Cell Phone Group Sues San Francisco Over Radiation Law 242
crimeandpunishment writes "The wireless industry wants to put San Francisco's cell phone radiation law on hold. An industry trade group filed a lawsuit Friday trying to stop the law, which requires cell phone stores to display how much radio energy each phone emits. The group says the law, which is the first of its kind in the country, supersedes the authority of the Federal Communications Commission, and will mislead consumers into thinking one phone is safer than another."
What science is behind this? (Score:3, Insightful)
At some point you stop and realize that some of these people are out after a power trip and have no interest the public welfare. I consider myself pretty pro-consumer, usually support class actions and that kind of thing, but I look at this and have to ask 'what science is behind this?'
Seriously, I want these cell phone fearing Luddites to fail in a public way, to be exposed to the world for the scam artists that they are. Why? Because Luddites like these make normal pro-consumer people look like nut-cases by association. Just like Greenpeace has done more environmental harm than any company in history with their self righteous and reckless actions.
Makes me wish the judge could pass the following sentence in court "Luddites be gone, back to your cave and never to see civilization again"
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like Greenpeace has done more environmental harm than any company in history with their self righteous and reckless actions.
Citation needed. If you can make me believe that they've done more damage than Monsanto, Union Carbide, or BP, then you can probably make me believe anything. I'm willing to believe they're a bunch of idiots for the most part, but that doesn't make them more damaging. Mostly they want people to not do stuff.
How much *ENERGY* the phone radiate? (Score:2, Insightful)
They are trying to say the phones have to have a label about how much energy they radiate? What, are the stores supposed to have some magical ability to integrate over all time including the future the amount of POWER the phone puts out?
OR, can the phone sellers say the phone emits zero energy, arguing that at the time the sticker was applied, the phone was off and thus integrating over the time to apply the sticker the phone emitted no RF.
And are they defining the bandwidth over which this is being reported, or do they expect the sellers to compute blackbody radiation at some standard temperature.
I'd like to see somebody set up the demo that I saw once at the Very Large Array, where they had a sensitive receiver hooked up to an antenna, measuring the amount of 400MHz your body put out as blackbody radiation - can you imagine the sorts of morons that get excited about this stuff freaking out when they see they themselves are "radioactive"!
Folks, if RF scares you - DON'T USE A CELLPHONE!
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree wholeheartedly. These folks are exposed to electromagnetic radiation on all sides, every day of their lives. They get it from the power lines, their appliances, and every other powered device on the planet. Unless they live in a cave (cage), these folks are deluding themselves. Of course video's like these don't help the stupidity...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQr6SbYpTYM&feature=related [youtube.com]
These guys were even too dumb to use a hotplate. Looks like they used a lighter instead ;)
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's true that it may cause people to choose one phone over another, but it's just a simple fact about the phone. The "hypocritical luddites" can have a phone that has less "radio radiation" and anyone that knows better can still buy whatever phone they like. It's the same argument used against putting GMO labels on food. If it's something the consumer wants to know about, even if misguided, who are we to tell them "it's not important". Yes it can be used to spread FUD and yes it has adverse effects, but in general giving the consumer more information about a product is a good thing for the market.
Oh noes! Radiation! (Score:5, Insightful)
I was at the Home Depot today and saw you can buy a device which emits TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY WATTS of ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION! Oooga boooga! The radiation is gonna git ya!
Link to the monstrosity in question: Home Depot Death Ray [homedepot.com]
Re:OK, I see their point (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, like the "no verified therapeutic claims" you see on quack-medicine advertisements.
You know the one written in dark gray on a black background in a 6 point font at the very bottom of the screen that flashes up for like 0.25 seconds ?
I just want to watch the video (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have time to find a citation at the moment, but I'll lay out the math for you. Take the pre-nuclear scare rate of building nuclear power plants. That number gives you a ratio to the power grid and power needs. Extend that ratio to what it would be today if Greenpeace hadn't killed nuclear power plants in 70's.
Now realize that instead of everyone singing kumbyah and living in caves they decided to be part of civilization instead. Now realize that their power came from coal burning power plants instead of the nuclear power plants that would have built in their place.
Realize that the average coal plant releases more radiation into the atmosphere every year than three mile island did in it's meltdown. Take the radiation, the sulfur and all the other pollutants that were put into our environment by coal power plants. Add those numbers up, add up the number of injuries, add up the wanton devastation caused by things like mountain top mining and the reclassification of streams to no longer be wetlands. The coal industry today would be dead and buried if it wasn't for Greenpeace.
Run the numbers for the last several decades, let the math speak for itself. Do the same for places like Germany where Greenpeace has done even more damage to the environment. I then challenge you to find any company anywhere in history that comes anywhere near that.
