty transparent ploy for publicity from one of the numerous scaremongering groups that likes to mascaraed as a legitimate source of scientific information. Unfortunately, these groups do all too often manage to grab some cheap advertising from the news media.
This entry was posted on Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Misc, inverse square, media. 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.
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September 25th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
As long as nothing tries to mess with my precious bodily fluids….
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September 25th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
As far as I’m concerned, feature #1 is always reception. If I have problems making calls, then I don’t care what else the phone does. I don’t have a home phone anymore, so this isn’t optional. This is hard to find out, but I can usually get a good idea from going to http://www.phonescoop.com and checking out the user reviews. You can’t get much information on brand new models, but I’d rather get used phones off ebay and avoid a new contract anyway.
It always boggles my mind that people will buy phones or any other electronics at the store without researching them first.
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September 25th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Note that again, they state the “risk of exposure to..” without even really providing evidence that said exposure has any negative concequences. This is not unlike the story about “more exposure to radiation” from medical imaging. There is a “risk of greater radiation exposure…” Oh heavens! A risk of more radiation? And why is this bad? Oh, it’s probably not going to cause anything? So why is it being reported?
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September 25th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
For every person who visits Depleted Cranium and learns some science, just how many find sites like EWG and are fed lies?
—-
Kurt said:
Fluoridated ice cream. Yum
I just watched that movie, it was great!
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September 25th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
Yeoz said:
There is this site and there are others and all together they hopefully will convince at least a few. The problem is that good skeptical reporting on this is just not the kind of thing the news media eats up and it doesn’t create the kind of headlines that sell. The other thing is that groups like the EWG and many others have the financial motives and means to do this full time and actually have a fully staffed PR department and that kind of thing.
They operate on donations and sensational news brings them in. The other thing is that I smell some very smelly lawyers might be on EWG. Many of the issues that they are all over are the kind of thing that make money in civil courts. I know some law firms have done things like donate money to groups that trump up claims over various substances that someone could get sued over. You’ve also got these bastards like Andrew Wakefield who both basks in the spotlight from his idiot fans and rolls in the money by doing interviews and writing books. Some of that may be afoot in these too.
That’s the problem too. Dishonesty can get you a lot of cash and that means that it becomes an illegitimate commercial operation completely staffed and financed.
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September 26th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
So what’s kept me from simply compiling a list of manufacturer specs and alerting the media? Oh, yeah, the ability to actually interpret scientific data and understand the physical world. Darn…
The idiots tend to receive a disproportionate amount of focus because their claims are the most outlandish.
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September 26th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Kevin Brennan said:
That and the popular media is under tremendous to gather eyeballs in a very competitive environment, as a consequence we are seeing the same effect as the period from from 1895 to about 1898 when Pulitzer and Hearst were fighting for share in the newspaper market, and both were sensationalizing the news in order to drive up circulation. The yellow journalism circulation war.
Basically the same thing is happening now.
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September 26th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Kevin Brennan said:
Nah. That doesn’t stop anyone. I’m sure plenty of the assclowns who push this stuff is know it’s BS. Knowledge and understanding of this stuff is not the problem. All you need is a willingness to be totally dishonest about it and you can put out this stuff endlessly
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September 27th, 2009 at 1:37 am
DV82XL said:
Perhaps, but that kind of battle to the bottom can’t go on forever. In the late 1800’s it got worse and worse until everyone finally stopped reading and even the worst of them realized that the whole lot of them were yellow and couldn’t be trusted. Once you go far enough, people are so desensitized that they shock journalism stops getting their attention.
The first time around there was a huge crash of news outlets once they pushed it too hard and the whole industry lost every shred of respect it may have had. It wasn’t until about World War I that they started to regain some level of respect. The big ones mostly bounced back, but they took losses and the little ones turned over.
Racing to the bottom is not a sustainable buisiness plan. Anyone can make this crap up and you compete for shock value which starts to lose its return as people begin to not notice it. Before you know it, you’re not considered credible anymore and your shock news has lost it’s potency. Then you’re competing with the garbage out there and nobody cares. It all goes to hell.
There are plenty of examples of some media company selling out for the latest trend and making money on it for a short while before it comes back to bite them in the ass when they realize its empty.
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September 27th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Russ said:
I agree with you completely, the situation in popular public media cannot go on, but it can last long enough to do real damage in some areas and this is the case in many of subject we discuss on these pages. Non-ionizing radiation from cellphones is one of those issues.
Fights over radio tower sites, municipalities prevented from offering public wifi and so on, where services are being denied to the public because of the hysterical reactions of the few are being fueled by irresponsible reporting simply to drive traffic to some media outlet that has draped itself in the banner of public awareness, is happening with depressing frequency.
You are right, it will pass, but not fast enough.
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September 25th, 2011 at 7:31 am
Great post,very enjoyable read,and I agree with most of what you say,and by the way,here is a great info about making money with posting ads on cell phones
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September 25th, 2011 at 8:02 am
What is it with all these spammers not even bothering to provide a link to whatever it is they’re trying to sell?
Are spammers just stupid? OK, I already know the answer to that one.
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