CTIA claims SF phone radiation law unconstitutional
Take my emissions figures from my cold, dead hands
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Cellular trade body The CTIA is challenging a San Francisco ordinance that requires radiation labels on every mobile phone sold, claiming that such a rule breaches the US constitution.
The ordinance, passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in June, requires buyers to be informed "at the point of sale" about the radiative properties of different mobile phones. The CTIA reckons that requirement undermines the FCC's (national) rulings and is thus unconstitutional – states can't go around overruling federal bodies.
"San Francisco’s attempt to regulate the sale of wireless handsets improperly intrudes upon the FCC’s exclusive and comprehensive regulation of the safety of wireless handsets."
The FCC lists the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) of different phone models on its own site, and the CTIA (which represents the US cellular industry) points out that many phones include the same information in the manual or accompanying documentation, but putting it at the point of sale will over-emphasise the relevance of an emotive figure. Not to mention that requiring such a thing would be illegal:
"The ordinance is thus not only scientifically unsupported, it violates the Supremacy Clause in Article VI of the United States Constitution and must be stricken."
So... having argued that the ordinance was insensible, and threatened to take it's business out of San Francisco, the industry is now trying a legal challenge to get the ordinance removed.
Which makes quite a lot of sense – those who believe they are being irradiated by their mobile phones aren't going to be convinced otherwise by logic, and the CTIA's annual show isn't that important to the San Francisco economy (the threat was only to relocate within California anyway), but a legal challenge on constitutional grounds is less emotive and it will be interesting to see how much money San Francisco is prepared to pay defending its ideals. ®
COMMENTS
To WInstonCourt
So the levels are much too high, in your opinion.
Well, I think it stands to reason that if they were, then people would be dropping like flies all over the world. Which they aren't.
What makes you think that this radiation can 'specifically' cook meat? I think this just may be that English doesn't seem to be your native language, and that you may have meant 'including' meat?
It doesn't cook food at all. It heats water. If the food has water in it, it gets hot. Anything in a microwave that has water in it gets hot.
However, as far as I know, there isn't a single case of proven harm done to a person by the emmissions from a mobile MAST, let alone a phone, anywhere in the world. Ever. Even in California.
Scientific evidence?
I had no trouble finding the relevant SAR declarations for several phones online - and I seem to remember seeing a hardcopy of this in the documentation supplied with my phone. I guess the phone manufacturers have no problem with supplying the SAR info (AFAIK, they are obliged to provide this) but they may have a problem with placing a sticker on the outside of the box which amounts to some kind of health warning when no causal link has been proven between mobile phone use and harm to users. Given the prevalence of litigation in the USA, the phone manufacturers may also be concerned that the presence of the stickers will be seen as some kind of admission of harm caused by their products and therefore, liability.
You also mention the use of Bluetooth devices but why shouldn't these devices also be subject to the same constraints? Bluetooth operates closer to the frequencies used by microwave ovens than mobile phones. Surely Bluetooth and WLAN devices, microwave ovens and any other RF emitting device should have to be labelled in the same way?
One option for the phone manufacturers would be to refuse to supply phones in SF, forcing residents to buy phones elsewhere (without any extra labels).
Much as I hate to agree ...
... because this whole thing is a bunch of pseudo-scientific codswallop (same frequency as microwave ovens therefore dangerous - I despair, really I do), there is no harm in letting people know these things. People can then choose to ignore it, take it into account based on various factors of their own (someone might want one with a higher output, for instance), or make it the key part of their choice. There is actually no down-side to this.
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