This time the law is likely to pass, because everyone supports it, since if they don’t, it proves that they are just a shill for the evil big corporations that want to eat your children.

Via PC Magazine:

San Francisco Gives Cell-Phone Radiation Law Another Try

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has approved a bill that would require a warning at stores that sell cell phones about the possible hazards of cell-phone radiation.

Last June, the City of San Francisco tentatively approved a bill that would have required merchants who sold cell phones within the city of San Francisco to display the “Specific Absorption Rate,” an FCC-mandated specification of radiation, next to the phones. Failure to comply would result in fines of between $100 to $300.

The bill approved this week would amend that bill with new provisions. Interim Mayor Ed Lee must still sign it into law.

In July 2010, however, the CTIA filed suit against the city, arguing that officials had no right to hand down regulations on an issue already addressed by the Federal Communications Commission.

There has been no definitive link that scientists have found linking the radiation emitted by cell phones to cancer. In late May, the World Health Organization classified mobile phones as a possible risk for a specific type of cancer in humans.

….

The new bill would mitigate the 2010 bill by proposing instead that customers would be notified of the dangers of cell-phone radiation, which would represent a strengthening of the law, as it includes an educational component, said Supervisor John Avalos.

“We are amending this ordinance…that would instead of having a rating per make and model of cell phone at point of sale, we would have a sign that merchants would provide in the stores close to the cell phones,” Avalos said. “I would say that cell phone emit radio frequencies and that they would also have to provide at the point of sale — they would have to provide at the point of sale a document sharing — to share with buyers on how to protect themselves from radiofrequency emissions.

“Those measures you can take to protect yourself, include using a headset instead of having the phone next to your ear, or keeping the cell phone in a casing that is less conductive of radiofrequency and there are other measures as well,” Avalos said.

Interestingly it seems the bills sponsor has absolutely no idea how mobile phones work or what RF radiation is. “Conductive” cases are exactly the kind that would block more of the RF energy, but that won’t actually reduce the exposure by the user because the phone will then have to boost its output to compensate for the poorer signal propagation. Actually no case can possibly reduce RF radiation intensity, at least not without impairing the function of the phone and thus defeating the purpose entirely.

Mr. Avalos, please, before you start legislating this, at least consider reading a book about it or maybe even take a course in physics at your local community college.

But since they seem to be hellbent on requiring labels on phones, I’d like to propose one that is totally in line with the current state of scientific understanding and represents the issue to consumers in the most balanced, complete and least confusing manner.

That should pretty well inform consumers, right?

But they are not giving TSA Agents or anyone else cancer, as it has been alleged recently.

Via Time Magazine:

Did Airport Scanners Give Boston TSA Agents Cancer?

Could radiation from full-body scanners be responsible for a “cancer cluster” among airport security workers? That’s what Transportation Security Administration union representatives in Boston have claimed.

Now, the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has obtained documents from the Department of Homeland Security, which EPIC says provide evidence that the government failed to properly test the safety of full-body scanners at airports, and dismissed concerns from airport agents about excessive exposure to the machines’ radiation.

The documents, which include emails, radiation test results and radiation studies, were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by EPIC. The advocacy group says they indicate that Homeland Security “publicly mischaracterized” safety findings by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), by suggesting that NIST had “affirmed the safety” of full body scanners.

But in an email obtained by EPIC, a NIST official stated that the agency had not tested the scanners for safety and does not in fact do product testing. Rather NIST had merely measured the radiation dose from a single machine against the standard of what is considered an acceptable. It had not done the rigorous product testing required to determine safety over time.
…

In the case of the Boston “cluster,” however, too little is yet known to suggest a link: neither EPIC nor the union reps have indicated what types of cancers the security agents in Boston have been diagnosed with. The scanners’ radiation, which typically targets the skin and the muscles right beneath it, would most logically be tied to a common type of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma.

The actual amount of radiation produced by backscatter x-ray systems is very low. While there has been some dispute about the accuracy of the measurements, since they were not independently verified for each and every machine under all possible conditions, even by the most liberal estimates, the maximum dose that a person might get from working near such a machine is on par with that one receives from flying in a commercial airliner. The radiation is also very low energy or “soft” so it does not have much penetrating power at all. It is barely able to penetrate the skin and would not result in much exposure to internal organs.

