San Francisco considers displaying phone radiation levels next to price tag
By Ross Miller 
posted December 24th 2009 2:49AM
posted December 24th 2009 2:49AM
posted December 24th 2009 2:49AM
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What makes California so crazy? Is there something in the water supply?
@feffrey You need to read your Engadget more my friend! Maine are doing the same thing.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/20/maine-mulling-cancer-warning-labels-on-cellphones-manufacturers/
In all seriousness, it wouldn't surprise me if this ended up being widespread. I've thought for a long time that people just assume mobile phones are harmless - well they used to think that about cigarettes. (Ok, cigarettes are a lot more harmful, but still.)
@feffrey
I blame all that damn smug.
@PaulMdx
Oh god I just walked outside into all the radiowaves and non-ionising radiation and tumors just appeared all over my body help!
@daytripper
Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks :-)
@PaulMdx Cigarettes were mainly harmless when they first appeared(better said, tobacco was harmless). It's the radioactive fertilizers they use that makes cigarettes so bad.
Ok, that was a bit off topic.
On the other hand, I bet obesity does a lot more victims than cell phone radiation, so they'd be better of if they supervised more carefully the crap they sell at fast food restaurants.
@PaulMdx, even for cigarettes one cannot be sure, at least when it comes to second hand smoking, but to consider low-grade non-ionizing radiation harmful is plain insane. That's your tax dollars funding FUD crap for you...
@feffrey:
Who says California is crazy? Maybe they're on to something. Though it's never been linked (as far as we know...) that cell phone radiation causes tumors and cancer, look around you. More people have cancer and tumors than ever before. Why?
Sure there are many reasons, but we've never had as many wireless devices surrounding us as we do now. Any way you can limit the amount of exposure you get is good. Think about the amount of time you spend on your phone. You're always holding your phone in the same spot on your head. We all agree you are exposed to radiation, so that radiation is constantly going to the same area of your brain. How can we seriously tell ourselves that exposing the same area to radiation, though be it small, can't have devestating effects over the course of time? Are we that stupid?
Even bluetooth headsets expose the same area of the brain to radiation. Wi-Fi networks are ubiquitous, there's no way to avoid their radiation. Cordless phones, cell phone towers video game controllers, etc etc. There's too much radiation around us and it's showing up in the form of increased cancers and tumors.
Who cares if they display the radiation levels next to phones? Ignore them if you want to, but let people who care see what they want to know and let them make their decision based on output levels. If this causes manufacturers to develop devices with lower outputs, well then thats because thats what people have decided they want through their purchasing power. If people keep buying phones with higher outputs, manufacturers are not going to drive to develop the lowest output phone. They're going to follow the money.
@Jordan
Nobody is saying that the radiation dangers aren't there, but California tends to blow things out of proportion when it come to things that cause cancer.
Radiation levels have been posted next top phones in France and Europe for a few years now, and nothing bad came of it, but that's Europe and this is America. Posting radiation levels next to cell phones would be about the same as that threat level thing you see on TV every blue moon, cause more fear and speculation than good.
Besides, CITA has been posing reports of cell phone radiation levels for a few years now as well, so if people were REALLY concerned they can just go online and look it up
Not saying any of this is a bad Idea, but I just see this causing more harm than good. Phone manufacturers would be better off just lowering the radiation output of their products than posing a sticker beside it that says how fast it can give you cancer.
@Jordan
I don't think it's fair to assume that cell phones can do harm to us when we're not sure what they really can do. Sure they release radiation, but like many people have said, it's non-ionizing. That means it doesn't even have enough energy to move an electron from another atom - let alone change one of the nucleotide base pairs in our DNA.
Don't forget that there's other causes to cancer too - genes and chemicals, among others. It's highly unlikely that cell phones really have anything to do with them.
That said, I suppose putting radiation labels next to the phone's price really isn't a huge deal... but who knows, it might open the floodgates for other (more drastic) legislation.
@Jordan yo jordan, you can also so a cancer increase corrilation to the:
Decreasing number of pirates
Rises in the ant population
Migration of Killer Bees into the northern Americas
Years since the death of jesus
or...more likely, the ever increasing life expectancy and population of humans
a correlation proves absolutely nothing. Until they can prove that cell phones cause cancer (which they haven't...they have proven high levels of radiation can cause cancer, but nothing in the level that your cell phone puts out)
its the same thing with nutra sweet, if you ate something like 2000% of a serving in one dose...ya might cause cancer....but nothing in the level that people acutally consume it at
California is a bunch of crazy idiots.
@feffrey I remember when I had my Nvidia 7800 delivered to me, it had a warning from the state of california saying that I could get cancer from the graphics card. Seems like they're doing the same thing with the iPhone.
The FCC says that cellphones are harmless? I guess we've got nothing to worry about then!
No definitive research exists that proves conclusively that cellphones pose a threat to our health! OMG, I guess we're totally OK then, and nobody should even consider such a ridiculous thing to be a possibility!
Come on, Engadget; even if your statement were true, haven't you ever heard the expression "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"? Besides that, there IS research being conducted, and the research DOES indicate that there is something to be concerned about. And even if it didn't, is it so hard to imagine that there's a lot more money to invest in proving them safe than there is to invest in proving them unsafe?
Common sense, people....
@feffrey
What water?
@SirNoDroin:
Right, a moron would make the argument you just made.
