The entire cell phone industry knows this dirty little secret and they are hiding it from consumers!! Nope, it’s not some wild conspiracy theory – it’s the ugly truth they don’t want you to know about! Skeptical?! I don’t blame you…. I couldn’t believe it myself. But, here are the facts:
I discovered that the BlackBerry cell phone I purchased for my 16 year old daughter had an FCC-required consumer safety warning to never carry the phone closer than 1” from the body or radiation would exceed the FCC safety limit of 1.6 SAR (the measurement of heat absorbed during exposure to cell phone radiation). She had been carrying it for 8 months in her pocket (as do most children, teens and young adults) receiving thousands of texts and phone calls each month with the phone directly against her body. Because that particular phone had the highest radiation of any cell phone on the market, the amount of radiation emitted when closer than 1” from the body most certainly exceeded the 1.6 SAR safety limit. The required safety warning which would have warned her to never carry the phone in her pocket was not in the user guide so we might have seen it; it was located on the CD that came with the phone which we had no hope of seeing as it was located in the bottom of the box; once I heard about the CD and found the silly thing, the safety warning which was supposedly on the CD could not be read on my MAC! It required a PC to even be read. Also, the elusive .pdf file which contained the safety warning was not referenced anywhere in the product literature.
FCC requires ALL cell phone manufacturers to warn users that the radiation level can be dangerous if carried in the pocket. Were you warned?After a bit of research, I discovered that ALL cell phone manufacturers are required to inform consumers of this warning although few consumers ever see it since the FCC allows this warning to be buried in fine print in an obscure place in the user guide within technical radio frequency emission jargon. If you check every word of the user manual that came with your cell phone, you might see it. Get out a magnifying glass, as it will be in incredibly small type font. And, it will be buried in some FCC “disclosure” stuff about radio frequency emissions or “separation distance”. Go on, see if you can find it. Unless you have a BlackBerry, which will NOT have the warning anywhere in the literature that came with your phone.
RIM hides the FCC-required safety warning in a .pdf file on a CD at the bottom of the stuff that comes with the BlackBerry!!Research in Motion (RIM), the manufacturer of all the BlackBerry devices actually hides this crucial safety warning in a .pdf file which must be downloaded from a CD that ships in the bottom of every BlackBerry cell phone’s box. The FCC allows their buddies in the cell phone industry to put this warning on a disk or even on a website if a consumer could be reasonably expected to find it (47 CFR 15.21). There would be no way that a consumer COULD “reasonably” find a safety warning on a CD or website since RIM mentions it nowhere in the product literature. The FCC does little, if any oversight of cell phone manufacturers, so this industry-wide deception continues without consequence.
Well… even if you did find the safety warning, you might not recognize what it implies. Manufacturers have become really tricky about wording the warning in a way that makes no sense. Instead of just writing,
“Don’t carry the phone in your pocket or you’ll be exposed to radiation levels that exceed the FCC-established safety limit,”
they write bizarre, misleading “suggestions”, like, “Always maintain a minimum separation distance of 1″ OR better yet… “Refer to body-worn configuration requirement”.
You are now warned. Spread the word to children, teens and others who carry cell phones in their pockets!Don’t let your kids carry cell phones in their pockets. Be informed. Find the safety warning for your phone and call your service provider and complain that the FCC-required safety warning needs to be in a prominent location in language a consumer would understand. Better yet, write to the president of your cell phone service provider or file a formal complaint with the FCC.
Demand that the cell phone industry stop hiding the safety warning!!
Most importantly, purchase cell phones with the lowest SAR level. But, don’t rely on CNET’s chart to research various cell phone radiation levels as they only list the SAR level at the head, not at the body when carried in a holster. This can be misleading as a phone can be rated quite low when held to the head, but emit the highest radiation on the market when carried on the body. Also, about 50% of the SAR values on the CNET radiation chart are just flat-out wrong when checked against the actual FCC reported values. The chart at the link below is the best one to reference as it lists the highest SAR value for a particular phone, whether it’s the rating at the head or when carried in a holster. And it’s updated weekly to fix any errors (Note: I don’t endorse any of their products as I don’t know if radiation shields are effective):
http://www.sarshield.com/english/radiationchart.htm
That’s all for now,
Lab Rat 4 SAR
PS I need to give some kudos to Apple. The tiny, almost unreadable safety warning that appears in the iPhone literature (if you look hard enough), is one of the only warnings to mention, in consumer-friendly language, not to carry the phone in the pocket. It’s a tiny step in the right direction for consumer safety. Now, Apple…..just make the dang warning big enough so someone could read it. And, put it in a place that a user might just happen to see it!!
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