Flickr photo by D. Sharon Pruitt
After San Francisco banned the use of plastic bags in 2007, it took a few years for the idea to catch on throughout California. Just a few weeks ago, though, the state Assembly passed a bill calling for a similar ban, suggesting that it's perhaps carrying forward the will of the people.
Whether San Francisco’s new law mandating disclosure of cell phone radiation levels will gain similar ground, of course, remains to be seen.
Last week, the county voted to disclose the measure of radiation that each cell phone emits in 11-point type next to the sales display. The information will have little meaning to consumers. Scientists are still divided about whether radiation emitted by cell phones poses a health risk. (The FCC requires disclosure of the ratings for each phone and you can see them here.)
A similar law carried by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, died just a few weeks ago in the Legislature. Leno was clear in a statement on his website – there is no definitive evidence to suggest cell phone radiation causes cancer or any other illness.
An analysis of the legislation explains the rationale for it:
Questions around potential health effects and the adequacy of current U.S. standards are significant enough to warrant basic precautionary measures that allow consumers to make informed purchasing decisions. This bill does not require any kind of warning label on cell phones; rather it would simply require retailers to disclose cell phone radiation levels at the point of sale, and require manufacturers to print this information on the box and in the user guide.
But the opposition was forceful, according to the analysis:
According to the opponents, this bill is "misguided, unnecessary and constitutes a de facto unwarranted warning label that would burden California retailers with additional regulations and significant costs and will lead to substantial consumer confusion."
When the bill was a going concern, it did little to slow the never-ending party that lobbyists for AT&T Inc., one of its chief opponents, tend to host at Arco Arena. The firm spent about $535,000 on lobbying during the first quarter of this year. From Kings games to Disney Stars on Ice to a Valentine’s Super Love Jam, legislative staffers continued to enjoy the hospitality. (Details below).
Whether the lobbying effort led to the bill’s demise may never be known. But the debate at least is bringing out more information on the issue, one that regulators and scientists pledge to keep watching.
Here’s one interesting fact that came out of a U.S. Senate hearing last fall, according to the technology publication CNET:
Indeed, research indicates that cell phone radiation penetrates the heads of children much more than it does adults for a variety of reasons, including the fact that children have smaller and thinner skulls. This was first discovered by Om Gahndi, a radiation expert from the University of Utah, and confirmed by recent studies by Niels Kuster, an electrical engineer from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
"The FCC set standards for the amount of radio frequency that can be emitted by a cell phone based on models of a man's head," Devra Davis, a researcher in the department of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, said during her testimony. "And not just your average Joe, but that of a 200-pound man with an 11-pound head, talking with a phone to his ear for 6 minutes."
Comments
via Twitter