Even if the dose were ten times higher than the worst case estimates, it would not result in any noticeable increase in cancer in a small group, such as the TSA employees at one airport.

More importantly, these scanners have not been in use for very long at all. The first of these scanners were installed at Logan International Airport in March 2010, barely more than a year ago. Even if a machine had malfunctioned and produced levels of ionizing radiation high enough to produce noticeable increases in cancer, that’s just not enough time for it to show up.  Radiation-induced cancer has an average latency period of ten to twenty years or more.   Of course, this is on average, so not all cancers will take this long.  A few will take more than average and a few will show up sooner.  In a large group, it’s possible that a small portion of radiation-induced cancers could show up as soon as a couple of years and rarely, maybe even less.

But less than a year?   No.  That would be highly unlikely.  In a group as small as a single airport’s TSA workers it would be unlikely for such an incident to happen even once, even if they were exposed to high levels of radiation.    With exposure to low levels of radiation, the likelihood that a significant number of workers would develop cancer as a result in the period of about a year is effectively zero.

It should be noted that we also are not given any information on what kind of cancer the individuals developed, how many developed cancer, what the total size of the group of TSA workers who work near the machine is or what their background might be.   So we can’t actually say whether there is even a real increase in cancer rates at all!   It should be noted that cancer is not an uncommon condition.   More than one third of individuals will suffer from some form of cancer at least once in their life.   It’s the number three cause of death in industrial countries, right behind heart attack and stroke.   These numbers are even higher for certain “high risk” individuals, such as long time smokers or those with a family history of cancer.

Yet a combination of confirmation bias and the fact that people seem to have a need to find a cause to attribute otherwise random disease like cancer to can result in a powerful illusion.  A couple of TSA agents being diagnosed with cancer in the period of one year at a large airport is not really anything unusual, but to those involved, it may seem like it is.

There’s a lot of pressure to say that they do, however. Claiming cell phones cause cancer sells books and magazines. Some dishonest people have made a whole career out of telling these lies. They become media darlings because everyone loves to hate the “big companies” and to talk about how some poor little guy is being kept down by those evil powers that be. Groups make a lot of money too. Especially when the emotion-charged issue of children is dragged into the mix, dishonest charities can grab headlines and donations. Groups that contribute nothing useful to the world are treated as charities while paying their top executives hundreds of thousands of dollars a year or more.

Oh, and by the way, I’m not afraid to name names when it comes to these dishonest people and groups: Lennart Hardell, George Carlo, Devra Davis, The Environmental Health Trust, Bioinitiative, EMF-Health, Microwave News. (there, so sue me. I’d love to see you in court about this)

Thankfully the WHO has been one organization that has been steadfast about the fact that there is no evidence to indicate a relationship between RF radiation and cancer. There are lots of claims, a few very poorly controlled experiments but no evidence, and this is despite some enormous studies and decades of trying.

Unfortunately, however, the WHO has recently made some more ambiguous statements on the issue. Bowing to pressure from those with a financial stake and those stupid enough to believe them, the WHO has now stated that mobile phone radiation is “possibly carcinogenic” – in other words, there’s no absolutely certain empirical evidence that shows beyond any shadow of a doubt that there’s no remote possibility that maybe somehow by some unknown mechanism, radio waves might have once in the history of the universe caused a cell to become cancerous. (They also claim to base this in part on largely discredited studies linking glioma, a certain form of brain cancer to mobile phones.)

Still, this is a bad idea.  It’s a horrible message to send out.  The problem is not that it’s entirely scientifically invalid to say that something is very remotely possible, but how politicians, the media and society take such statements.   It sometimes seems that research scientists don’t fully understand just how badly a statement can and will be butchered and taken out of context.

