BlackBerry Bold Tops Radiation Ranking

geek4 writes with this excerpt from eWeek Europe: "Data from the Environmental Working Group places the BlackBerry Bold 9700 as the mobile device with the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation among popular smartphones. Research In Motion's BlackBerry Bold 9700 scores the highest among popular smartphones for exposing users to the highest legal levels of cell phone radiation, according to the latest 2010 Environmental Working Group ranking. Following the Bold 9700 are the Motorola Droid, the LG Chocolate and Google's HTC Nexus One. The rankings still put the phones well within federal guidelines and rules."

Comments

Oh good

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps this means it'll get signal where I live?

lol, where's the iPhone?

[0xdeadbeef]

You poor fanboys, your precious toy didn't even make the list. Weak is the signal, weak as the user.

Re:lol, where's the iPhone?

[cyfer2000]

Based on your id "0xdeadbeef (28836)" and the fact that you didn't RTFA, you must be old here.

Re:lol, where's the iPhone?

[DJRumpy]

Here's the URL with the full list of phones (yes, including the iPhone if you're curious): http://www.ewg.org/cellphoneradiation/Get-a-Safer-Phone?allavailable=1

Re:lol, where's the iPhone?

[vadim_t]

I agree, my point is, theres all this raw HATE for the iPhone, much of it from bitter people who for whatever reason cannot have an iPhone, and "the coverage sucks" is a very common complaint I hear.

It's not as much hate as annoyance over all this horrible hype it constantly gets. Yes, we get it, you like it. But couldn't you just shut up about it? It's not new, I know it exist so no need to tell me, and there are more interesting things to talk about.

Re:Brand-name Power

[sakdoctor]

Why do you hate Americium?

Radiation Blues

[handy_vandal]

It's flamebait for the "cell phones cause cancer" crowd: the word "radiation" is a dead giveaway.

not a big deal

[sammykrupa]

Someone compiled a list, then sorted it numerically by some quantifiable characteristic.

Something came in at #1. what a surprise. this doesn't mean #1 is that that good or great or bad or harmful, as noted in the summary itself
"The rankings still put the phones well within federal guidelines and rules."

stupid

no comprende

[Eil]

The rankings still put the phones well within federal guidelines and rules.

Then why is it a story?

Re:no comprende

[Anonymous Coward]

The rankings still put the phones well within federal guidelines and rules.

Then why is it a story?

Because we know from the meatpacking, pharmaceutical, and genetically modified crop industries just how much those lobbyist-paid federal regulators have (hah) public safety at heart. So we want to see the numbers and decide for ourselves.

Re:no comprende

[natehoy]

Three reasons come to mind:

1. Even though it's within limits, there are people who intentionally look for units that emit the least RF possible, so that if it does turn out there was a risk they are minimizing their risk. It's at least more rational than sleeping in a Faraday cage and suing neighbors for WiFi radiation or wearing tinfoil underwear. If you need a cell phone but have some concerns about RF exposure, picking the cell phone that emits the lowest levels of RF just seems like a rational middle ground.

2. Some will intentionally seek out phones with high RF because more RF means the radio has more juice or the antenna is more efficient, which means it'll get "more bars in more places". I know my Blackberry Curve 8310 gets awesome signal in a lot of places that iPhones don't, so I'm sure that also means it's putting out more RF and/or has a more efficient antenna.

3. If it's GSM, one of the side effects is the annoying clicky-buzzing sound every nonshielded electronic device within ten yards emits. Less RF means less of that interference.

This link would have been nice in the article...

[CliffH]

http://www.ewg.org/cellphone-radiation -- This is the actual report site. Have a look through.

Radiation yes, but non-ionizing radiation folks...

[Audrey23]

Folks please don't get wound up about 'radiation' from a wireless device, remember that it is only 'heating' radiation, not ionizing radiation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ionizing_radiation. All it is going to do is warm your skin near where the phone is, or very slow cook for you microwave oven enthusiasts... Ionizing radiation like gamma rays are quite another story and will cause DNA damage, but are a wholly different type of 'radiation'. You will get more damage from standing out in the sun every day then you will from the weak signal that is emitted from your mobile. Now the fact that most mobile phones these days do not have a very efficient antenna is quite the reason that so many of them have such bad SAR values, if people could just stand having a little 'duckie' antenna sticking out of the top of the phone then we would have more efficient emission of the signal and a better SAR value. But that is not sexy and so we won't see any more antenna's like we did when cellphones first came out and so instead the phone body itself is the antenna and a good portion of the emitted signal is absorbed by the hand and head, its just the way it works... The best thing is to educate yourself and make your own decisions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health

Re:Brand-name Power

[Fluffeh]

I hope this doesn't turn into a boron and predictable thread of chemistry puns.

A post like that is like a big Neon sign just asking for it to happen though.

Re:Brand-name Power

[willworkforbeer]

I hope this doesn't turn into a boron and predictable thread of chemistry puns.

A post like that is like a big Neon sign just asking for it to happen though.

I zinc you guys must beryllium, like, so bored this evening.

Manganese puns get any lamer?

Re:So?

[zero_out]

In PA (USA) the legal limit for driving while intoxicated was 1.0. Now it's 0.8. Legal limits change when new facts are discovered. Do you remember asbestos? Lead paint? What about cigarettes? Oh, wait, cigarettes are still legal, even though their deadly effects are well documented.

