Calling this “radiation” is technically correct, but the actual emissions are the radio frequency waves used for WiFi and radio (cellular, bluetooth, etc.) transmission. It’s not the types of...
Calling this “radiation” is technically correct, but the actual emissions are the radio frequency waves used for WiFi and radio (cellular, bluetooth, etc.) transmission. It’s not the types of ionizing radiation people typically think of when that term is used in popular media.
Overall this just seems like a weird step and makes it seem as if the EU has a particular axe to grind against American tech companies.
Except it seems they did meet the rules previously and also through independent testing agencies as mentioned in the article. Just, no. Non-tariff barriers to trade are rules that aren’t there to...
Except it seems they did meet the rules previously and also through independent testing agencies as mentioned in the article.
Rules are rules. Law is law.
Just, no. Non-tariff barriers to trade are rules that aren’t there to technically violate WTO agreements, but clearly designed (intentionally or unintentionally) to infringe on the spirit of free trade as outlined by the WTO. There is nothing especially sacred about rules or laws that very evidently have no real public safety concern associated with them.
Honestly, I don't think the issue with your comment is whether or not the rules are justified. It's that you seem to ascribe a motive to the regulator's actions which isn't supported by the rest...
Honestly, I don't think the issue with your comment is whether or not the rules are justified. It's that you seem to ascribe a motive to the regulator's actions
it seem as if the EU has a particular axe to grind against American tech companies
which isn't supported by the rest of your comment. Some of us live in the EU and are thankful that regulators play a proactive role in protecting customer interests (e.g. the GDPR, the USB-C mandate on Apple devices, EU fining Meta 1.2 billion euros for data privacy violations, etc).
Of course, reasonable folk might disagree with these regulations. However, it feels a little unfair to shoehorn in an attack against the EU in an otherwise good comment, given that the digression is neither necessary nor justified.
That's how non-tariff trade barriers work though. The classic example is automotive safety regulations, where countries will prioritize and weight tests that their domestic industry producers do...
Of course, reasonable folk might disagree with these regulations. However, it feels a little unfair to shoehorn in an attack against the EU in an otherwise good comment, given that the digression is neither necessary nor justified.
That's how non-tariff trade barriers work though. The classic example is automotive safety regulations, where countries will prioritize and weight tests that their domestic industry producers do well at and deprioritize the ones in other countries. So, for instance, American standards are held to front-impact collision tests because our cars are oversized and do well when slamming into things. But we don't prioritize rollover tests as much, because that's what European and Japanese cars are better at. If you just framed it in the abstract as "safety regulations" of course nobody would argue. But who regulators listen to when making the regulations also matters, and a lot of news coming out of the EU on tech regulation lately seems to have a distinct flavor of trying to make it a more difficult market for American companies to succeed in.
In this case, the fact that they immediately jumped to suggesting that Apple must issue a recall on these devices, rather than a more measured response like "mitigate the issues" or discussing their testing protocols says a lot.
NTBs do not arise as technical specifications. They arise due to the types of pressure industries exert on the policy making process. Regulatory agencies are going to have a lighter touch on the...
NTBs do not arise as technical specifications. They arise due to the types of pressure industries exert on the policy making process. Regulatory agencies are going to have a lighter touch on the stuff their domestic industries have a comparative advantage on because domestic industries are better connected to the policy-making apparatus than external ones and political systems are more dependent on them.
This is evidently not true. Repeated experiments show an increased cancer risk in rats at high radiation doses. Many countries, including the US - which arguably have stricter limits -, therefore...
very evidently have no real public safety concern
This is evidently not true. Repeated experiments show an increased cancer risk in rats at high radiation doses. Many countries, including the US - which arguably have stricter limits -, therefore have set "just to be safe" limits. Why the iPhone suddenly failed on repeated testing remains to be seen, according to Apple it is "related to a specific testing protocol used by French regulators".
I think you might have misunderstood or been misinformed by the article — it certainly doesn’t spend much time clarifying what it means by “radiation” except for a brief paragraph towards the end....
