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Cell Phone Group Sues San Francisco Over Radiation Law
crimeandpunishment writes "The wireless industry wants to put San Francisco's cell phone radiation law on hold. An industry trade group filed a lawsuit Friday trying to stop the law, which requires cell phone stores to display how much radio energy each phone emits. The group says the law, which is the first of its kind in the country, supersedes the authority of the Federal Communications Commission, and will mislead consumers into thinking one phone is safer than another."
At some point you stop and realize that some of these people are out after a power trip and have no interest the public welfare. I consider myself pretty pro-consumer, usually support class actions and that kind of thing, but I look at this and have to ask 'what science is behind this?'
Seriously, I want these cell phone fearing Luddites to fail in a public way, to be exposed to the world for the scam artists that they are. Why? Because Luddites like these make normal pro-consumer people look like nut-cases by association. Just like Greenpeace has done more environmental harm than any company in history with their self righteous and reckless actions.
Makes me wish the judge could pass the following sentence in court "Luddites be gone, back to your cave and never to see civilization again"
Given that everything causes cancer in the state of California, it's natural that they are required to do this. I'm glad I live in a state where not everything causes cancer.
They are trying to say the phones have to have a label about how much energy they radiate? What, are the stores supposed to have some magical ability to integrate over all time including the future the amount of POWER the phone puts out?
OR, can the phone sellers say the phone emits zero energy, arguing that at the time the sticker was applied, the phone was off and thus integrating over the time to apply the sticker the phone emitted no RF.
And are they defining the bandwidth over which this is being reported, or do they expect the sellers to compute blackbody radiation at some standard temperature.
I'd like to see somebody set up the demo that I saw once at the Very Large Array, where they had a sensitive receiver hooked up to an antenna, measuring the amount of 400MHz your body put out as blackbody radiation - can you imagine the sorts of morons that get excited about this stuff freaking out when they see they themselves are "radioactive"!
Folks, if RF scares you - DON'T USE A CELLPHONE!
www.eFax.com are spammers
Then demand that the sentence "...levels of radiation indicated do not necessarily mean one phone is safer than the other" be placed somewhere in the shop.
I usually see something similar on TV where some statement to the effect that "the opinions expressed during the program are not necessarily the opinions of the broadcaster" feature prominently after each commercial break.
I was at the Home Depot today and saw you can buy a device which emits TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY WATTS of ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION! Oooga boooga! The radiation is gonna git ya!
Link to the monstrosity in question: Home Depot Death Ray
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Where someone tries to explain the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation and specific absorption rate to the city council. Probably a lot like trying to explain the internets in my phone to my 88 year old grandmother.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Geiger Counter app... measures cumulative REM, reminds you to switch ears to minimize overexposure of one ear, etc... it can pay for itself with built-in advertisement for treatment clinics...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
A law requiring all cellphones to have a warning label:
"use of this device while driving a motor vehicle is dangerous, and against the law in most states"
Or something, since cellphones have killed more people that way than by the radiation they emit.
There are only *corporate* rights (and by extension, those of the shareholders).
Move along now, nothing to see here.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
This is not a regulation that puts a limit or changes the market in any way, it just requires disclosure of the energy levels of telephones, and there isn't any reason a society cannot require disclosure.
That monster emits "High Energy Photons". (Ok, higher energy photons than any cell phone.) Ban it Ban it Ban 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.
There is no regulation that puts any limit on the energy level of the cell phones, it is just a disclosure requirement. All the "pro-market" folks always talk about how information makes markets more efficient, and here is a requirment that only requires one thing: disclosure. IF you are against this, you are against democratic process, and efficient markets. BTW, the science right now is somewhat equivocal. Certain is there is any health risk to using cell phones it is rather small, but who are to to decide what information people should have? Let them decide, and act accordingly. The attitude of witholding this information really is the same as those who advocate a 'nanny-state'--we know better then you, and we will decide what you need to know. Your attitude is very paternalistic and anti-freedom.
In the world of radios most people want as high a transmit power as they can get, to increase their range. Many consumers "know" that bigger numbers are better (watts of audio, megapixels of image, gigabytes of memory). Maybe these labels will start a new rush to show higher numbers on the phones. Of course the actual power output is regulated by the FCC.
