SAR is hidden by most mobile phone manufacturers
Have you noticed how craftily mobile phone manufacturers hide the single but probably most controversial piece of information – SAR?
(SAR stands for Specific Absorption Rate – a measure of radio wave energy exposure upon a cellular phone user. It varies greatly between phone models even by the same maker)
So far only Siemens has been found to clearly state this parameter on the product pages in its website. Samsung-Europe publishes it on their website quite prominently, but not in the product manuals.
All the others producers checked (Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Motorola) guard it pretty heavily.
For e.g. Nokia makes these data available in seemingly convenient form but keeps them on an isolated domain. Why not on the same pages with the rest of the technical data? That’s easy – to exclude them from the product selection process.
Sony-Ericsson buried this 2-significant-digit value into a 2.5 MB (!) PDF file – a dedicated monster for each single cell phone model – probably to deter the inquisitiveness of the potential customers.
FYI: it’ll take an average dial-up user (these users still comprise some 40-60% of all home users or more, depending on the market) half an hour to download this “document” of the WHOLE TWO decimal digits for only one phone model.
So why’s that?
Do they just keep customers for brainless cattle?
Do they fear that customers are going to make “wrong” purchasing decisions based on “unimportant”, but highly vexed data which SAR definitely is?
The marketer’s logic in Sony-Ericsson’s case is fairly clear: dial-up users are overly conservative folks who don’t understand the benefits of broadband which is very cool and it is very wrong not to choose new technology. These marketers aren’t willing to realize that dial-up users are just being reasonable in not going for crazy speeds (or any other new “cool” stuff for that matter) – they can’t read text at 2 Megabits per second anyway, so why pay for it?
Therefore, mobile makers probably think, it’s better to liberate these unfortunate from any distractions. Or otherwise these consumers will risk conservatively sticking to their old handsets thus spoiling sales prospects.
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April 6th, 2007 7:54am
I was recently exposed to the EMR emissions from a bank of 8 AT&T 2.4GHz phone bases at a place of employment. I now have contracted cataracts in both eyes, with the left eye most severe where I held the remote to my head while staying on the phone for 8-12 hours per day, 6 days a week, for about 6 consecutive weeks. I now have a hypersensotovity to cell phones, microwave ovens, towers and even my old CRT computer monitor. The left eye now has an oblique orientation of approximately 30 degrees, and the ophthalmologists that I have been examined by have no feasable explanation for the eye anomoly. The shelf of phone base units were actually touching eatch other, and I believe boosting their signal in order to maintain their own signal connection to the various remote phones in use by the other employees. Each remote had a corresponding charger. These 8 phone bases were within 5 feet of my head, and I had an old computer Cathode Ray tube monitor in front of me at my desk.
I believe that the boosted signal was bouncing off the monitor screen directly int my face. I experienced facial heating, headaches, sharp stabbing pains to my eyes, and a tightness in my chest, with heart palpitations.
I believe that the phones were sending a highly increased signal directly through my body, then hitting the CRT monitor, thereby bouncing the EMR back into my face and body. Calls to the advertising clients were dropped or bled over on to the phones of the other employees during their conversations.
Can you give me the SAR rating for these AT&T phones. I believe they were 1412’s with the E-262 handset and charger. OSHA did a survey and claims that there was no detected emissions from any of the phones. I don’t think that is possible, as any phone in operation or the “on” position should have an emission signature.
Thank you for posting this website, as I have been doing a lot of research, and the more that I find, the less confidence I have in the OSHA, FDA, EPA or any other such government oversight. Once again, profit over people is prevailing, while the physical damage and genetic harm goes on without regulation, as long as the industry makes the cash, paying the taxes and buying the polititions.
Keep up the good work,
L. M. Mullin
April 25th, 2007 2:07am
The FCC makes SAR data available to the public. They maintain a database of all certified equipment. Just go to the following website and enter the FCC ID number found on your phone. Many times it is on the product label under the battery.
https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/cf/eas/reports/GenericSearch.cfm
The last few lines of the FCC grant will state the SAR values, and the filing will contain the SAR report. Notice there is typically a prohibition against placing multiple radios within 20cm of each other (without additional SAR testing or MPE estimates to demonstrate compliance to RF safety requirements).
In theory, a 2.4 GHz handset with an output power over 25 mW must be SAR tested and found compliant with FCC rules. The same is true for cellular handsets. See: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/13nov20061500/edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2006/octqtr/pdf/47cfr2.1093.pdf
In order to be FCC certified, the measured SAR levels must be stated in the user manual.
December 19th, 2007 6:53am
Hi,
I would like to emerge from the mass consumer cattle which I’ve been belonging to for a while now.
Joke aside, it is a pleasure to see the truth pointed out in your articles. Now – the problem I have is that I am quite dependent on those mobile phones. I would like to find the safest to use, keeping in mind that a safe use implies other things, like having a free hands kit and leaving your cell phone in a bag when not using it, as well as using it when the signal is strongest.
But right now, on the net, there’s no such thing as a ranking of the safest mobile phones! The only things I could find were either rumours of new safer Japanese phones or HUGE lists of all mobile phones to have ever bee produced with seperate dowloadable rankings.
I mean… they couldnt make this any easier could they?
December 22nd, 2007 5:33pm
In fact, I’ve found the ultimate solution to all the SAR puzzles. It’s the corded headset.
Surprisingly, modern, feature-rich phones are getting worse, not better, at SAR (possibly due to constraints of fitting more in less). In addition, many important features – like Conference calling or Call wait Caller-ID – are intended for use during talk, so a headset becomes almost mandatory in ever more scenarios.
However, many people find mobile phone convenience in occasional use like answering a rare one-minute call once a day. For that, cords would be a hindrance.
Thus, SAR is still an important factor sometimes.
So it is real pain to see all those poor, clasping their phones to the ear fully covered with a hand. It’s nice some of them start to realize the basics of radio communications physics and at least adjust headset handling [in Russian], which mitigates SAR severeness to an extent. Still others go about selecting handsets more SAR-wise.
August 3rd, 2008 1:06pm
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