This non-story has already spawned over one thousand media reports.   Here are a few to provide a taste of just how this plays out:

Los Angeles Times: Experts say cellphones are possibly carcinogenic
Financial Times: WHO signals mobile phone cancer fears
Dallas Morning News: World Health Organization says cellphones might cause brain cancer
The Australian: Risk of brain tumour from mobile phone use is similar to pesticide DDT, petrol exhaust and coffee
Bellfast Telegraph: Brain cancer warning over mobiles
Newsday: Panel sees possible cellphone-cancer link
PC Magazine: WHO Finds Tentative Link Between Cell Phones, Cancer
Seattle Post Intelligencer – Experts: Cell phone use raises risk of cancer

Those are, of course, just a few.

A couple comments about this shameful reporting:
What the hell is a “tentative link?”   Does that mean that they don’t have a shred of evidence but are pretty sure they will at some point?

Also, in case you did not know:  DDT has never been conclusively linked to cancer in humans, though there were some conflicting studies about chronic exposure in prepubescent girls and breast cancer later, the link appears very weak.  There’s not even the slightest evidence that DDT is related to brain cancer.

Coffee has never been linked to brain cancer in any way shape or form, though some studies have found a small risk of increased bladder cancer in very heavy coffee drinkers.   The evidence of this is considered inconclusive, in part because the increase was very small and not found by all studies of coffee and bladder cancer.  There may be other confounding factors at play.

Automobile exhaust may be carcinogenic depending on the circumstances, such as the fuel burned, the exposure levels etc.   There’s little evidence that the combustion byproducts of properly and completely burned gasoline are directly carcinogenic.   Of course, these would be mostly carbon dioxide and water.

Note to the reporter: Please see me during office hours.  We need to talk about whether you should re-take some of your basic classes and whether you might benefit from a special needs tutor.  Clearly you are struggling with the basics.

Can we show this is a crock of bull? Thanks to the inverse square law, we can. In fact, we can do so with just one 620 by 680 pixel diagram.   In this case, we’ll assume that the estimate of 180 meters to the base of the tree is accurate, however it really does not matter that much.   The principle is the same, whether the actual distance is 170 meters, 190 or 200.   The numbers would work out to be slightly different but the fact that one side of the tree does not actually have a significantly higher or lower exposure to the RF energy from the tower does not change.

Note that the frequencies that mobile phone and data systems operate on pass through tree foliage easily without being reflected or shielded to any major extent, so the argument that parts of the tree are shielded by the closer foliage is not valid here.

What, you don’t believe in math?

The study claims to have found evidence that children born to mothers who used mobile phones heavily during pregnancy are more likely to have behavioral problems than those whose mothers did not use mobile phones heavily.

Via CNN:

Do cell phones cause behavioral problems?

Evidence of harm from cell phones continues to emerge: First there was the possible cancer link, and now there’s suggestion that those little hand-held devices may affect children’s behavior.

Children who had exposure to cell phones both in the womb and after birth, up to age 7 had a higher likelihood of behavioral problems than those who had no exposure, researchers said in a new study in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

The behavioral problems include hyperactivity and attention and social issues.

“These are important findings, but we are just at the beginnings of learning about potential effects of cell phones,” said Leeka Kheifets, of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Public Health.

Kheifets and colleagues had previously found similar results in a smaller sample, of 13,000 children from the Danish National Birth Cohort. But she said that analysis needed further scrutiny because the mothers in it had been among the earliest adopters of cell phones, she said.

In this study, the researchers looked at more than 28,000 children. More than 10 percent of children who had prenatal exposure to cell phones had mothers who said they spoke on their cell phones four times a day or more. Nearly 50 percent of mothers said they had a cell phone turned on at all times. Again, these figures are based on self-reporting by the mothers who participated in the study.

They found that, as with the previous study, the more frequently a mother used a cell phone, the greater the risk that her child would have a behavioral problem. This time around, they also ruled out a family history of behavioral problems, as well as the inattention of the mother. Cell phone use and behavior problems were not related to time breast feeding and spent with the child, either, the researchers found.

The association between cell phone exposure is not terribly strong, Kheifets said. Also, the authors do not yet know the mechanism behind the connection between cell phones and behavioral problems. One theory is that cell phone use may lead to excess secretion of the hormone melatonin, which can affect the mother’s metabolism and may influence the development of the fetus’s brain. But this is just a speculation, Kheifets said.

