by Dr. Joseph Mercola 7/5/2022
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 (0.19 to 0.59 inches) millimeters away from your head and body at all times to avoid exceeding the safety limit for RF exposure
• In the real-world, most people carry their phones close to their body, usually in a pocket or bra. When popular cellphones were tested in direct contact to the body, they all exceeded the safety limit
• 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.
In the real-world, however, most people carry their phones close to their body, usually in a pocket. Many women even tuck their phone right into their bra which, by the way, is the absolute worst area for a woman to put it, as it could raise their risk of both heart problems and breast tumors, their two leading risks of death.
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.”
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What You Need to Know About Your Phone’s SAR ValueAs 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
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Why SAR Ratings Are Terribly FlawedIn 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.
More:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/07/05/cellphone-sar-values.aspxhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm69ik_Qdb8&t=133s
