Bay Area City Presses Cell Radiation Right-to-Know
The City Council of Burlingame, California, is moving ahead with plans to come up with a cell phone right-to-know ordinance.
Council members said last week (Oct. 18) they are working to draft the measure. If passed, it would require stores to post on their shelves the specific absorption rate (SAR), a measure of how much electromagnetic radiation our bodies absorb, of every cell phone sold in the city.
EWG Seeks FCC-Cell Phone Industry Communications
So you’re thinking about trading in your old cell phone, and you want to know how much radiation the new models emit. Think scavenger hunt and you’ve got the idea.
Technically speaking, the Federal Communications Commission makes that information public through its FCC SAR Database. But only the most tenacious shopper will have the patience or know-how to navigate the agency’s online maze to find a phone’s Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) value – the standard measure used to define the amount of radio frequency energy absorbed by the body of a person using a cell phone.