Sorry, I missed the link between phones and cancer (maybe because it does not exist), but the link between mobile phones and media hype is pretty clear cut. This story has exploded in the media.

Some of the headlines:

AFP: Cell phone exposure linked to bad behavior in kids: study
Slate:  Cell Phones Linked to Childhood Missbehavior
The Australian: Mobiles linked to naughty children
WebMD: Cell Phone Use in Pregnancy: Risks for Child?
Reuters Canada: Study links cellphones to child misbehavior
The Sydney Morning Herald: Controversial study finds mobile phones a risk to foetuses
The Daily Mail: Using phone while pregnant ‘can lead to behavioural problems in children’
Time: Study: Could Cell-Phone Use in Pregnancy Affect Kids’ Behavior?
Today Online: No Mobile Use When Pregnant?

The actual study looked at children who reached age seven by the year 2008 and who had mothers who owned cell phones and used them regularly at birth and shortly after. Thus the time period represented is the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, a period of time when mobile phones began to become extremely popular.

Importantly, the study does not appear to have attempted to account for the possible differences in behavior or lifestyle of those who were heavy mobile phone users versus those who were not. Thus the possibility of confounding factors is extremely high.

So what is causing this small but significant increase in behavioral problems? Must be the mobile phone radiation, right? Well, if you’re looking to jump to an unsupported conclusion that will get you some press, that’s probably what you’d conclude.

Let me put forth an alternative hypothesis, which I believe to be perfectly reasonable as an explanation as to why mothers who talk on the phone a lot during pregnancy might have a tendency toward children with behavioral problems:

If a woman spends much of her pregnancy yaking endlessly on the phone (wireless or otherwise), she probably is the kind of person who spends a lot of time yaking endlessly on the phone.   It’s probably not unique to her period of pregnancy – it didn’t start when she became pregnant and it won’t end when she gives birth.

Mothers tend to be the primary care giver to young children, especially during their early infanthood.   A woman who spends a great deal of time on the phone is not going to be providing the same level of direct social interaction and bonding with a baby as one who is less prone to spending a great deal of time on the phone.   If the constant use of the phone is job-related it could indicate that the woman in question has a very demanding career or takes her job very seriously, which could easily result in diminished time and effort spent in interacting with the child.

Not only that, but anyone who has been with a person who is continually yaking on the phone knows that it can be very very very annoying.   It’s unlikely that the sheer annoying of it is confined to adults.  Young children want a lot of attention and having their mother gabbing into a cell phone is not going to be the kind of thing that makes a baby happy.  An irritated, annoyed child is always going to have more behavioral problems.

Then there’s the question of whether constant observing of phone conversations could interfere with a child’s social development.   It’s well established that young children pick up a great deal from the social enviornment they are raised in, observing how their parents, caregivers and peers interact to learn how to relate to others.   Children who are born into dysfunctional families are prone to a variety of social and psychological problems.    It’s possible that a child who constantly observes one-sided conversations with a person who is not visible could end up with developmental problems as a result.

I should add, I have not yet been able to track down the text of the actual study itself, only the news reports.

Via PC World:

Wi-Fi Makes Trees Sick, Study Says

Radiation from Wi-Fi networks is harmful to trees, causing significant variations in growth, as well as bleeding and fissures in the bark, according to a recent study in the Netherlands.Radiation from Wi-Fi networks is harmful to trees, causing significant variations in growth, as well as bleeding and fissures in the bark, according to a recent study in the Netherlands.

The Department of Redundancy Department would like to inform the author that they have used a phrase twice and also that the same phrase was used two times.

All deciduous trees in the Western world are affected, according to the study by Wageningen University. The city of Alphen aan den Rijn ordered the study five years ago after officials found unexplained abnormalities on trees that couldn’t be ascribed to a virus or bacterial infection.

Additional testing found the disease to occur throughout the Western world. In the Netherlands, about 70 percent of all trees in urban areas show the same symptoms, compared with only 10 percent five years ago. Trees in densely forested areas are hardly affected.

