WASHINGTON-The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, seeking to foster better public understanding of controversial wireless health issues, will require beginning Aug. 1 that all mobile phones seeking certification include radiation exposure data.
CTIA’s board of directors approved the policy at its June meeting, though the trade group has yet to publicize it. Most of the nation’s 94 million-plus phones are CTIA-certified.
“I think it’s important for people to know we didn’t make them [SAR numbers] up. It’s part of a formal process,” said Jo-Anne Basile, vice president of external and industry relations at CTIA.
Basile said new phones will include SAR information for several months, owing to the lag time involved in CTIA certification and FCC authorization of telecom equipment.
The CTIA plan calls for boxes containing new mobile phones to state on the outside that phones meet FCC guidelines. In addition, on the outside of each box will be printed the FCC equipment identification number and the FCC Web site address. Some SAR data is included on the FCC Web site today. More data will be available in the near future.
Inside each box will be nontechnical printed materials on SAR testing and the manufacturer’s Web site address so consumers can obtain additional SAR information.
The Telecommunications Industry Association helped CTIA craft the SAR language.
The effort to reach out to wireless consumers appears to reflect a shift of sorts for the U.S. wireless industry, which has tended to react defensively and cautiously to claims that mobile phones may cause brain cancer and other diseases.
The SAR limit-1.6 watts per kilogram averaged over one gram of human tissue-has been the subject of much controversy in recent months.
In a report on mobile phones last October, an independent study conducted for ABC’s 20/20 revealed that some mobile phones exceed federal radiation exposure guidelines. The industry, through the CTIA project, is seeking to de-link SAR from the health issue.
Fueling the controversy is the fact that SAR data supplied by mobile-phone manufacturers to the FCC is reviewed, but not independently verified, by federal regulators. That is expected to change in the future.
The FCC and Food and Drug Administration, which oversees radiation devices but does not regulate mobile phones, have been working with industry to develop a standard protocol for measuring SAR from mobile phones.
While progress is being made, an SAR standard is not expected to be completed until next year.
A final draft of the standard is set to be voted on later this summer by a subcommittee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The United States and Europe are attempting to harmonize SAR testing standards.
Last year, the FCC contracted to purchase SAR testing equipment. But it is unclear whether the equipment has been delivered yet.
Moreover, it’s not clear whether the agency is adequately staffed or funded to conduct independent SAR testing. The agency currently is advertising to fill an SAR testing position in the FCC laboratory in Columbia, Md. The FCC recently filled an SAR position at its Washington, D.C.’s headquarters.
“The real question becomes are the SAR numbers useful with regard to human protection,” said Dr. George Carlo, the epidemiologist who ran the cellular industry-funded health research program. “The SAR is a thermal measurement. It has increasingly come under criticism because it doesn’t allow the most important aspects of radio-frequency exposure to be assessed, namely cumulative exposure and chronic exposure.”
Norman Sandler, director of global strategic issues for Motorola Inc., said explaining to consumers how mobile-phone radiation exposure is measured and what it means relative to health is no easy task.
“They [SAR numbers] are measurements of compliance, not of safety,” said Sandler.
Sandler noted that a United Kingdom-appointed scientific panel recently recommended making SAR data readily available to consumers. The U.K. panel failed to find a mobile phone-cancer link but embraced the “precautionary principle” and urged caution with respect to usage by and marketing to children.
While RF health research is under way overseas, the FCC and FDA are cooperating to replicate experiments by Carlo that found genetic damage from strong doses of mobile-phone radiation. Two days of meetings will be held on the FDA-CTIA research program on Aug. 1-2.
Meanwhile, several lawmakers in Congress are attempting to find federal funds for government mobile-phone health research. The General Accounting Office, for its part, has begun to conduct a review of scientific studies. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) requested the investigation last fall.