I think you might have misunderstood or been misinformed by the article — it certainly doesn’t spend much time clarifying what it means by “radiation” except for a brief paragraph towards the end.
While the word “radiation” colloquially refers to the kind that causes cancer (and the type you’re talking about with the rats etc), the type of radiation emitted by cellphones is not this same type.
Phones emit radiation mostly in the radio bands, which are long wavelength (much longer than the visible colour spectrum) and generally seen as safe at anything but the most extreme, industrial kinds of power levels. The kind that causes cancer is typically low wavelength, from just below the low end of the visible spectrum, and all the way down to X-rays and gamma rays, and this is generally called “ionising radiation”.
I don’t know of any phones that emit any ionising radiation, it’s just not a useful spectrum for long distance broadcasting.
Pretty sure the user knows that cell phone emissions are not ionizing and thus not supposed to cause cancer. But apparently there's evidence that they do. They aren't working with too many orders...
Pretty sure the user knows that cell phone emissions are not ionizing and thus not supposed to cause cancer. But apparently there's evidence that they do. They aren't working with too many orders of magnitude more than cell phone emissions here either; these aren't quite doses that make the emission limits seem ridiculously cautious. Doesn't quite seem like a "known to the state of California to cause cancer" type situation to me.
I wish more research would be put into the polarization property of electromagnetic waves. Article from 2015: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914 - Polarization: A Key Difference between...
I wish more research would be put into the polarization property of electromagnetic waves. Article from 2015: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914 - Polarization: A Key Difference between Man-made and Natural Electromagnetic Fields, in regard to Biological Activity
Abstract (emphasis mine):
In the present study we analyze the role of polarization in the biological activity of Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs)/Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR). All types of man-made EMFs/EMR - in contrast to natural EMFs/EMR - are polarized. Polarized EMFs/EMR can have increased biological activity, due to: 1) Ability to produce constructive interference effects and amplify their intensities at many locations. 2) Ability to force all charged/polar molecules and especially free ions within and around all living cells to oscillate on parallel planes and in phase with the applied polarized field. Such ionic forced-oscillations exert additive electrostatic forces on the sensors of cell membrane electro-sensitive ion channels, resulting in their irregular gating and consequent disruption of the cell’s electrochemical balance. These features render man-made EMFs/EMR more bioactive than natural non-ionizing EMFs/EMR. This explains the increasing number of biological effects discovered during the past few decades to be induced by man-made EMFs, in contrast to natural EMFs in the terrestrial environment which have always been present throughout evolution, although human exposure to the latter ones is normally of significantly higher intensities/energy and longer durations. Thus, polarization seems to be a trigger that significantly increases the probability for the initiation of biological/health effects.
The followup question for many people is, "Then why haven't I, personally, ever experienced any symptoms when I've been exposed to these waves?"
To address that, further studies like this one in 2020 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7139347/) talk about incidental factors that might increase effects in humans. The primary one they talk about here is something called "multiple chemical sensitivity" which affects a subset of the population.
In its 2005 official statement on EHS, WHO indicated there is “no scientific basis to link EHS symptoms to EMF exposure” meaning there is no accepted physiopathological mechanism to link environmental cause to disease. This is no longer the case. The basic low-grade inflammation and oxidative/nitrosative stress-related states we showed in EHS patients [10,11,22] are remarkable since they confirm the detrimental health effects of (1) non-thermal or weak thermal non-ionizing radiation, which were proven experimentally in animals [37,38,39] and in humans [11] exposed to different environmental stressors including ELF and RF EMFs, and (2) multiple man-made environmental chemicals [40,41,42], especially in the brain [43,44].
It's a shame this type of research is quickly handwaved away on many forums, as it's too easy to point at people and call them crazy. Let's not lump together actual research with obvious false claims like "5G causes COVID." (Not saying anyone here is doing that; just that it's an easy and lazy way to shut down certain lines of thought.)
Personally I'd been sitting on these couple of articles, not posting them despite coming across them months/years ago, because of that exact chilling effect.
