[NavinF]

> testing found that the model emits more electromagnetic waves susceptible to be absorbed by the body than permitted

SMH, they're talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ionizing_radiation

Next they'll issue an order to halt sunrise and the subsequent 1000W/m^2 of electromagnetic radiation

[PetitPrince]

> Next they'll issue an order to halt sunrise and the subsequent 1000W/m^2 of electromagnetic radiation

It's not halting sunrise but there's a directive[1] that basically says (amongst other) "don't work under the sun without protection".

[1] Amended proposal for a Council Directive on the minimum Health and Safety requirements regarding the exposure of workers to the risks arising from physical agents — Individual Directive in relation to Article 16 of Directive 89/391/EEC (Text with EEA relevance) (OJ C, C/230, 19.08.1994, p. 3, )

[RugnirViking]

well yes? Can you imagine working on a hot building site for 8+ with no sun shelter provided or even allowed onsite? a simple gazebo is a godsend, and very cheap for employers to provide, its no surprise something like that would be regulated.

Heat exhaustion and skin cancer are common in those kinds of industries.

[argiopetech]

If you can find a way for e.g., roofers to work in the shade, in sure you'd be handsomely compensated. Most of the building trades work in the sun by default.

[skywal_l]

> If you can find a way for e.g., roofers to work in the shade, in sure you'd be handsomely compensated.

Wear long sleeves.

Contact me privately for details about where you should transfer my compensation.

[RugnirViking]

it's not (necessarily) about working in the shade all the time, but having some shade available for breaks etc.

[PetitPrince]

It was just me trying to be a wiseass by reaction to OP argument that I felt like "omg next they'll want to regulate the sun!!11" by answered "yes actually yes, there is a regulation about the sun".

[SigmundA]

Cellphone level limits on light would be like requiring you stay inside with blinds closed and no lights on and you would probably still exceed them.

[yanellena]

The phone doesn't meet the regulations which means it can't be sold. Whether they're good regulations or not is another matter.

[HPsquared]

I think parent is questioning the premise of said regulations.

[saiya-jin]

I wonder why it took them 3 years to find out, I thought these radiation tests are pretty basic these days due to cancer scares some decade and half (?) ago. I think gsmarena publishes similar values in their summary pages, but maybe its just copy paste from release material.

[bondant]

I guess this is because the agency is underfunded. Their missions are not only to check the radiation on new phones but also to check all 2G/3G/4G/5G in France (about 200k) and investigated in case of radio-frequency problems.

[tuyiown]

> I wonder why it took them 3 years to find out

From the ANFR publication [1] «141 mobile phones, including Apple’s iPhone 12, have recently been tested to check compliance with limit SAR values».

I suspect they simply weren't tested before. sigh.

[1] https://www.anfr.fr/liste-actualites/actualite/temporary-wit...

[Algent]

Most EU regulations let manufacturers self certify they are observing them. This should come with heavy testing but sadly this is so irregular you can get away with a lot.

A few years ago a French tech journal caught several huge chinese PSU maker who claimed they had all certification but during actual testing they would catch fire or short under 50% of rated load.

[Fradow]

This was explained on French news: those radiation levels can vary with a software update. It's likely they were compliant before and a software update changed that.

Which also means the fix can be a software update. That was (according to the news) the likely way this would be resolved.

[fersarr]

Yea this should have been acted on faster. I wish we had more of this data easily available for everything. Ear buds are directly next to our heads.

[google234123]

It's perfectly fine to discuss if these are good regulations or not in this thread. Shame for down voting based on this.

[sebstefan]

The sun has ionizing radiations, this doesn't

Weird that we're regulating for 4W/kg of non-ionizing radiations

[NavinF]

It's the precautionary principle at work. Of course most people never consider the negative effects of such alarmist behavior. There are some pretty good examples on the wiki showing this happening throughout history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#Critic...

[stinos]

Weird that we're regulating for that

Not sure if you really mean that, but how is that so weird? It's a not man-made phenomenon and the regulation would go against freedom in far more serious ways than this regulation does. Likewise there is (in some countries) regulation against solarbeds but nog against the sun. However there is advice everywhere on how to deal with the sun: stay out of it at certain times and places. If you can and want.

[sebstefan]

The "that" was referring to the regulation of 4W/kg for non-ionizing radiations in consumer electronics, not the sun

Maybe the phrasing was ambiguous

[stinos]

Oh, right, yes I interpreted it the other way. Sorry but too late to edit or delete my comment..

