San Francisco Passes Cellphone Radiation Law

[Marcus Yam]

The hip city looks to educate its consumers on SAR.

San Francisco Passes Cellphone Radiation Law : Read more

 

[dfusco]

I'm surprised the residents of SF don't need signs warning them that water is wet.

 

[sirmorluk]

"overwhelming consensus of scientific belief" WTF does this mean?
Oh ambiguity I salute thee.

In other news SF pols determine that fecal coliforms exist in drinking water and water molecules must now be nano tagged to display this fact to protect the ignorant masses.

 

[dfusco]

I'm surprised the residents of SF don't need signs warning them that water is wet.

 

[yzfr1guy]

My underwear should come with a label warning of potential bacon strips!!

 

[elbert]

I would base my any cell phone for my family uses mostly on its radiation level. With any luck this will force cell phone makers to compete to be the lower radiation phones.

 

[Transmaniacon]

The cell phone radiation is pretty negligible though, everyone absorbs radiation from the environment everyday, and are bodies can tolerate it fine. Even when we have x-rays, which expose us to levels hundreds of times higher, we are alright (though you have to limit your annual x-rays). Cell phone SAR just falls into that general everyday environmental category. Sure I would support lowering SAR levels on newer phones, but its not something we need to panic over.

 

[insider3]

Seriously?

 

[MeanSquare]

We're getting into a dangerous mode in "science" of late. Consensus of belief is replacing serious peer review and re-testing. A lot of regulations come from ideas that sound scientific, but essentially decrypt into unsubstantiated fear. Note the cell-phone use stickers at gas stations when there is no data to show that cell-phone use has triggered any accident.

 

[CBRworm]

I would be inclined to think that a phone with a higher SAR may have a higher power transmitter or higher gain antenna improving call quality. I might buy the higher SAR phone given the choice.

 

[killerclick]

Nanny state wants to put bureaucrats and regulations between me and my cancer! I want my country back!

 

[brendano257]

[citation][nom]Rab1d-BDGR[/nom]Putting warnings on everything, without any convincing evidence is a bad idea. It cheapens the warnings that ARE important. Once there are warnings about both doing and not doing every activity and using every product and eating every foodstuff - how is anyone going to decide which of these warnings actually matter?[/citation]

Yes. Also, as mentioned in the article, as soon as you start labeling something with radiation, the general public will buy the lower rated one without any base of knowledge. Currently the radiation index is a useless number. It neither designates a specific amount of harm done to a cell or mass of cells, or truly has any bearing on what the phone does. Might as well label exactly what colors of light (infrared, UV, etc.) come out of a box of Cheerios. It's useless.

 

[jellico]

People have been using cell-phones at an exponentially increasing rate for over two decades. In all that time, not a single confirmed case of any sort of adverse health effects that can be directly attributable to cell phone use. We're talking about hundreds of millions of people and trillions of hours of cell phone use with no established adverse effects. That is pretty much the most comprehensive safety analysis that we could ever hope to have. I think San Francisco needs to stop taking themselves so serious (the FCC too, for that matter).

 

[TwoDigital]

I'm constantly amazed that people (without a SINGLE evidential study) will blame a 1.5watt cell phone for things like brain cancer, or lupis, or whatever... has it ever occurred to anyone that if you are going to blame electromagnetic radiation for being sick that there are (depending on where you live) maybe a DOZEN or more broadcast towers transmitting kilowatts (1000s) or megawatts (1,000,000s) of electromagnetic radiation that they are walking around in every minute of their lives... If we can blame electromagnetic waves we should have ALL died 100 years ago.

 

[extremepcs]

I'm sure there are studies that show smoking has no negative side effects either...

 

[eyemaster]

Conclusive evidence for cel phones is the same as it was 30 years ago with cigarettes. In 20 years, we'll wonder wth we were thinking, doubting the health hazzards they pose.

 

[tokenz]

[citation][nom]elbert[/nom]I would base my any cell phone for my family uses mostly on its radiation level. With any luck this will force cell phone makers to compete to be the lower radiation phones.[/citation]

I hope not. I need the reception. If you want lower radiation use a home phone.

 

[gpace]

They should also post signs on the average radiation absorbed by each person at each street corner in San Francisco.

 

[Pyroflea]

There's absolutely no conclusive evidence that suggests that the amount of radiation phones emit is harmful. Every study at this point in time has been inconclusive.

 

[tokenz]

[citation][nom]extremepcs[/nom]I'm sure there are studies that show smoking has no negative side effects either...[/citation]

I am sure there are. Did you know the oldest woman ever smoked until she was 95? The problem with those studies are people who smoke are dying every day from lung cancer. I dont see a huge spike in brain cancer over the 20 years we have been using cell phones.