Mobile phones to feature radiation labels next year
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HELSINKI, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Mobile phone manufacturers plan to start labelling mobile phones next year with the amount of radiation they emit in response to concerns from consumers and organisations, leading producers said on Monday.
Finnish Nokia <NOK1V.HE>, the world's largest mobile phone maker, U.S. Motorola <MOT.N> and Sweden's Ericsson <LMEb.ST>, are working on developing a standard for measuring specific absorption rates (SAR), a measure of radiation from cellphones.
"We are going through the harmonisation process at the moment and waiting for an SAR measurement standard which is expected to be finalised by early next year," Nokia Mobile Phones spokesman Tapio Hedman told Reuters.
"Once that standard is in place we plan to publish SAR value consistently for all our phones globally."
The move comes as questions still linger about whether there is a link between mobile phone usage and cancer or other risks to human health.
"This is an issue consumers feel strongly about and we want them to get the relevant information," Ericsson Mobile Phones spokesman for health and safety issues Mikael Westmark told Reuters. "With the huge increase in mobile phone users more and more people want information about the products they use."
Years of research have not found health risks from mobile phone radiation, but experts say more research is needed.
There are currently about 570 million mobile phone users globally and Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson expects this figure to grow to 1.4 billion in five years' time.
The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA), the U.S. trade body which represents the industry, has urged mobile phone producers to disclose radiation levels by August 1.
Ericsson said it plans to start labelling its phone packages with SAR values by April next year, while Nokia Oyj Abp has not given a specific date but said it would do it once a global measurement standard was in place.
Motorola said it expected an agreement early 2001 and would then start labelling its products as soon as possible.
Manufacturers do not plan to label the actual phones with SAR values but rather the packages that the phones come in.
MANUFACTURERS SAY NO EVIDENCE OF HEALTH DANGERS
"All research conducted for several years has not shown any evidence of a correlation of health effects and the use of mobile phones," Nokia's Hedman said, adding all Nokia phones fulfilled relevant safety standards set by public authorities.
The British Stewart inquiry, which published its findings in May, concluded there was no evidence of danger from mobile phone radiation but recommended tough controls be implemented, including dissuading children from using cellphones too much.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) already requires cellphones to meet radiation safety standards and all manufacturers are required to give their phones SAR levels to the commission before they are approved for sale nationally. Consumers can already get the radiation absorption numbers for specific models from the FCC, Hedman said.
But he said the challenge for manufacturers was to agree on how SAR -- which was the best way of measuring radiation -- values could be explained simply to consumers and that all manufacturers agreed on one single measurement standard.
Some nine manufacturers, industry bodies such as the CTIA, governments and other groups were now talking about moving away from using the current two standards -- one for Europe and the U.S. -- to one single global SAR standard.
SAR measures the maximum quantity or radiation absorbed by a kilogram of tissue from a cellphone. Mobile phones are, in effect, tiny radio stations that send and receive.
Earlier this month a neurologist in the United States filed an $800 million lawsuit against Motorola Inc as well as eight other telecommunications companies and organisations, claiming his use of cellphones caused a malignant brain tumor.
05:41 08-28-00 |