Do we really have to keep beating this product liability drum? Product liability lawyers have been beating this drum for years because the cell phone industry is such a cash cow. There is absolutely no danger from cell phones. None at all. The idiots who think cell phones can ignite fuel vapors at a gas station are the same idiots who think cell phones can cause cancer - at least they want it to be true sooooo badly so they can sue everyone in sight and make a killer living at it.
Sounds as if this might have a good correlation with transmitter power (yeah, yeah, assuming similar antennas and distance to skin etc). In that case, wouldn't there be some benefit to choosing a phone with a *higher* number, with the idea that the one with the lower number probably uses less transmit power (and could potentially drop more calls in marginal areas)?
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
i'm eager to hear hipsters arguing over who has fewer bars.
do not read this line twice.
I would have no problem putting the power output rating on the phone. I would then tweak the phones to crank up the power output to the highest limits allowed. Once I had everything ready, I'd start advertising about how higher power = fewer dropped calls (which isn't entirely untrue) and how much more powerful my phones are than my competition's.
Doing that would drive away the small percentage of idiots who are most likely to be problem customers. Beyond that, it would be a huge selling people to more knowledgeable people and it would help capture the "must buy the biggest numbered thing" market segment as well.
The cell phone radiation scare reminds me so much of the AC power line scare of 15 years ago, which got to the point where people were seriously questioning whether electric blankets would give them cancer. Back at the height of that scare, my friends and I half-jokingly came up with the idea of marketing an electric blanket AC-to-DC rectifier. We had the TV commercial all figured out; the late night TV salesman would pass a field strength meter tuned to 60 Hz over a blanket, and show how the evil cancer-causing electromagnetic RADIATION was making the needle deflect. Then he would plug the blanket into the rectifier, and show how the needle barely budged. Yes, for only $39.95, you and your family would be safe!
Today, of course, we see exactly the same pseudoscientific scare tactics being applied to cell phones. The funny thing is that electric blankets haven't changed a bit, but no one worries about them any more. People pick a target of fear to fixate on, and completely ignore everything else with equal or greater risk, even the "old" hazards that used to frighten them. The psychology of risk assessment never ceases to fascinate me.
and will mislead consumers into thinking one phone is safer than another
Well, it would be misleiding if it wasn't true, but lower radiation also means safer to use... The real effect of cellphones has yet to be determined, it will take at least 2 decades before the real consequences will be known... And let's not forget, we already know from the past that a test that was said there is no harm, later revealed to be disasterous..
> ...will mislead consumers into thinking one phone is safer than another.
No, it will mislead consumers into thinking one phone is more dangerous than another when there is, in fact, no danger at all from any of them.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Why exactly is telling people MORE about the product they are buying a bad thing?
Sure just writing how many watts each phone emits might not reveal the whole picture, but the manufacturer can always include the frequency of the emissions and any other relevant information in the product description. It's not like the law prevents you from revealing anything except the power.
The manufacturer could also try to *gasp* educate the public - You have a study that shows the frequency of your phones emissions is not harmful while another phone will cause you to grow an extra ear within the next 2 years? Publish it, include it in your add campaign,... It might actually give you a bigger market share.
I don't see why any court should limit the amount of information customers have about products they are buying.
Bullocks! Customers do have a right to this information! Companies can use the label to educate by just showing a comparison of how much radiation a person gets from:
If Companies cannot spin this, it is their own damn fault. Not the consumers. Information wants to be FREEEEEEE and this is an excellent way to *start* educating the public. With the precedent that Phillip-Morris set of hiding information, if the cell phone manufacturers fight this too hard, things will be much worse for them. They will appear to be hiding something regardless of the truth of the situation.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Why fight it? People just might seek out the phones with the strongest transmission numbers in effort to get better connections. :)
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I don't know about CDMA standard, so this is just for GSM/3G standard.
For 850/900Mhz they use 2W at maximum power. That only happens in poor signal areas.
For 1800/1900/2100Mhz they only use 1W at maximum. That only applies in poor signal areas.