Hmm.. well, that seems like quite a conclusion they have there, but then we have this…

Besides the electromagnetic fields created by mobile-phone networks and wireless LANs, ultrafine particles emitted by cars and trucks may also be to blame. These particles are so small they are able to enter the organisms.

Excuse me for asking, but is it the fine particles emitted by cars and trucks or the mobile phone radiation or both? If it actually is particulate pollution from vehicles then I can’t exactly say I’m shocked. It’s well known that the particulates emitted by vehicles and other fossil fuel uses can be harmful to plant life. This is hardly a new revelation.

And finally…

The study exposed 20 ash trees to various radiation sources for a period of three months. Trees placed closest to the Wi-Fi radio demonstrated a “lead-like shine” on their leaves that was caused by the dying of the upper and lower epidermis of the leaves. This would eventually result in the death of parts of the leaves. The study also found that Wi-Fi radiation could inhibit the growth of corn cobs.

The researchers urged that further studies were needed to confirm the current results and determine long-term effects of wireless radiation on trees.

20 ash trees? How exactly do we get from that to all the all deciduous trees in the Western world? And for that matter, why the Western world? Are the trees in Japan all immune to this? Also, does Australia count? In other words, are we talking about the geographic western world or the cultural one?

And what is a “lead like shine”? Is that the only symptom? Hell, lead isn’t even really all that shiny.

I think I might see some unfounded conclusions here.

Via Tom’s Hardware:

Huntkey PC Chasis Offers Radiation Protection

Last week Huntkey Enterprise Group revealed its new SHIELD chassis slated for a global launch. The big deal behind its upcoming PC case is that it supposedly protects the end-user against radiation generated by PC components. This means the chassis could possibly reduce acne, balding and infertility–three side effects associated with PC-generated radiation.

According to the company, the chassis adopts full-body radiation protection and a TAC 2.0 design. The rack is made of premium conductive metal while a large steel mesh front panel ensures excellent ventilation, dust and radiation protection. It also has an independent USB rack wrapped with metal, EMI shrapnel embedded in the rear PCI slot for better chassis shielding, ventilation diameters smaller than 5.5-mm for an optimal balance between radiation protection and ventilation, metal panels shielding the HDD, and more

I just hope that that comment about balding, acne and infertility was tongue-in-cheek, because while many computer enthusiasts may suffer from such problems, it has nothing to do with radiation.

On the bright side, this is one of the few “radiation sheidling” products that I’ve seen that actually might have some legitimate uses. Assuming that it does indeed block a RF emissions from a computer, it could be handy in some situations where RF noise is a problem. Desktop computers are full of oscillators, pulsing clocks and cycling processors, which do create a fair amount of RF noise. This can sometimes cause some problems.

Over my many years of working with computers and other electronics, I’ve observed many occasions where a PC caused unwanted interference to other nearby devices. This may include increased radio noise or reduced television reception. On occasion it may even result in noticeable noise on nearby analog audio and video equipment, especially if the cables that connect them are long and poorly shielded. It’s possible that this noise could even result in some stations not being receivable on a TV tuner if they are on the edge of the reception area and close to the point of having too poor a signal to noise ratio. On occasion, the noise generated by a computer can also be a problem for computing tasks such as analog video and audio capture, where the capture device is poorly isolated from the noise produced by the system itself.

In these circumstances, this case might be just the ticket. Anyone who is planning on operating their computer in a setting with sensitive test equipment or who plans on using it in tandem with radio monitoring or amateur radio equipment should also consider RF isolation as an important factor – if not with a “radiation protection” case, then by some other means. Of course, filtered power supplies and a good grounding system are also critical.

However, don’t expect this kind of case to actually improve the health or safety aspects of computing. That said, it may offer relief to sufferers of “electrohypersensitivty,” but only if they’re convinced that the case is actually blocking bad radiation. Then again, a regular computer case and a trumped-up story about how it blocks radiation would work just as well, as is the case with any psychosomatic condition.

It’s not the amount of radiation, necessarily. It’s the pulsed nature of the signal. It’s like: You can snap a rubber band, and it’s fine; but if you keep snapping it over and over again, it will break. Smart phones are constantly looking for signals, and it’s that sudden stopping and starting that I’m concerned about, not the total amount.

