Have You Seen the Safety Warning Hidden Inside Your Cellphone?
March 18, 2019
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
A little-known warning from the manufacturer hidden within your cellphone manual advises you to keep the device at a certain distance from your body to ensure you don’t exceed federal safety limits for radiofrequency (RF) exposure
Depending on the manufacturer, you need to keep your cellphone at least 5 to 15 millimeters away from your head and body at all times to avoid exceeding the safety limit for RF exposure
SAR is a measure of how much RF energy your body will absorb from the device when held at a specific distance from your body (ranging from 5 to 15 mm, depending on the manufacturer). It’s important to realize that the SAR value is not an indication of how safe your phone is
SAR testing, which is modeled on a very large male head, was devised before cellphone usage became commonplace among toddlers and young children, whose skulls allow for far greater RF energy penetration
In this special edition of CBC Marketplace, originally aired March 2017, journalist Wendy Mesley investigates the safety of cellphones, focusing on a little-known warning from the manufacturer hidden within your cellphone manual that advises you to keep the device at a certain distance from your body to ensure you don’t exceed the federal safety limit for radiofrequency (RF) exposure.
What’s more, while the safe use information is provided by all cellphone manufacturers, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who has actually been able to find the message on their phone, without detailed instructions on where to locate it.
What the Manufacturer’s Warning Says
While the safe use warning may differ slightly from one phone to the next, the basics remain the same. Mesley reads the information from her iPhone:
“To reduce exposure to RF energy, use a hands-free option, such as speakerphone … Carry iPhone at least 5 millimeters [mm] away from your body to ensure exposure levels remain at or below the as tested levels.”
According to the report, “81 percent of Canadians have never seen the message in their phone or manual about carrying their phone 5 to 15 mm away from their body.” What’s more, few really understand what it all means. Is it dangerous to have the phone touching your body? Mesley sets out to discover what the warning means for consumers.
The Berkeley Controversy
Mesley visits Berkeley, California, where the city council passed a cellphone “Right to Know” ordinance,1 requiring cellphone retailers to put up signage informing customers that when the phone is on may result in RF exposure that exceeds federal safety guidelines. The ordinance was initially proposed in 2010 and passed in 2015.
In response, the wireless industry (CTIA) sued Berkeley, claiming the ordinance violates free speech rights by forcing retailers to share this information. Considering the information in question is hidden in the manual of every cellphone sold, and is required by federal law, this legal wrangling sure makes it appear as though the manufacturers have hidden the warning on purpose, and really do not want consumers to find or know about it.
Berkeley mayor Jesse Arreguin believes the lawsuit was launched to prevent other areas from following suit. If Berkeley can require cellphone retailers to post warnings, before you know it, the safety message might be required to be posted in every store across the nation.
What You Need to Know About Your Phone’s SAR Value
As noted by Mesley, whether your phone should be kept 5, 10 or 15 mm away from your body in order to prevent RF exposure exceeding federal safety limits has to do with how the phone was tested. In the film she brings three newly purchased cellphones to RF Exposure Lab in San Marcos, California, one of several labs across the U.S. that conducts specific absorption rate (SAR) testing for cellphones.
SAR is a measure of how much RF energy your body will absorb from the device when held at a specific distance from your body (ranging from 5 to 15 mm, depending on the manufacturer). It’s important to realize that the SAR value is not an indication of overall safety. As explained by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC):2
“Many people mistakenly assume that using a cellphone with a lower reported SAR value necessarily decreases a user’s exposure to RF emissions, or is somehow ‘safer’ than using a cellphone with a high SAR value.
While SAR values are an important tool in judging the maximum possible exposure to RF energy from a particular model of cellphone, a single SAR value does not provide sufficient information about the amount of RF exposure under typical usage conditions to reliably compare individual cellphone models.
Rather, the SAR values collected by the FCC are intended only to ensure that the cellphone does not exceed the FCC’s maximum permissible exposure levels even when operating in conditions which result in the device’s highest possible — but not its typical — RF energy absorption for a user.”
Why SAR Ratings Are Terribly Flawed
In a nutshell, the phone is tested to assess how much RF energy is emitted when used under the worst of conditions. “We’re transmitting as if you were as far away from a base station as you can get and still make a call. This is the worst case it could ever get to be for a cellphone,” the lab technician explains.
