The FCC says that radiation from your cell phone is not serious. A cancer surgeon friend told me that he begs to disagree.
While public health experts continue to debate the issue, and the public’s own concerns may be overblown, perhaps the best approach is “prevention is better than cure.”
This is certainly the approach of the manufacturers’ lawyers, who have contributed to the development of the manuals and legal notices for their mobile phones.
Modern iPhones, including the 14 Pro Max and iPhone SE, recommend that their customers “use a hands-free option, such as the built-in speakerphone, headphones, or other similar accessories” to “reduce noise”. ‘RF exposure’. [radio frequency] energy.’
These RF exposures, according to The German Federal Radiation Office can be exceptionally high from certain mobile devices – with a few energetic Android phones topping the list.
You have to ask yourself: what do manufacturers know that we don’t?
A table of cell phone radiation exposure rates from the German Federal Radiation Office (Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz) compiled by the Digital Information World last year
the new iPhone SE suggests using “a hands-free option, such as the built-in speakerphone, headphones, or other similar accessories” to “reduce RF exposure [radio frequency] energy’
iPhone manuals released a decade ago recommend users keep their phones 10mm away
“People are addicted to their smartphones,” according to Joel Moskowitz, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health.
“We use them for everything now, and in many ways we need them to function in our daily lives,” Moskowitz said. “I think the idea that they potentially harm our health is too much for some people.”
As director of The Berkeley Family and Community Health Center, Moskowitz, has made studying the biological effects of radiofrequency energy on the human body a research priority since 2009.
But he picks up where U.S. federal regulators, in his view, dropped the ball.
“Cell phones, cell towers and other wireless devices are regulated by most governments,” Moskowitz said, with a caveat. “Our government, however, stopped funding research into the health effects of radiofrequency in the 1990s.”
In 2020, Moskowitz and colleagues published a review of 46 case-control health studies on the issue of cellphones and health, which they published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
“Our main takeaway,” says Moskowitz, “is that approximately 1,000 hours of lifetime cell phone use, or approximately 17 minutes per day over a 10-year period, is associated with a statistically significant increase of 60 % of brain cancer”.
Of course, not all scholars on the subject share Moskowitz’s grim view. And the UN’s World Health Organization currently maintains that, at this time, “no adverse health effects have been established to be caused by mobile phone use”.
So what do I do?
I play it safe and keep my phone away from my body and head as much as possible. (Yes, I’m that person taking calls on my AirPods or speaker.)
And I take inspiration from foreign agencies, such as the German Federal Radiation Office (Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz) which lists the specific absorption rate (SAR) data of each mobile phone.
It turns out that some phones emit more radiation than others. But what exactly are we measuring with the specific absorption rate?
SAR, which is calculated in watts per kilogram of body weight, quantifies the amount of energy absorbed per unit mass by the human body when exposed to radio frequency.
Typically, it’s based on an absorption value recorded when you make a call with the phone to your ear. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) even uses a dummy head to calculate the SAR values of cell phones.
In 2018, an NIH report warned of “clear evidence” of a link between high levels of cellphone radiation and brain, heart and adrenal cancers in male rats. Berkeley Family and Community Health Center director Joel Moskowitz worries people are too ‘addicted’ to care
But, really, you don’t need to know all the details, just that the legal limit is 1.6 watts/kg here in the US.
See where your cell phone ranks on the list, compiled by Digital Information World.
These five models emit some of the most powerful radiation on the market: Motorola Edge (1.79 w/kg); OnePlus 6T (1.55W/kg); Sony Xperia XA2 Plus (1.41W/kg) Google Pixel 3 XL (1.39W/kg); and the Google Pixel 4a (1.37 w/kg) tied with the Oppo Reno5 5G (1.37 w/kg).
Gentlemen, don’t put your phone in your trouser pockets. Ladies, keep it out of your bra.
Not far behind were the Google Pixel 3 (1.33 w/kg), Huawei’s P Smart (1.27 w/kg) and the OnePlus 9 (1.26 w/kg).
If you’re concerned about your SAR risks, but don’t feel like keeping your phone away all the time, these are the phones known to emit the least radiation: the Samsung Galaxy Note10+ 5G (0.19 w/ kg ); Samsung Galaxy Note10 (0.21w/kg); the Samsung Galaxy A80 (0.22W/kg); LG G7 ThinQ (0.24W/kg); and the Motorola Razr 5G (0.27 w/kg).
And given the warnings in the manuals, what about the iPhone?
Well, it falls somewhere in the middle. This iPhone SE with this warning emits SAR or 0.98 w/kg.
It is comparable to other popular models: iPhone 11 (0.95 w/kg); iPhone 12 (0.98w/kg); iPhone 13 (0.99w/kg); and iPhone 14 (0.98w/kg).