Something I think that's worth reminding people is that in, in the US, the general philosophy around regulation is that we ban something when there's strong reason to believe it's a risk, while in...
Something I think that's worth reminding people is that in, in the US, the general philosophy around regulation is that we ban something when there's strong reason to believe it's a risk, while in Europe the philosophy is to allow something when there's strong reason to believe it's not a risk. So, even if the effect size may be on the whole small, it's not completely unreasonable for regulators in Europe to respond out of an abundance of caution.
And that's why the USA has a real big problem with having to recall stuff. Namely the glorious diversity of random chemicals that don't reveal their problems till decades later. Like cigarettes.
And that's why the USA has a real big problem with having to recall stuff. Namely the glorious diversity of random chemicals that don't reveal their problems till decades later.
I see more smokers and feel drawn to smoke by the peer normalcy of it in Europe. Actually this was an unexpected example that seems to run counter to the general theme of USA getting it wrong with...
I see more smokers and feel drawn to smoke by the peer normalcy of it in Europe. Actually this was an unexpected example that seems to run counter to the general theme of USA getting it wrong with public health trends.
I was mostly referring to how the cigarette industry ended up getting rooted in for the first 3/4 of the 20th century. I agree, probably not the best example. Asbestos and basically 95% of the...
I was mostly referring to how the cigarette industry ended up getting rooted in for the first 3/4 of the 20th century.
I agree, probably not the best example. Asbestos and basically 95% of the cosmetics industry pobably would have been.
I have a buddy in the Air Force. He knows folks who work on radar systems (the big ones, like PAVE PAWS) that crack jokes about not standing too close to the arrays with your junk, because you’ll...
I have a buddy in the Air Force. He knows folks who work on radar systems (the big ones, like PAVE PAWS) that crack jokes about not standing too close to the arrays with your junk, because you’ll end up shooting blanks (you’ll become sterile). There have apparently been some documented cases of fertility issues among that cohort. It wouldn’t surprise me if anthropogenic EM radiation is substantially different enough to cause health issues, but it does seem like one of those illnesses that is very non-obvious and hard to diagnose.
With radar sets, you also have a lot of high voltage equipment around because of the sheer amount of power needed. Basically, older radar sets generate ionizing radiation (x-rays I believe) as a...
With radar sets, you also have a lot of high voltage equipment around because of the sheer amount of power needed. Basically, older radar sets generate ionizing radiation (x-rays I believe) as a side product, which then does the damage. I'd presume it's the inverse photoelectric effect, s.t. there's a 1-1 correspondence between voltage [volt] and photon energy [electron volt]. Thus, high voltage -> ionizing radiation. Basically, junk in front of the antenna - fine[1]. Junk in front of the unshielded magnetrons and vacuum tubes - turns your junk into scrap. Enjoy prostate cancer too.
true, but does that cover all our bases? there was a study in 2016 that suggested a possible link to a type of heart cancer, don't know if it's been debunked or refuted:...
It’s not the types of ionizing radiation people typically think of when that term is used in popular media.
true, but does that cover all our bases? there was a study in 2016 that suggested a possible link to a type of heart cancer, don't know if it's been debunked or refuted:
In a quick review of the summary, it looks like they're exposing the rats to much more RF than would be absorbed by a human using a cell phone. They exposed rats to between 0 and 6 watts/kg of SAR...
In a quick review of the summary, it looks like they're exposing the rats to much more RF than would be absorbed by a human using a cell phone. They exposed rats to between 0 and 6 watts/kg of SAR exposure. That's a measure of how much radiation is absorbed by tissue.
By comparison, cell phone transmitters operate between 0.6 and 3 watts of transmission power, but only a small fraction of that is absorbed by a human body, and the body is much more massive than a rat's.
It is interesting that almost none of the rats in the control group ended up with the reported diseases, but the incidence rate in those that were exposed was also quite low - likely below the threshold for being statistically significant. Only two of the test categories were marked as being likely statistically significant.
i think they said they exposed the rats to an amount they expected a human to receive over a lifetime. so maybe it was a rate that would overwhelm the cellular "cancer-correcting" mechanisms, but...
i think they said they exposed the rats to an amount they expected a human to receive over a lifetime. so maybe it was a rate that would overwhelm the cellular "cancer-correcting" mechanisms, but it was at least cumulatively accurate.