Normally however the power from the GSM/3G phone is around 0.1mW up to 0.5mW. Depending on location and so on.
ive been an amatuer radio operator for years exposing myself to all types of RF radiation in many different freqs. i dont really think a 25 milliwatt RF exposure will do anything. I run a 5 watt next to my ear all the time. I guess i will have a super tumor.
As someone else has said, it was the movie The China Syndrome that scared everyone about the Three Mile Island accident.
But nuclear radiation is off-topic.
Those who are concerned about the radiation from cell phone antennas should think about the 1,218,000,000,000,000 Watts of electromagnetic radiation the earth receives continuously from that big antenna in the sky, the Sun.
Unfortunately, I have read that the SAR rating indeed can be quite misleading. Maybe we need a new rating.
It should not be hard for the cell phone companies to come up with a method similar to the nutrition info you find on all food products. It's broken down in easy to understand terms. We all know junk-food is junk-food, but like anything else, there is a gradient which represents the degree of "bad". You can comparison shop and find out which can of tomato soup is going to be better for your health. Seems to me we should be able to compare products in the same way.
Sounds to me like the phone companies aren't really worried about consumers being misled, they are more worried about loosing their marketing edge due to bling or popularity factors. If you knew a Palm Pre emitted half the radiation of an iPhone (for instance) which would you buy? Which would you buy for your kid? Which one for your pregnant wife?
Sounds like a great idea to me, and I hope the law gets extended to the federal level across all electronic gizmos.
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They know people will see "Radiation" and say "Oh shit it is going to kill me!" As the city council well demonstrated, people do not have a good understanding of different kinds of radiation. It will lead to consumer paranoia, perhaps lower sales, and worst of all bogus lawsuits. The hypochondriac types will feel sick, and blame the phones (this happens all the time with WiFi) and they'll want to sue.
Also there's a good possibility the label will be required to be done in a scary manner. So not something like "this device emits up to 3 watts of 1900MHz RF," but more like "this device emits up to 3 watts of radiation which is known to the city of San Francisco to cause cancer."
Over labeling isn't a good thing.
Nice to see. Maybe we'll start moving away from irradiating everyone just so we can play games and talk on the phone everywhere.
Why not just have the phone display (on the screen) the real-time transmit power level? That would be much more useful than some arbitrary number on the label.
Apple stood if full support of the new bill, stating that they have been ahead of the game on this one. Even going so far as to sacrifice minute usability for the health of all their customers and the world as a whole.
"I say this as someone who likely put solar panels on my own house in the next couple of years."
So i can buy the one with the most radiated energy. That way i get more reliable connections.
but I look at this and have to ask 'what science is behind this?'
Nobody knows either way whether cell phone radiation is harmful to humans. But it has been shown experimentally that it has biological effects: http://bit.ly/bTSVvj That makes it plausible that it might have harmful effects in humans.
So, until there is clear and convincing evidence that cell phone radiation is harmless, why not give people a choice?
Honestly, I want to know the power output of my phone - and the selectivity and sensitivity of the receiver as well.
At least with this law, consumers will have some indication of which phones are the most likely to drop calls. By measuring the emitted radiation (as opposed to the power put into the antenna), you get a better idea of how far from a cell tower you can be and still make calls.
Sure, maybe it does cause cancer; too bad there isn't any good scientific study showing such. If there was, Californians would have a lot bigger problems than warning labels.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
As if no for-profit company in a capitalist environment has ever purposely lured in consumers with ultimately unimportant information.
And they don't even bother to orient them to the sun; being parallel to the street is considered to be more important. They're big piles of shit all around.
neighborhood design is a big issue and should be considered more carefully. Many homes are shitty all the way around, especially those 'McMansions' built during the boom. I think there needs to be a home grading system, a sort of house version of EPA gas mileage(though that metric has it's own problems).
As for the cooling towers and heat deflectors and all that, they DO add a substantial amount to the cost of a home and have limited ability to decrease the temperature. It'd work fine at moderate latitudes, for example I don't even have AC, do my 'cooling' via opening/closing windows and drawing air through my basement. But I'm pretty far north.
Basically, I think homes can be made a LOT more efficient economically, but a lot of greens are pushing uneconomical solutions.
For example, I wish that solar thermal heating via absorption chillers was around a third of it's price; but even now there are areas where one would pay itself off in 5-10 years.
I don't read AC A human right