People need to know if their mobile phone over-radiates

Opinion of Europeans for Safe Connections

SAR limits of mobile phones are supposed to protect consumers’ health. But what is the value of SAR limits if exceedances of the limits are not made known to the public right away?

Actual radiation levels matter

Over the last few years the National Frequency Agency (ANFR), the French governmental telecom watch dog, has been monitoring phones on the French market and is well aware of SAR exceedance but unfortunately doesn’t make it publicly known as soon as tests show it.

Phonegate Alert, the well-known French NGO, which informs about health dangers of wireless devices, keeps on pushing to take exposure limits of phones seriously, but the response of ANFR continues to be slow.

Many phones do not comply

The long list of phones, which didn’t comply in the tests, now counts no less than 45 models. They all radiated too much, even up to over 40% over the limit and can be considered dangerous to your health.

The latest non-compliant models according to ANFR are: DOOGEE S88, EMPORIA simplicity V27, iPhone 12, Motorola Edge, Essential Clap 20+. Where will this list end?

Nevertheless, ANFR is extremely slow to publish these breaches. It took three years after its launch on the European market for ANFR to announce that Apple’s iPhone 12 5G (model A2403) exceeded the authorized limit of the specific absorption rate (SAR) by more than 40% (5.74 W/kg instead of 4 W/kg) and requested its temporary ban. All these years, consumers were kept in the dark and were being exposed without knowing.

ANFR, having received and validated the correction proposed by APPLEin less than a week, announced that it would suspend its ban on sales on the national market and at the same time asked APPLE to make the correction available to all owners of this model in France. Important to know is that from experience Phonegate Alert expects the iPhone not to work properly after this software update.

It took ANFR 10 months to inform the public, but the software correction apparently could be done in just one week. Isn’t there something fishy about this?

Despite a recent reminder from the European Commission, ANFR has not yet publicly reported any information concerning the exceeding of regulatory SAR levels to the various telecom market surveillance authorities in the European ICSMS database. As a consequence these phones continue to be sold in the other EU countries.

Since 2019, the French Agency for Health and Environmental Safety (ANSES) has recommended that local SARs be tested in direct contact with the body. In 2020, at the request of Phonegate Alert, the French Governmentlodged a formal objection with the European Commission with support from other countries. Four years later, the trunk SAR of the iPhone 12 is still measured at 5 millimetres from the skin as are all mobile phones sold on the European market. This looks like a small difference but implies that radiation levels may really go over the top in practical use, since many users have their phones in direct contact with the body.

Europeans for Safe Connections supports Phonegate Alert

Europeans for Safe Connections supports Phonegate Alert in its quest to assure radiation levels of phones adhere to the legal limits and that the radiation is measured taking practical use of the phones into consideration: 0 mm from the skin.

At the same time science tells us also that long and cumulative exposures over several years will not be safe and may lead to serious health problems, even when within the legal limits.

Therefore Europeans for Safe Connections advises phone users to limit their exposure.