It feels like you don't understand how the EU works. France is not the EU. France is an independent country, and only this country banned the phone. The Netherlands for example didn't make a big...
It feels like you don't understand how the EU works. France is not the EU. France is an independent country, and only this country banned the phone. The Netherlands for example didn't make a big deal out of it. They basically just asked Apple for an explanation first.
They should be using a term that doesn't evoke images of Chernobyl. "The iPhone 12 emits too much radiation" and "The radio transmitter in the iPhone 12 is too strong" will likley evoke very...
They should be using a term that doesn't evoke images of Chernobyl. "The iPhone 12 emits too much radiation" and "The radio transmitter in the iPhone 12 is too strong" will likley evoke very different reactions among people who only read the headline. Both are technically correct but one more precisely describes the situation while the other will drive more clicks.
That is Reuter's choice of words that you have a problem with here. The announcement by the National Frequency Agency neutrally states the facts without these implications. Temporary withdrawal...
That is Reuter's choice of words that you have a problem with here. The announcement by the National Frequency Agency neutrally states the facts without these implications.
Thank you, that is a much more direct and factual source. I must have a misunderstanding of how SAR or radio transmitting power is calculated. Cell phones are limited to 3W of transmitting power,...
Thank you, that is a much more direct and factual source. I must have a misunderstanding of how SAR or radio transmitting power is calculated. Cell phones are limited to 3W of transmitting power, so I don't see how 5.74 W per kg could be absorbed by the body. I'll have to do some more reading.
The only way the math makes sense to me is to concentrate a significant fraction of that power in rather little tissue. If 100g of your hand can block the antenna, then that's 30W/kg. It doesn't...
The only way the math makes sense to me is to concentrate a significant fraction of that power in rather little tissue. If 100g of your hand can block the antenna, then that's 30W/kg.
It doesn't make much sense to average out over a large amount of mass. If my foot gets irradiated, I don't divide by the mass of my body, but of my foot, because that's the better indication of what will happen.
Could well be that the dosages the french detected only apply to the fingertip that's just above the antenna or something.
Note that radiation energy decreases at a rate proportional to the square of the distance. In other words, exposure drops off quite quickly as you move away from the emitter. Your body will absorb...
Note that radiation energy decreases at a rate proportional to the square of the distance. In other words, exposure drops off quite quickly as you move away from the emitter. Your body will absorb more energy from a relatively low-power transmitter placed, say, directly next to your head than a much more powerful emitter half a mile away.
Apple claims they can come into compliance with a software update: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/09/15/apple-iphone-12-software-update-france-radiation/
It probably means they are weakening the antennas, which could mean some users could experience worse reception than before. Not great, but it's better than having the phone recalled or something.
It probably means they are weakening the antennas, which could mean some users could experience worse reception than before. Not great, but it's better than having the phone recalled or something.
Is this comment a reference to something? It seems very brief and I don’t understand the context… I think Roentgen is a measure for radiation, but have no mental map of the scale… is 3.6 less than...
Is this comment a reference to something? It seems very brief and I don’t understand the context… I think Roentgen is a measure for radiation, but have no mental map of the scale… is 3.6 less than a banana, or more than licking the Chernobyl “elephant’s foot”, or somewhere in between?
It's a reference to the Chernobyl TV miniseries of a few years past. There was a scene where they were measuring fallout of the incident, and they were recording 3.6 Roentgens, the main scientist...
It's a reference to the Chernobyl TV miniseries of a few years past. There was a scene where they were measuring fallout of the incident, and they were recording 3.6 Roentgens, the main scientist of the time saying "Not great, not terrible" in reaction(them not knowing that their radiation sensors were maxing out and it was going way past 3.6 Roentgens).