Let's see, take something such as radiation from cell phones and try to link it to the increase of cancer, or, do as you are suggesting and take non-logical items (such as the decrease of pirates) and say they too could be linked to cancers.
Radiation causes cancer and tumors. We know this. You are obviously one to try and ignore facts. I'm not saying cell phone radiation causes cancers, as I don't know myself, but logically speaking - why wouldn't it?
@Jordan
"Radiation causes cancer and tumors. We know this."
Radiation is also used to treat cancer and treat tumors. Not all radiation is the same. The heat coming from a bonfire is a form of radiation.
A 30 year study in Scandinavia has found no link to brain tumors and cell phone use. As studies go, this one is incredibly large and covered the time from beginning of commercial use of cell phones, through the boom in the 90's up to todays market saturation.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5B25K020091204
Unfortunately even this study will not convince those in political office who legislate on emotion and not facts, which puts cellphone manufacturers in the unfortunate position of trying to prove a negative.
@LC:
I'm not saying I believe cell phones are dangerous. I hope they're not, but I'm not going to put them under the "completely safe" category because of one research study. I don't have links, but more studies are coming out recently that are showing that cell phones possibly ARE dangerous.
My question to that study you posted would be that they have been studying since the beginning of cell phones. Meaning, they have studied forms of cellular networks we no longer use (aka, analog, TDMA, etc). Are there differences between the amount and type of radiation between an "analog" and "digital" cell phone? I don't know myself, but that's the first thing I would think of when looking at that.
@feffrey I smoke weed and that's all lol cigarettes are NASTY! Anyways.... I never put cellphone in my front pant pockets, I always put them in my jacket or the back pockets cause I (and hopefully all men) want my penis to be healthy and not get some radioactive shit ha ha
@LC
Hey Doctor LC, check your facts before you start spouting off garbage.
The radiation used to help kill Cancer......can actually cause another form of Cancer..........yea
This will undoubtedly spark a race to the bottom as cellphone companies try to reduce their signal output strength. This means crappier connections, slower data rates, and dropped calls.
Yay, San Francisco.
@JS
and people think that AT&T sucks now!
@daytripper I blame the earthquake. Poor bastards still haven't recovered from it
@JS, on the other hand, it could force them to improve their antennas and radios (in phones and towers both) so that they have better signal using the same amount of power (or equal signal using less power), thus allowing them do drop the power and save some battery. Of course they've already been evolving in this direction for many years: the FCC max for cell phones is 3 watts, but most current phone radios now use less than 500 milliwatts.
@JS, the phones may start radiating less, but the cell tower signals will become stronger to make up for it. You'll get irradiated either way.
France is doing the same thing for years ...
I always choose my cell by the lowest DAS.
@EricMRS
What is DAS? As far as i know FCC & other wireless regulation body use SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) which represent RF energy that absorbed by human measured in watt per kilogram.
@Ahmed Alzayani
sorry french for SAR
good for them!... im so happy for them...
This could turn out to be really useful: If you need a phone with a long range, for instance for rural use, you pick the one with the highest radiation levels.
The cancer risk has not been proven, however cell phone radiation does increase the brain's craving for fart apps.
Dude this phone has a SAR level of 1.6 watts per kilogram!!! don't buy it or you will die.
Most people don't even understand what SAR levels is.
@Ahmed Alzayani
Most people have enough common sense to not care.
man, i guess at&t needs to put out a new ad.
@Saja
Want cancer? Got to VZW: there's a map for that!
AT&T, fewer bars in more places. Keeping you safe and disconnected.
@derX If your phone can't connect, one of the things it might do is increase its output power to see if it can reach a tower. So, not connecting is worse than being closer to a tower and connecting at a low power level.
How about dealing with the SF homeless problem instead? When I was there 2 years ago I was really shocked at the number of homeless. Turns out SF has an unusually high homeless rate. Higher than NYC, Boston, Chicago, Philly, LA. But yeah... possible theoretical health problems are much more important.
@(Unverified) its because its warm.
More information is never a bad thing
I refuse to buy a cellphone unless it can cook a full grown frozen turkey in 30 seconds
@Einlander
*sighs* I see someone's into last year's tech and it's about to be next year so that's like...*converts to tech years* like, the invention of the wheel's still in R&D-old.
@Einlander
The question is can it also cook stuffing?
we don't really know for sure what the radiation can do to humans, people who care will take look at those numbers, i think this will not have any influence on their sales. In-fact many use phones for data rather voice to get any brain tumors..........
@coolthug, yes we do. Maybe you don't know, but physicists and geneticists do, and that's a difference between an educated man and FUD-prone drone right there... Non-ionizing radiation can do shit to your cells, at least their genetic part, so no cancer there possible. NONE! Zilch! Nada! Non-ionizing radiation can do other harms, but not at the power levels that cell phones transmit. People who `care` and think they are smarter than people who spent 10-20 years researching that exact field are probably the ones that believe that aliens are after them and for them there is only one cure - tin foil hat!
i thought it was safe!
http://www.londonsf.com/2009/12/toronto-it-is-official-cellphones-dont.html
All legislation should also have a liberal non-sense rating too.
@josebr
I totally agree.
@josebr
AMEN to that!
that explains steve jobs's health
@rohitgaba Now I know why he carries the big water bottle everywhere he goes...
This is a 2-step process for San Francisco:
1st - Radiation labels on every new phone purchased
2nd - Radiation suits and crowbars with every new phone purchased
Thanks San Fran. Looking forward to gravity guns in the near future.