This has come up time and time again. It’s a claim being made by a number of alarmists who want to make it seem as if newer 3G and 4G applications and technologies are more dangerous than the phones and devices that have been around since the 1980’s and earlier. The fact of the matter is that there is ZERO evidence that “Pulsed” emissions are any worse than continuous RF emissions. NONE. There’s also no theoretical reason why they would be. Your body can’t demodulate the signals – it only responds to the potential dialetric heating that microwave radiation can produce.

But there’s another point worth making. Even if pulsed RF emissions were more dangerous (which they’re not) this is not what 3G technologies and new high speed data applications do. They don’t pulse. No, not at all. Some older 2G systems based on a system called TDMA do, but those are the ones we’ve had for more than two decades.

Frequency Division Multiple Access:
Arguably not a “true multiple access” method, this is the simplest and the one used by nearly all analog systems and some early digital ones.   Each transmitter is assigned a frequency.  Data or voice is carried on that frequency continuously.

No other transmitter in the area can use the same frequency until it becomes free.   Other transmitters are assigned a different frequency.   Usually a band of several designated channels exists.  Therefore, if you are talking to someone using 900.05 mhz, someone else may be talking on 900.10 mhz and someone else on 900.15 mhz etc.

Time Division Multiple Access:
Each transmitter is assigned a frequency, as in FDMA, however it is also assigned a “time slot” which is normally a period of a few milliseconds.   It broadcasts data only during this brief period of time.  Other transmitters can broadcast on the same frequency without interference because they are assigned a desperate time slot.

Since the rate of TDMA broadcast slots is very fast and because data is compressed into these transmission slots, there is no noticeable  interruption to voice.  The audio is buffered to create continuous speech.

TDMA is the standard for most second generation mobile systems such as GSM.  It has been in use since the 1970’s and has been employed in mobile phone networks since the 1980’s.

Code Division Multiple Access:

Compared to TDMA and FDMA, CDMA is much much more complex.  CDMA is considered a “spread spectrum” technology and uses RF channels that are generally larger than FDMA or TDMA systems. The transmitter broadcasts a continuous signal that distributes data across the channels bandwidth.
However, despite using a wide RF channel, CDMA can make efficient usage of spectrum by having multiple transmitters use this same spectrum simultaneously. Each signal is “encoded” differently in a manner that allows the receiver to receive the individual signal while ignoring the data from other signals

Without going into too much detail of how that actually works, each transmitted signal contains the data that is being transmitted riding on a carrier wave that is modulated using a pseudo-random code.    The receiver must also have the pseudo-random stream to demodulate the signal.  (This is done internally using a complex algorithm shared by transmitter and receiver.)

Despite being more complex, CDMA has numerous advantages.  It tends to be less prone to interference from RF noise, it’s extremely secure and it makes excellent use of spectrum.   Most newer CDMA-based systems include additional features to allow for compensation of Doppler shifts and to improve error correction, dynamic spectrum allocation and to address what is known as the “Near-far problem.”

Systems that use FDMA:

• Nearly all analog transmission systems
• First generation mobile phones
• Many two-way radio systems
• Broadcasting
• Simple point to point transmissiters like baby monitors, cordless phones etc.

Systems that use TDMA:

• GSM, the most popular mobile standard in the world, in use since 1987
• Most other 2G mobile phone standards, some of which are now depreciated or used only regionally
• “2.5 G” data standards like GPRS and EDGE
• Industry standard multiplexed voice and data such as wireless frame relay
• Many digital 2-way radio systems like those used by police, fire, government, railroad and business radio

Systems that use variations of  CDMA:

• IS-95, sometimes refered to simply as “CDMA,” a 2G phone and data standard used primarily in North America
• All “3G” systems including UMTS (W-CDMA), CDMA2000, HSDPA and others
• All “4G” systems including WiMax
• Wifi
• Bluetooth
• Other advanced wireless services such as satellite services and other high speed data systems

Many of the systems that use TDMA are still alive and in use.   Even 3G phones may utilize the 2G TDMA systems for voice and rely on 3G systems for high speed data or in areas where 3G service is not yet available.   However, the point is that the newer systems are not in any way “pulsed.”  Not that this matters anyway.