Although this finding certainly is not usual, according to this and other articles, there is no perceived link between this excess and any health risks yet:
Although this finding certainly is not usual, according to this and other articles, there is no perceived link between this excess and any health risks yet:
The agency’s tests are carried out at diagnostic lab that uses a liquid-filled mold simulating a human head and body with brain and muscle tissue. Devices transmit at maximum power for the six-minute test, the agency says on its website, acknowledging that the tests “do not reflect the most common use of a telephone.”
While mobile phones have been in widespread use for years, studies haven’t shown a clear link to adverse health effects like cancer, headaches and cognitive function, said Ian Scivill, a senior scientist with expertise in radiation at the U.K.’s Royal Hallamshire Hospital.
I mean, the FCC in the USA has strict regulations about radio emissions for a reason, and its not health. This could potentially wreak havoc on all sorts of other stuff if left unregulated.
I mean, the FCC in the USA has strict regulations about radio emissions for a reason, and its not health.
This could potentially wreak havoc on all sorts of other stuff if left unregulated.
Calling this “radiation” is technically correct, but the actual emissions are the radio frequency waves used for WiFi and radio (cellular, bluetooth, etc.) transmission. It’s not the types of ionizing radiation people typically think of when that term is used in popular media.
Overall this just seems like a weird step and makes it seem as if the EU has a particular axe to grind against American tech companies.
Except it seems they did meet the rules previously and also through independent testing agencies as mentioned in the article.
Just, no. Non-tariff barriers to trade are rules that aren’t there to technically violate WTO agreements, but clearly designed (intentionally or unintentionally) to infringe on the spirit of free trade as outlined by the WTO. There is nothing especially sacred about rules or laws that very evidently have no real public safety concern associated with them.
Honestly, I don't think the issue with your comment is whether or not the rules are justified. It's that you seem to ascribe a motive to the regulator's actions
which isn't supported by the rest of your comment. Some of us live in the EU and are thankful that regulators play a proactive role in protecting customer interests (e.g. the GDPR, the USB-C mandate on Apple devices, EU fining Meta 1.2 billion euros for data privacy violations, etc).
Of course, reasonable folk might disagree with these regulations. However, it feels a little unfair to shoehorn in an attack against the EU in an otherwise good comment, given that the digression is neither necessary nor justified.
That's how non-tariff trade barriers work though. The classic example is automotive safety regulations, where countries will prioritize and weight tests that their domestic industry producers do well at and deprioritize the ones in other countries. So, for instance, American standards are held to front-impact collision tests because our cars are oversized and do well when slamming into things. But we don't prioritize rollover tests as much, because that's what European and Japanese cars are better at. If you just framed it in the abstract as "safety regulations" of course nobody would argue. But who regulators listen to when making the regulations also matters, and a lot of news coming out of the EU on tech regulation lately seems to have a distinct flavor of trying to make it a more difficult market for American companies to succeed in.
In this case, the fact that they immediately jumped to suggesting that Apple must issue a recall on these devices, rather than a more measured response like "mitigate the issues" or discussing their testing protocols says a lot.
NTBs do not arise as technical specifications. They arise due to the types of pressure industries exert on the policy making process. Regulatory agencies are going to have a lighter touch on the stuff their domestic industries have a comparative advantage on because domestic industries are better connected to the policy-making apparatus than external ones and political systems are more dependent on them.
Non-tariff and technical barriers to trade are a substantial concern for the World Trade Organization and a primary focus for bilateral trade negotiations. See here, here, here (including the cited links). It also manifests within the EU common market as outlined here. The USTR does annual reports outlining the highest priority NTBs to address through bilateral negotiations on a country-by-country basis.
This is evidently not true. Repeated experiments show an increased cancer risk in rats at high radiation doses. Many countries, including the US - which arguably have stricter limits -, therefore have set "just to be safe" limits. Why the iPhone suddenly failed on repeated testing remains to be seen, according to Apple it is "related to a specific testing protocol used by French regulators".
I think you might have misunderstood or been misinformed by the article — it certainly doesn’t spend much time clarifying what it means by “radiation” except for a brief paragraph towards the end.
