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San Francisco Requires Cell Phone Radiation Warnings
Lord Ender writes "Poor phone reception may soon be a selling point in San Francisco. A city ordinance was just approved which requires those selling phones to indicate the 'specific absorption rate' (SAR) caused by the radio transmitters in the phones. Cell phone industry groups opposed the law. The FCC already requires phones sold in the US to have SAR levels below 1.6 W/kg, though adverse health effects from such levels of radio exposure have never been conclusively demonstrated."
Recently it was reported widely that “airport scanners, power lines, cell phones and microwaves” ain't got nothin' on medical scanning radiation. Now people are asking for tracking systems and calling them a threat.
...
I'm not really worried about cell phones as much as when I roll into my new dentist's, get 18+ x-rays of my entire mouth for their record. Find out I need two inlays on the lower left. Come back in two weeks and get two more xrays so they know where to drill. Come back in two weeks to get the inlays put in only to have them re x-ray the inlays after they were in to make sure they were in properly since they couldn't floss between them. What. the. hell? Can't you use regular light and your eyeballs to set those in there? I mean, I'm glad you did a good job, I just don't know what to do about this malignant jaw tumor now
My work here is dung.
Poor reception means that the phone has to transmit at higher power to reach the cell base station.
WARNING: The Sun is radioactive! Avoid using it to make phone calls. -- San Francisco.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Please educate yourself.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
What about second hand radiation? Maybe they should only call in their own homes!
-Fire
-Stove
-Television
-The sky
Seriously - I didn't get anywhere near that many x-rays when I had my root canal/crown operation a couple of years ago.
I acknowledge we don't know the long term effects of any mobile phone usage because we haven't been using them long enough, but at the same time I feel uneasy. Phone companies would stand to lose so much money and have their industries labeled alongside big tobacco, so I can't help but think they're pouring as much research into studies that "prove" phone radiation is harmless. Even if they couldn't convince people, at least they'd make the water murkier.
I dunno, my opinions on the ethics of big business have hit another all time low, for some reason.
Cheers, ~ Ruben
If everything is labeled "warning" including things that have shaky evidence to support it, eventually warnings become less useful and ignored.
That being said, I really do not see what "information" is being provided.
Just like a bunch of Californian wussies to get all worried about a little bit of cell phone radiation, when we have FREAKING UFO's flying around everywhere.
Did anybody tell them that when the wind blows East to West that dust from the Trinity site settles in the fog?
Put sharp 1 inch spikes on the phone. They will have the added benefit of preventing pigeons from landing on your phone.
... not just a crown. They drill a screw down into your jaw or skull bone, then mount a tooth on it.
I would *definitely* not want to have problems with that, they could take as many X-rays as they want. At 0.005 millisieverts (see parent's link) that's still 1/20th the amount of a chest Xray.
Now off to brush my teeth compulsively for the next hour.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
And semi-coincidently California now has so many warnings on so much stuff that the warnings do get ignored.
CA should just save time and require everyone and everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) within the magical borders of CA to be labeled as being possibly cancerous.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
So, San Francisco passed a law that required a sticker on a common product showing a rating of something most people do not understand or even know about, that has not been shown to have any health consequences, and offers no guidance or explanation. And, it is all to placate some paranoid idiots and will result in ignorant hypochondriacs going bonkers.
This isn't FUD. It is blatant fear mongering and deliberate risk miscommunication.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
its better safe than sorry. Take the oil rig disaster. Had *PROPER* precautions been taken, it wouldn't have happened. Same with that brain cancer you are hoping not to get. It might hit your testicles as well - think about where that iPhone that never stops transmitting data is right now.
Count me in with the "nut jobs" who would rather think in FUTURE tense and could be wrong than thinking only in present tense and thinking the outcome is always going to be "on my side."
Ignorance may be bliss, but its no way to live your life. Hey, I just came up with that - I would say that's a pretty good notable quotable, eh?
Light bulbs and sun light? I mean the photos in both of those have large numbers of photons in the visible range. Those are quite a bit more energetic than microwaves so logically you'd think they'd be more dangerous. (Oh I'm sorry, logic doesn't come into it.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
As soon as you hear the xray machine go on, yell "Owww!"
They love jokes like that!
Over here, the SAR has to be noted with the technical details for at least 10 years now. Not a cellphone less was sold.
bickerdyke
It will kill you by heating and denaturing the proteins in your brain, but it will not give you cancer. Only ionizing radiation has sufficient power to damage DNA.
I always marvel at those people who are concerned about cell phones and cancer...
These are the same people who insit on driving and carrying on a conference call at the same time. I got news for you. There is a high probability that your cell phone will be a direct cause of your death... but it has nothing to do with radiation.
And you pedestrians, don't act so smug. A few weeks ago I saw a walkin' talkin' fool step out in front of a bus without looking (lucky for him, a conscious observer yanked him back from the clutches of death).
Believe me, radiation is the least of your worries...
Actually, you should check out Mexican dentists (and doctors.) Sailboat liveaboards and other adventurers who spend extended periods of time down there swear by them. A good many are reported to have US training, speak English, and your cash expense could be less than your insurance deductible.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I'm curious what the measure of cell phone radiation exposure is in bananas?
From wikipedia:
"""
Many foods are naturally radioactive, and bananas are particularly so, due to the radioactive potassium-40 they contain. The banana equivalent dose is the radiation exposure received by eating a single banana. Radiation leaks from nuclear plants are often measured in extraordinarily small units (the picocurie, a millionth of a millionth of a curie, is typical). By comparing the exposure from these events to a banana equivalent dose, a more realistic assessment of the actual risk can sometimes be obtained.
The average radiologic profile of bananas is 3520 picocuries per kg, or roughly 520 picocuries per 150g banana. The equivalent dose for 365 bananas (one per day for a year) is 3.6 millirems.
"""
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose
What are you talking about? This is the home of quantum metaphysics. Without them we wouldn't have known about the healing power of pyramids and rocks.