The testing itself was in fact devised long before cellphone usage became commonplace among toddlers and young children, whose skulls allow for far greater RF energy penetration. With the phone emitting at maximum power, a sensor is then used to measure the depth to which the RF energy is able to penetrate into the dummy head.
All the SAR rating seeks to measure is the short-term thermal effect of the radiation on your body, defined in terms of how much power is absorbed (watts) per unit of tissue (kilogram).
Different types of tissue, such as bone, brain, muscle and blood, all have differing levels of density and conductivity, which also affect the absorption rate. What this means is that a SAR rating is highly dependent on which part of your body is exposed to the radiation.
In the U.S. and Canada, the SAR limit for mobile devices used by the public is 1.6 W/kg per 1 gram of head tissue. There are several major problems with using SAR as our safety guideline.
For starters, the anthropomorphic mannequin (SAM) used to measure SAR is modeled after attributes of the heads of the top 10 percent of military recruits in 1989 — in other words, a 6-foot, 2-inch-tall, 220-pound male, which is larger than 97 percent of the American population. This means anyone smaller than SAM is more vulnerable to radiation penetration, especially children.
According to Om P. Gandhi, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Utah:3
“RF exposure to a head smaller than SAM will absorb a relatively higher SAR. The SAR for a 10-year-old is up to 153 percent higher than the SAR for the SAM model. When electrical properties are considered, a child’s head’s absorption can be over two times greater, and absorption of the skull’s bone marrow can be 10 times greater than adults.”
Secondly, the FCC uses SAM to determine safe levels of ionizing radiation, not noniodizing radiation. Because nonionizing forms of EMF have so much less energy than ionizing radiation, it had long been believed that nonionizing electromagnetic fields were harmless to humans and other biological systems. However, as discussed below, science has shown nonionizing radiation can indeed cause physiological damage.
What’s more, the SAR of the radiation emitted by cellphones is only measured when the phone is actually on and in use, not when it’s sitting idle in your pocket (when it is still communicating with nearby cellphone towers and/or seeking the nearest Wi-Fi signal). Lastly, SAR standards haven’t been updated since 1996, despite the fact the cellphone technology has changed dramatically since then.
Government Research Confirms Safety Concerns
Mesley visits Devra Davis, Ph.D., who first became aware of the dangers of RF from cellphones and began speaking out about it in 2007. Since then, the scientific literature has doubled in size, and Davis is now more convinced of the dangers than ever.
Among the more damning studies are two government-funded animal studies4 that reveal GSM and CDMA radiation has carcinogenic potential. The finalized report5 of these two studies — conducted by the National Toxicology Program (NTP), an interagency research program under the auspices of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences — was released November 1, 2018.
While the preliminary report released in February 2018 significantly downplayed the findings,6subsequent peer review upgraded the findings of risk. The NTP rates cancer risk based on four categories of evidence: “clear evidence” (highest), “some evidence,” “equivocal evidence,” and “no evidence” (lowest). According to the NTPs final report, the two studies, done on mice and rats of both sexes, found:7
- Clear evidence for heart tumors (malignant schwannomas) in male rats. These types of tumors started developing around week 70, and are very similar to acoustic neuromas found in humans, a benign type of tumor that previous studies have linked to cellphone use.
- Some evidence of brain tumors (malignant gliomas) in male rats. Glial cell hyperplasias — indicative of precancerous lesions — began developing around week 58.
- Some evidence of adrenal gland tumors in male rats, both benign and malignant tumors and/or complex combined pheochromocytoma.
- Equivocal or unclear evidence of tumors in female rats and mice of both genders.
The studies also found evidence of DNA damage and damage to heart tissue in exposed male and female rats, but not mice, as well as prostate, liver and pancreatic tumors in both rats and mice.
While the NTP insists the exposure — nine hours a day for two years, which is the lifetime of a rodent — is far more extensive than that of heavy cellphone users, I would strongly disagree, seeing how many, especially the younger generation, have their cellphones turned on and near their body 24/7. Many are literally sleeping with their phone beneath their pillow.
What’s more, cellphones are not the sole source of RF. Tablets, computers, smart TVs, wireless baby monitors and smart meters, just to name a few, are also sources of similarly harmful radiation.
From Mercola.com, here.