While the word “radiation” colloquially refers to the kind that causes cancer (and the type you’re talking about with the rats etc), the type of radiation emitted by cellphones is not this same type.
Phones emit radiation mostly in the radio bands, which are long wavelength (much longer than the visible colour spectrum) and generally seen as safe at anything but the most extreme, industrial kinds of power levels. The kind that causes cancer is typically low wavelength, from just below the low end of the visible spectrum, and all the way down to X-rays and gamma rays, and this is generally called “ionising radiation”.
I don’t know of any phones that emit any ionising radiation, it’s just not a useful spectrum for long distance broadcasting.
Pretty sure the user knows that cell phone emissions are not ionizing and thus not supposed to cause cancer. But apparently there's evidence that they do. They aren't working with too many orders of magnitude more than cell phone emissions here either; these aren't quite doses that make the emission limits seem ridiculously cautious. Doesn't quite seem like a "known to the state of California to cause cancer" type situation to me.
I wish more research would be put into the polarization property of electromagnetic waves. Article from 2015: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914 - Polarization: A Key Difference between Man-made and Natural Electromagnetic Fields, in regard to Biological Activity
Abstract (emphasis mine):
The followup question for many people is, "Then why haven't I, personally, ever experienced any symptoms when I've been exposed to these waves?"
To address that, further studies like this one in 2020 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7139347/) talk about incidental factors that might increase effects in humans. The primary one they talk about here is something called "multiple chemical sensitivity" which affects a subset of the population.
The meat of this article for laymen would be in Section 8: Proposed Physiopathological Mechanism and toward the end.
It's a shame this type of research is quickly handwaved away on many forums, as it's too easy to point at people and call them crazy. Let's not lump together actual research with obvious false claims like "5G causes COVID." (Not saying anyone here is doing that; just that it's an easy and lazy way to shut down certain lines of thought.)
Personally I'd been sitting on these couple of articles, not posting them despite coming across them months/years ago, because of that exact chilling effect.
Something I think that's worth reminding people is that in, in the US, the general philosophy around regulation is that we ban something when there's strong reason to believe it's a risk, while in Europe the philosophy is to allow something when there's strong reason to believe it's not a risk. So, even if the effect size may be on the whole small, it's not completely unreasonable for regulators in Europe to respond out of an abundance of caution.
And that's why the USA has a real big problem with having to recall stuff. Namely the glorious diversity of random chemicals that don't reveal their problems till decades later.
Like cigarettes.
I see more smokers and feel drawn to smoke by the peer normalcy of it in Europe. Actually this was an unexpected example that seems to run counter to the general theme of USA getting it wrong with public health trends.
I was mostly referring to how the cigarette industry ended up getting rooted in for the first 3/4 of the 20th century.
I agree, probably not the best example. Asbestos and basically 95% of the cosmetics industry pobably would have been.
I have a buddy in the Air Force. He knows folks who work on radar systems (the big ones, like PAVE PAWS) that crack jokes about not standing too close to the arrays with your junk, because you’ll end up shooting blanks (you’ll become sterile). There have apparently been some documented cases of fertility issues among that cohort. It wouldn’t surprise me if anthropogenic EM radiation is substantially different enough to cause health issues, but it does seem like one of those illnesses that is very non-obvious and hard to diagnose.
With radar sets, you also have a lot of high voltage equipment around because of the sheer amount of power needed. Basically, older radar sets generate ionizing radiation (x-rays I believe) as a side product, which then does the damage. I'd presume it's the inverse photoelectric effect, s.t. there's a 1-1 correspondence between voltage [volt] and photon energy [electron volt]. Thus, high voltage -> ionizing radiation. Basically, junk in front of the antenna - fine[1]. Junk in front of the unshielded magnetrons and vacuum tubes - turns your junk into scrap. Enjoy prostate cancer too.
It's reasonably well documented in Germany and at least somewhat well known. Look here, use your preferred translator. As always, ask away if the translater garbles things. TL;DR: 600+ recognized cases of service-related cancer in radar personnel.