Note: I do not believe that cell phones cause cancer, but just because something is legal doesn't mean it's safe.

Re:Brand-name Power

[Arthur Grumbine]

The apparent contradiction in your statement presents an interesting antimony. Personally I think all the good puns argon, but I've lead the way before, and I will again, although I'm not nearly as good at this as my friend Nick. When he gets going nickel bark them out like he was Rin-Tin-Tin. I do feel like I have one on the tip of my tungsten... Copernicium.

Actually. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Oh boy.

I can't count the number of times I've run across this particular piece of rationalization. Probably because, on the surface, it makes an emotional kind of sense.

Yes, non-ionizing radiation doesn't burn anything. But that's not the problem. Nobody is claiming it IS the problem. The only people who are convinced that anybody is claiming this as the problem simply aren't paying attention. Sorry. I don't mean to come down hard on you, but the EM spectrum is useful in electronics because it vibrates, not because it burns things. Cells, when vibrated on the EM spectrum, react. It's that simple. There is a ton of information available to anybody who wants to know what is really going on here.

Basically, it comes down to this:

Cells respond, evidently by their very nature, to coherent electromagnetic signals in the 1 to 500Hz range. They do all kinds of weird things depending on the pulse rate and power and how the Earth's magnetic field interacts with the signal. Cells have been observed to reproduce many times faster or slower than normal when exposed to different radio frequencies. -Or to open up their membrane walls allowing foreign particles to enter which would not normally be able to pass. Very low power signals can do this and a great deal more.

There are a number of observed mechanics, one of which is called, "Cyclotronic Resonance". Here's an example. . .

As I am sure you know, everything has a natural sympathetic frequency. This is understood. Cyclotronic Resonance is a type of resonance which occurs when both a radio frequency and a steady magnetic field are present. For instance, when you produce a 60Hz frequency, (as in wall-socket current), and combine it with a steady magnetic field of 0.2 Gauss, (as supplied by the Earth's magnetic field), the Lithium Ion resonates and becomes excited. It also moves on a spiral vector. The result is that any trace quantities of Lithium which happen to be in the blood stream of an organism will cease to sit still and will instead energize and move, enabling them to penetrate the blood brain barrier with greater frequency than normal. It was noted that rats exposed to these conditions exhibited behavior consistent with a medicinal dose of lithium drug as compared to the control rats. It should be noted that Lithium is the active ingredient in many anti-depressants.

That's just one small example. There are many others. But you're NOT going to read about them in the main stream press. You just won't. I'd explain why but that's a whole other post. (Typically, people who believe in the whole idea that "non-ionizing" means "Safe" also tend to have trouble believing that the media can be anything less than honest. Or that corruption exists. Or that any group might have a vested interest in mass-medicating a population. Just as one example.)

But there is some excellent information out there. -A good book on this is, "Cross Currents" by Robert O. Becker.

Scary?

Of course it is.

Good luck.

-FL

Re:Actually. . .

[QuoteMstr]

Oh boy, yourself.

Your post displays all the hallmarks of pseudoscience: elevated language to bamboozle the layman, accusations of censorship from the media, bald assertion of "common sense" causal connections, and a complete lack of rigorous data. A simple search-and-replace on your post could turn it into a defense of intelligent design, magnetic healing, or homeopathy: the thought process is the same. You adopt all the trappings of science without the rigor that makes the exercise worthwhile. You're no better than an alchemist.

You're not being censored by the media. Get over yourself. The mainstream media is more than happy to report on harmful substances when there's a modicum of evidence attached: see asbestos, tobacco, trans-fats, etc. That stuff sells like hotcakes! If it were discovered that cell phones were carcinogenic the media frenzy would make the Toyota debacle look like a slow news day.

There's simply no credible evidence in support of your worldview. You're the one making the outrageous claim that electromagnetic waves we've lived with for over a hundred years are actually harmful despite all the research to the contrary. Therefore, the burden falls on you to provide evidence, and your shameless unfounded assertions are seriously wanting.

Oh, and before you link to some minor study that purports to find a weak effect: your evidence needs to be strong enough to outweigh the "null hypothesis" of there being no connection. Perform enough studies and you'll get a few that show a positive result just by chance. Any study that purports to show a connection between cell phone use and cancer needs to:

• Rigorously control for other risks. (Oh, look! Cell phones are correlated with cancer in our study! Never mind that all our cell phone users worked in PCB plants and our control group was a class of toddlers.)
• Have a large enough sample size that its statistical power is significant. If cell phones are harmful, clearly the effect is weak and gradual. A very large study is required to reliably detect weak and gradual effects.
• Be performed by a credible, disinterested party like a university or government lab. Would you trust a Philip Morris study on the effects of smoking, a Trojan study on the reliability of condoms, or a PETA study on the health effects of red meat? I thought not.
• Be confirmed by an independent organization

Show me one of those and I might concede you're onto something. It wouldn't be the first time in history of science that a fringe group happened to be right. But the vast majority of these fringe groups are utterly incompetent if not downright fraudulent. That's why we ask for real evidence. If we were cro-magnons, I'm sure you'd be spreading FUD about the evil spirits that would be awakened if we kept using "fire" to cook our food.

Provide strong evidence. Put up or shut up.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a fact for you: .08 isn't the magic number at which people are intoxicated. Facts didn't drop that number, lobbying by MADD and other groups dropped that number.