San Francisco Gives Cell-Phone Radiation Law Another Try

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a bill that would require a warning at stores that sell cell phones about the possible hazards of cell-phone radiation.
Last June, the City of San Francisco tentatively approved a bill that would have required merchants who sold cell phones within the city of San Francisco to display the "Specific Absorption Rate," an FCC-mandated specification of radiation, next to the phones. Failure to comply would result in fines of between $100 to $300.
The bill approved this week would amend that bill with new provisions. Interim Mayor Ed Lee must still sign it into law.
In July 2010, however, the CTIA filed suit against the city, arguing that officials had no right to hand down regulations on an issue already addressed by the Federal Communications Commission.
There has been no definitive link that scientists have found linking the radiation emitted by cell phones to cancer. In late May, the World Health Organization classified mobile phones as a possible risk for a specific type of cancer in humans.
The WHO and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) jointly said that mobile phones show a limited evidence of carcinogenity, which the WHO defines as the following: "A positive association has been observed between exposure to the agent and cancer for which a causal interpretation is considered by the Working Group to be credible, but chance, bias or confounding could not be ruled out with reasonable confidence."
But the same classification has also been given to gasoline and coffee, among others.
This month, other research has called other phone/cancer studies into question.
The new bill would mitigate the 2010 bill by proposing instead that customers would be notified of the dangers of cell-phone radiation, which would represent a strengthening of the law, as it includes an educational component, said Supervisor John Avalos.
"We are amending this ordinance...that would instead of having a rating per make and model of cell phone at point of sale, we would have a sign that merchants would provide in the stores close to the cell phones," Avalos said. "I would say that cell phone emit radio frequencies and that they would also have to provide at the point of sale -- they would have to provide at the point of sale a document sharing -- to share with buyers on how to protect themselves from radiofrequency emissions.
"Those measures you can take to protect yourself, include using a headset instead of having the phone next to your ear, or keeping the cell phone in a casing that is less conductive of radiofrequency and there are other measures as well," Avalos said.