[1] I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Also, with the other study I linked in this thread, it's probably only fiiine and not fine.
true, but does that cover all our bases? there was a study in 2016 that suggested a possible link to a type of heart cancer, don't know if it's been debunked or refuted:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf
In a quick review of the summary, it looks like they're exposing the rats to much more RF than would be absorbed by a human using a cell phone. They exposed rats to between 0 and 6 watts/kg of SAR exposure. That's a measure of how much radiation is absorbed by tissue.
By comparison, cell phone transmitters operate between 0.6 and 3 watts of transmission power, but only a small fraction of that is absorbed by a human body, and the body is much more massive than a rat's.
It is interesting that almost none of the rats in the control group ended up with the reported diseases, but the incidence rate in those that were exposed was also quite low - likely below the threshold for being statistically significant. Only two of the test categories were marked as being likely statistically significant.
i think they said they exposed the rats to an amount they expected a human to receive over a lifetime. so maybe it was a rate that would overwhelm the cellular "cancer-correcting" mechanisms, but it was at least cumulatively accurate.
It feels like you don't understand how the EU works. France is not the EU. France is an independent country, and only this country banned the phone. The Netherlands for example didn't make a big deal out of it. They basically just asked Apple for an explanation first.
What else should they be doing?
They should be using a term that doesn't evoke images of Chernobyl. "The iPhone 12 emits too much radiation" and "The radio transmitter in the iPhone 12 is too strong" will likley evoke very different reactions among people who only read the headline. Both are technically correct but one more precisely describes the situation while the other will drive more clicks.
That is Reuter's choice of words that you have a problem with here. The announcement by the National Frequency Agency neutrally states the facts without these implications.
Temporary withdrawal from the market of the iPhone 12 for non-compliance with EU regulation
Thank you, that is a much more direct and factual source. I must have a misunderstanding of how SAR or radio transmitting power is calculated. Cell phones are limited to 3W of transmitting power, so I don't see how 5.74 W per kg could be absorbed by the body. I'll have to do some more reading.
The only way the math makes sense to me is to concentrate a significant fraction of that power in rather little tissue. If 100g of your hand can block the antenna, then that's 30W/kg.
It doesn't make much sense to average out over a large amount of mass. If my foot gets irradiated, I don't divide by the mass of my body, but of my foot, because that's the better indication of what will happen.
Could well be that the dosages the french detected only apply to the fingertip that's just above the antenna or something.
The term that tends to be used in industry is “non-ionizing radiation”. There’s even a symbol for it (a tower emitting radio waves).
Note that radiation energy decreases at a rate proportional to the square of the distance. In other words, exposure drops off quite quickly as you move away from the emitter. Your body will absorb more energy from a relatively low-power transmitter placed, say, directly next to your head than a much more powerful emitter half a mile away.
Apple claims they can come into compliance with a software update: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/09/15/apple-iphone-12-software-update-france-radiation/
It probably means they are weakening the antennas, which could mean some users could experience worse reception than before. Not great, but it's better than having the phone recalled or something.
As soon as they do that you can cue the probe into allegations of forced obsolescence to push people to upgrade.
At least it's not 3.6 Roentgen
Is this comment a reference to something? It seems very brief and I don’t understand the context… I think Roentgen is a measure for radiation, but have no mental map of the scale… is 3.6 less than a banana, or more than licking the Chernobyl “elephant’s foot”, or somewhere in between?
It's a reference to the Chernobyl TV miniseries of a few years past. There was a scene where they were measuring fallout of the incident, and they were recording 3.6 Roentgens, the main scientist of the time saying "Not great, not terrible" in reaction(them not knowing that their radiation sensors were maxing out and it was going way past 3.6 Roentgens).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg5HOnq7zD0
Although this finding certainly is not usual, according to this and other articles, there is no perceived link between this excess and any health risks yet:
I mean, the FCC in the USA has strict regulations about radio emissions for a reason, and its not health.
This could potentially wreak havoc on all sorts of other stuff if left unregulated.