[contravariant]

Is that the limit? Because it sounds like a lot, it's like hitting someone with a tennis ball every second. (unless of course I'm misunderstanding the definition)

[SigmundA]

Its 4w/kg averaged over 10g of mass receiving the highest absorption, so if the 10g of tissue near the phone gets 0.04 watts its 4w/kg but only 0.04 joules per second requiring 100 seconds to receive 4 joules.

Cellphone don't put out 4 watts let alone 4 watts per kilogram of a human full human, they might hit 4 watts per kilogram if you are only looking at a small amount of flesh near the phone which is what SAR looks at.

Its like determining CPU performance by looking at perf per watt just because has a high perf per watt does not mean its fast or faster than a much larger CPU.

For instance dancing is around 5 wh/kg for your whole body more than actually getting hit with a tennis ball every second!

[kaba0]

Not sure how you calculated that, but it’s more like standing beneath a quite strong LED lamp (~300W for around 80 kilos).

The reason it is relatively easy to surpass the limit in a phone is that you use it from quite close, and the energy density decreases exponentially with distance.

[contravariant]

I remember a fast tennis ball being something around 100J.

So something like 300W for a human body seems like quite a bit of energy. But maybe it's not like poison where it's maximum amount per kilogram bodyweight, but it's more like the maximum for any particular kilogram of tissue.

But even when pelting someone with uniform light rather than physical objects, a 300W IR lamp would be pretty noticeably warm I think.

Anyway it was more than I thought. I was expecting some figure that could easily be dismissed as 'impossible to cause any physical effect, let alone harm'.

[NavinF]

Humans are watercooled so we can dissipate small amounts of heat with zero side effects. It's all about temperature. You can easily get an RF burn[0] if you climb a cell tower and get extremely close to the antenna, but nothing happens if you hold a wifi router or phone that's transmitting at max power

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_burn

[wnoise]

*geometrically

[sebstefan]

In terms of heat, 4 joules would heat 27g of water (the weight of a ballsack) by 0.14°C

Maybe that's why

[BenjiWiebe]

0.14C/second, right?

[doloputer]

No, total.

Watts are per second, Joules are total energy (watts * seconds). 4 Watts would be per-second.

[eecc]

bad take, different frequencies have different absorptions and biological effects...

[NavinF]

We're talking about ghz frequencies whereas sunlight is terahertz. Latter interacts with human cells and a portion of it causes skin cancer. Former (non-ionizing radiation) causes a rise in temperature or passes right through.

People tried so hard to find the smallest negative effects of non-ionizing radiation (without p-hacking or silly surveys) and failed miserably. This is one of those rare cases where absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

[hilbert42]

E=hv

[archerx]

A microwave oven has produces non-ionizing radiation, would you put your hand inside one while it's on? It's non-ionizing so it should be 100% safe right?

[NavinF]

At the power levels we're talking about (5W)? Of course I would. The effects are well known: It heats your hands up at 5 joules per second.

Incidentally, Tech Ingredients has a great video on using microwave ovens without an enclosure and how to block similar directed energy weapons that use a lot more than 5W: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg_aUOSLuRo

[SigmundA]

Its not 5W in the EU its based on 10g of mass so its at least 100 times less than that which makes it more ridiculous, mobile phones transmit at 300 milliwatts peak omnidirectionally.

They are like holding a fast blinking very dim led light and being worried about getting burned or some other undiscovered physical phenomenon from EM while staring at a monitor putting much more into your face.

[archerx]

Go right a head then but I know prolonged no distance (touching skin) exposure to wifi RF antenna will burn you from the inside out. It was painful but it heals fast.

[sigilis]

What makes you say things like this that are easily verifiably false? I am reaching over and touching my WiFi router’s antennas right now and I’m not being “painfully burned from the inside out.”

I’m hoping the answer is a desire to make a joke and not something that indicates a disconnection with reality.

[haswell]

That’s because your WiFi router’s transmission power is limited.

RF burns are real, but generally aren’t going to happen with consumer gear designed to operate inside your house.

But climb a cell tower and get on the wrong side of a backhaul and you’ll get burned pretty quickly. You can probably get there with some routers running OpenWRT with the power cranked up (not recommending this).

(Worked on RF gear for years and have experienced high power RF output).

