back to article US to chat again with Campaigners Against Stuff on mobile health regs

The FCC has launched an official enquiry into the rules around cellphone radiation, and has invited world+dog to pitch in and have their say on the brain-melting devices. Most of the FCC's suggestions are amendments to the rules on handsets which haven't been updated since 1996. Those ageing rules don't reflect the latest …

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  1. AndyS

    Wearable tech

    I struggle to see the difference between "wearable" tech and standard mobile tech; I'd imagine a very large proportion of mobile phones spend the majority of the day in a pocket, and so "within a centimetre or two of the body for extended periods of time." On a practical level, wouldn't this mean any regulation for wearable should also apply for mobile, and vice versa?

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Wearable tech

      The idea is that if you are using a bluetooth device clamped to your ear, and the mobile on your belt, you will be keeping W/m² low and the most harmful device with the devilish application of the Maxwell Equations away from your most sensitive neural substrate. Bluetooth is considered softer.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    I Always Use Headphones

    ..and put my cellphone into my trousers' pockets. Thereby I only "damage" my reproductive organs and that's the (imaginated) problem of my not-yet existant offspring.

    Ahh, the world of irrationality !

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I Always Use Headphones

      I wouldn't worry about it. I have a mobile in each pocket (ensuring good coverage of the boys from both sides), my trousers are too tight, and I have a hot, wifi-spewing laptop sitting on my lap for 4 hours+ per day for years.

      The ease with which I have made babies has scared me silly!

      And we all know that anecdotes > data.

  3. phuzz Silver badge
    Facepalm

    They're everywhere

    I was at a customer's site recently, sat at someone's desktop computer, cleaning off a virus when they walked up to say hello.

    I'd been having a lot of problems with the mouse not moving the cursor half the time, so I told the user that they ought to ask for a new mouse. "This one's crap" says I, "It's held together with sticky tape!".

    "Oh, I'm used to it now" quoth the user, "and the tape is there to hold the coin on".

    I flip the mouse over, and sure enough, there is a two pence piece taped to the bottom of the mouse, slightly lifting it and so spoiling the sensor's view.

    "Why's that there?" I ask, already dreading the answer

    "Oh, that's because I'm allergic to electro-magnetic radiation" says the user.

    Rather than make a scene in the customer's office and start the user crying, I limited myself to "oh" and turned back and did my best to ignore how much the stupid was burning my brain.

    1. Schultz

      Re: They're everywhere

      Now which BOFH suggested this elegant solution? Gotta remember this for the next meeting with the scared members of society.

  4. blcollier
    Facepalm

    Not again...

    Please no not again... Aren't we done with this? Why do these idiots persist? More importantly, why do government agencies pander to these idiots instead of going by the established scientific opinion?

    If mobile phones Do Bad Things, then we'd have all started dying off 7 or more decades ago when we started spewing non-ionising electromagnetic radiation from massive transmitters on a large/national scale. The frequency makes little difference (other than how far through any given material the signal will penetrate); what matters is transmission power, and you're not likely to have a megawatt, or even kilowatt, transmitter clamped to your face for hours on end any time soon.

    And if you think living under/near mobile phone masts is dangerous then see my first point: TV and/or radio transmitters would have killed us all long ago.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The circus is back in town...

    Well we all know what the answer will be, they want a limit of zero, no RF because people are worried about it BUT they will still want all the wireless things they find useful to work as they did before. It is really is like asking an addict if they want some more and wondering why they said yes..

    From what I have read the answer to is RF dangerous is still inconclusive and the best advice is not to use it too much, lowering the current limits is a laywers delight as it makes it much harder to meet and easier to prove it was too high. I hope the FCC take a pragmatic view of this but I suspect the hysteria surrounding the topic will influence them.

  6. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Ruh oh.

    USA exposure limits are amongst the highest in the world, because they rely on detectable heating effects.

    Russian standards are around 10% of USA levels on average (It's complex, high levels are allowed for brief periods, with a rapid dropoff in acceptable level vs increasing time and frequencies. Certain microwave frequencies are verboten for exposure because they correspond to wavelengths where the eyeball and skull are resonant.)

    Can your equipment handle operating at levels 10dB lower then they currently are?

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