Via the Washington Post:

FCC changes position on cell phone radiation and safety guidelines

The Federal Communications Commission has updated its views on cellphone safety in a move criticized by a public interest group for downplaying the potential risks that radio frequencies could pose to users.

The agency, without issuing a press release, made the update on its Web site, saying that its guidelines on radio frequency limits were confusing and did not necessarily show whether one phone is safer than another.

Specifically, the FCC revamped its Web entry on cell phone health guidelines, removing a suggestion that users concerned about the radiation emitted from cellphones could choose devices with lower SAR values. SAR stands for “specific absorption rate,” which is a measure of the rate of radio-frequency energy absorbed by the body.

“The FCC requires that cell phone manufacturers conduct their SAR testing to include the most severe, worst-case (and highest power) operating conditions for all the frequency bands used in the USA for that cell phone,” the agency wrote on its consumer and governmental affairs section.

The issue of cellphone health risks has captured the attention of several jurisdictions, most notably San Francisco, which adopted a “Right to Know” ordinance that requires cell phone companies to label phones with radiation levels. San Francisco is scheduled to hold public hearings Thursday on the ordinance. A similar measure is also being considered by nearby Burlingame, Calif.

Public interest groups, scientists and some lawmakers have called for an overhaul of the way regulators assess the safety of cellphones. They say that testing of phones’ specific absorption rates should be conducted by regulators, and they cautioned that the current testing approach does not account for the fastest growing group of users: youth.

All of this has put the cellphone industry trade group, CTIA, on the defensive. It filed a lawsuit against San Francisco seeking to block the ordinance, said it would not longer consider the city for future trade shows and ramped up a lobbying campaign against similar measures elsewhere.

Scientists say the higher the SAR, the greater the potential danger to humans. To be sure, scientists do not agree on the effects of cellphone use on humans. Some studies show that radio frequencies absorbed by brain tissue have led to cell mutations and tumors – with the greatest threat posed to children. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and state lawmakers in Maine and California have called for a sweeping federal review of its oversight of cell phone safety.

The Environmental Working Group says the FCC’s changes mimic a message pushed by CTIA. The FCC said that measuring safety by SAR ratings can be misleading and cause confusion. A phone has different SAR levels depending on how far the phone is located from a cell tower base station and how closely it is being held to the body.

Great. The Environmental Working Group. How do these groups manage to even get the credibility to be quoted in the mainstream press? Oh that’s right. It’s because everyone pays attention when you say you want to protect the children and take on those big bad corporations.

I should mention, just for the sake of full disclosure, that I have no loyalty to the CTIA and I certainly don’t get paid anything by them or any mobile phone company. I don’t like the FCC a whole lot either, primarily because they’ve done a lousy job of spectrum management and adoption of transmission standards.

That said, the FCC was right to remove this statement, but really should never have put it there in the first place. Placing such language in an official statement implies that the government is endorsing the claim that the emissions from mobile phones are a danger to human health and that this is somehow related to the SAR level at rates bellow the maximum allowed by standards.

This is simply not the case, and despite the claims made in this article and elsewhere there is no solid evidence that there is any relationship between exposure to nonionizing radiation and chronic health problems. While extremely high absorption can cause RF burns, the current regulations for maximum SAR and maximum transmitting power assure that such concerns are nonexistent with mobile phones.

I would like to know who these “scientists” are who claim that there is a danger, although I suspect I already know.

For those who may not know, Dennis Kucinich is a US congressman who is known for being a bit on the wacky side. He attempted a run for US President in the last election, with one of his pledges being to “# Halt all Biochemical Aerial Spraying of Pesticides and other toxins.” He also called for banning all genetically modified organisms and has claimed to have seen a UFO. (not just an object in the sky he could not identify but something far less sane)

If you are new to this site and feel like commenting to argue that mobile phones indeed do cause cancer or just to argue that I have not provided good information to indicate that they do not, please use the search function on the main page or just look in the “Inverse Square Law” category.  You will find this has been covered in great detail before.