Exposure Limits: The underestimation of absorbed cellphone radiation, especially in children

October 16th, 2011

Summary – Link to full article below

This paper describes how cellphones are certified to meet the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) exposure limit for the maximum amount of microwave cellphone radiation that will be absorbed in the head or other parts of the body of a cellphone user.  The only trouble is that the industry-designed certification process so under-estimates the actual absorption of cellphone radiation that all cellphone users who keep their cellphone in their pockets absorb cellphone radiation above the FCC exposure limit.  Further, even if not kept in pockets, when held next to the head, 97% of the population will exceed the certified level of absorbed radiation, and even more so for children who will absorb more than two times the certified cellphone radiation.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that this paper describes an alternative FCC approved process already used extensively within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  The alternative process uses MRI-scans of a set of real human beings to determine the amount of radiation absorbed in every tissue.  It is called, the “Virtual Family” and includes a 5-year old girl, a 6-year old boy, an 8-year old girl, an 11-year old girl, a 14-year old boy, a 26-year old female, a 35-year old male, an obese male adult and 3 pregnant women at 3rd, 7th and 9th months of gestation, allowing for appropriate cellphone certifications for the most vulnerable cellphone users.

In contrast, the existing cellphone certification process uses a plastic mannequin head, SAM, of a very large man with a liquid inside the mannequin which assumes all tissues in the head are identical.  A robot positions a sensor within the liquid and calculates the maximum Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) with a tolerance of +30%.  The FCC exposure limit is SAR=1.6 Watts per kilogram of tissue (1.6 W/kg).  Because of the wide tolerance range, SAR values can be as large as 2.08 W/kg, 30% higher than FCC exposure limit.

The paper provides a history of how exposure limits have been developed over several decades and continues with an exposition of chronic cellphone health effects (humans, animals and human cells) reported in science papers. It then describes the two FCC-approved processes for cellphone certification: the existing cellphone process (exclusively used) and the MRI-based computer simulation process (never used for certification).  Next it compares the efficacy of the two processes.

 

The paper explains in detail that the existing exposure limit process is so far from the original intent that we can only wonder what happened! Here are some examples:

The paper concludes:

Get the full Article

Posted in Latest Research | 7 Comments »

7 Responses to “Exposure Limits: The underestimation of absorbed cellphone radiation, especially in children”

  1. Johnny says:

    Ever since, all of us in this world has noted the dangers of cell phone dangers, all of us should stay united with one voice propose to Federal Communications Commission’s further enhance the safety of the peoples and upgrade the whole system.

    Thank you prevention is better that cure.

  2. Thank you for your informative truthful articles. Parents have to ask themselves why would they expose their children to this risk?

  3. [...] brain’s protective barrier, and that according to a recently published scientific report from Environmental Health Trust (EHT), children’s heads absorb twice as much microwave radiation from cell phones as [...]

  4. [...]  Children absorb twice the amount of cellphone radiation to the heads, up to triple in the their brain’s hippocampus and hypothalamus, greater absorption in their eyes, and as much as 10-times more in their bone marrow when compared to adults; (see data here) [...]

  5. Hos says:

    Council of Europe
    banned use of cell phones, WiFi at schools.

    Read original report.

  6. [...] microwave radiation from cell phones weaken the brain’s protective barrier, and according to a recently published scientific report from Environmental Health Trust (EHT), children’s heads absorb twice as much microwave radiation [...]

  7. Howard Kalnitsky says:

    My partner and I just returned from Cetecom’s testing facility in Milpitas California this week. We had gone there to test some new products we have been developing to help protect people from the potentially harmful effects of radiation from cell and cordless phones.
    We soon realized that the testing we were doing and the results we achieved were completely bogus for several reasons the most important one being that the testing head (SAM) didn’t differentiate between young or old, different tissue types, differences in skull anatomy depending on sex/age and wasn’t an accurate representation of what a skull really looks like. ( no ears, no soft tissue etc) After now reading the report from EHT I realize they pointed this out months ago..I have now experienced this travesty first hand! What this means to me is that as long as this type of flawed testing is allowed to be used for the standard what in fact is happening is that money is governing safety over people’s health…very sad.

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