[hilbert42]

"But climb a cell tower and get on the wrong side of a backhaul and you’ll get burned pretty quickly"

No doubt cell towers will burn unless one has considerable skin area in contact with the metal mast. I recall being on broadcast transmitting masts where 10s of kW were being radiated and RF burns were accepted as an occupational hazard.

Keeping one's hands firmly clasped to the mast was essential to avoid burns. Nevertheless, some burns couldn't be avoided, for when clinging to the tower one's legs are often wrapped around the mast or a part of it. I recall a good pairs of jeans and overalls being ruined by the RF arcs between the mast and my knees. The pants were peppered with burn holes several mm diameter. Similarly, my knees had multiple RF burns on them.

One should wear shorts in such circumstances so one could keep in full contact with the metal surface but TX towers are often cold and windy places.

Incidentally, I once had a Seiko digital watch ruined on the tower, its LCD went totally black. Also, one can't use a digital multimeter either for the same reasons. However, with precautions we could use ancient analog multimeters so long as they used copper oxide rectifiers—as they had an upper cutoff frequency of about 10kHz. The only meters we found suitable were AVO-8s.

[goda90]

I can think of a few reasons why you might get different results. The plastic cover over the metal antenna might be thick enough to keep your skin away(inverse-square law). The version of WiFi has different frequencies(2.4 ghz vs 5 ghz). The Wi-Fi isn't actively transmitting at full power. Or you're simply not holding it there as long.

I'm sure we could come up with a repeatable experiment for this that doesn't have any risk of burning.

[gruez]

>The plastic cover over the metal antenna might be thick enough to keep your skin away(inverse-square law).

Doesn't the same apply for cellphones? They're not exactly known for having exposed antennas.

[SigmundA]

Just because touching a 1000w lightbulb will burn you does not mean a milliwatt led will. Getting burns is based heat which is based on power absorption, and phones do not put out enough power give you RF burns no matter how long you hold them against you.

[hilbert42]

"but I know prolonged no distance (touching skin) exposure to wifi RF antenna will burn you from the inside out."

Uh? I've never had that experience, any WiFi stuff I've used uses trivial levels of power.

I'd suggest you read my post on microwave radiation, also the one where I have received RF burns whilst working on transmitting towers where the radiated power was between four and five orders of magnitude higher than WiFi equipment.

[kaba0]

Wtf are you talking about

[kaba0]

Microwaves were used to heat up and reanimate frozen hamsters. You just obviously don’t do it at 1000W, unless you are planning on eating said hamsters..

But taking into account the amount of heat a gram of tissue can reasonably absorb, it doesn’t cause any biological change whatsoever.

[hilbert42]

Two separate issues are at work here. Ionizing radiation will cause damage to cells no matter the power level (however, at very low power levels such as the normal background radiation the damage is likely negligible).

Non-ionizing radiation such as microwaves produces heating effects. At low power you may perceive warming and nothing else, at high power you'll surely be burned.

Heating from microwaves can be more damaging than say heat from a stove because the longer wavelength means heating starts from one's insides and will cause considerable tissue/organ damage before one realizes what's happening.

Microwave ovens can be very dangerous if the door interlocks are bypassed and the door opened whilst it's operating. People who are seen on YouTube doing this are either ignorant of the dangers or are just plain crazy!

Microwaves, especially shorter wavelengths above 5GHz (that's about 5 times that of mobile phones) are especially damaging to the eyes as interior of the eye doesn't have a good way of dissipating heat.

I was taught never to look into waveguides even when only used with receiving equipment as even the local oscillator can have enough power to damage one's eyes if concentrated in a small area. About 1W/cm^2 has a noticeable heating effect and from about 5GHz (approx 6cm wavelength) the CSA of waveguides is small enough to concentrate EM radiation of, say, 1W to do damage to one's eyes.

For mobile phones scale that figure down as the longer wavelength dissipates the power over a greater area (also remember area goes up by the square of the wavelength which means that phone wavelengths are much less damaging than microwave frequencies (>3GHz).

I'm not up to date on the latest research but from what I was taught I'd be concerned if more than 0.1W/cm^2 were entering my eyeball. In fact, if I recall the Russian standard for exposure was 0.1W/cm^2 which was considerably tighter than the US figure of 1W/cm^2.

Keep in mind those figures were for the microwave band which starts at 3GHz. As mentioned, because of the longer wavelength of mobile phones it's unlikely one could exceed those figures whilst using a mobile.