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have time to find a citation at the moment, but I'll lay out the math for you. Take the pre-nuclear scare rate of building nuclear power plants. That number gives you a ratio to the power grid and power needs. Extend that ratio to what it would be today if Greenpeace hadn't killed nuclear power plants in 70's.
False dichotomy. PV solar panels were known to repay the energy cost of their production in eight years or less in the 1970s, and vertical-axis wind turbines were used by ancient Romans to pump water uphill (with an Archimedes screw.) Meanwhile, the plants that they were railing against probably should NOT be built; they're all extremely antiquated designs which unnecessarily produce large amounts of waste. I am against building any plants that don't involve fuel reprocessing, myself. That doesn't mean I'm pro-coal. You're saying that since the evil fuckers who run the power monopolies will only consider building shitty nuke plants that it's Greenpeace's fault that we don't put any genuinely cleaner power production online and I just can't agree with you.
Run the numbers for the last several decades, let the math speak for itself.
Since your entire argument is based on a bogus premise, math isn't really the problem here.
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:2, Insightful)
So, you're suggesting we should have labels specifying the number of ponies killed in the manufacture of anything, eh? After all, more information is a good thing for the market.
Face it, the RF emissions of a cell phone aren't "more information", but rather just more FUD to herd the idiots...
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't more detailed, it's just more strict, but unlike the recent pollution spat in California, there is no proof that radiation from a cell phone is harmful (as opposed to auto emissions). There is a reason that the FCC has jurisdiction here. It would make things nearly impossible for a company to sell a product at a national level if every state had different standards. Imagine if USB devices had different standards for 50 states. It would be an absolute nightmare, and not only for the vendor.
If the radiation level is far below the 'dangerous' level, then how is it even relevant unless they are measuring every bit of EM they are receiving from every electronic device they are exposed to? If the science behind a municipal decision isn't sound, but it gives the impression that it is, it can create FUD just by it's existence. In some cases, it is necessary to have standards at a federal level.
http://gov.ca.gov/press-release/8047/ [ca.gov]
In the case of auto/pollution standards stink (no pun intended) raised in California, there is an obvious public benefit to stricter standards, which California felt wasn't being met at the federal level. There are obvious health risks to exposure to those emissions, and countless studies proving that. Cell phones, on the contrary, have zero proof that they are dangerous to the public health.
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only false dichotomy here is the one you just presented. Solar panels were not viable for any widespread usage back in the 70's. They are only now starting to become viable, and even then only with significant government subsidies. Look at the public subsidies for solar power in places like Germany and Spain and you'll see that their solar panels have come at a very expensive cost. I say this as someone who likely put solar panels on my own house in the next couple of years.
Solar power in most environments only supplies spot power, much like wind power. They typically do very little when the sun is down (molten salt solutions that allow for night time use are just now coming into use). In case you haven't noticed society needs power outside of those times it is sunny or windy.
Certainly nuclear power plants should reprocess fuel. Your point about plants is moot though as greenpeace has consistently managed to kill funding for new and improved designs across different nations for decades. Greenpeace has never invested a single dollar into renewable energies, (you know trying to solve these problems) instead choosing that they prefer 'direct action' and political influence. You still haven't run the math, I think your afraid of the answers you'll get.
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's really no science behind it at all. This isn't about science, it's about ignorance and fear. It's nothing new, really.
In a very real sense all these crazy "OMG CELL PHONES! POWER LINES! VACCINE!" hysterics reflects the high rate of change in our society and peoples inability to keep up with it all. The average person has NO idea what the electro-magnetic spectrum is or about the nature of knowledge. The cliche's tossed about are along the lines of "well.. they just don't know everything about these things! What if it turns out the thing DOES cause cancer! Better safe than sorry!" and then pull some random fact like how nobody knew smoking was bad for you 100 years ago (which isn't exactly true).
That's maybe a better attitude than we used to have that "oh it's all perfectly safe, that asbestos, agent orange, and DDT won't hurt anyone!", but not by much. People are very very bad at understanding the everyday risks around them and at understanding the nature of knowledge and the nature of scientific inquiry.
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only problem is where do you draw the line, how much science does there need to be to justify having it at all?
None. If there's reason to believe that people would like to be able to discriminate between products containing or not containing ground up spiders then it's legitimate to require labels to let them make the choice, regardless of the health benefits or lack of health problems associated with ground up spiders. Same goes for any other aspect of a product. When there's enough interest to act is a political decision, not a scientific one.
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the same argument used against putting GMO labels on food. If it's something the consumer wants to know about, even if misguided, who are we to tell them "it's not important". Yes it can be used to spread FUD and yes it has adverse effects, but in general giving the consumer more information about a product is a good thing for the market.
Only if the information is not misleading, or misrepresenting the facts. In this case it seems very clear to me that putting labels on cell phones that tell people the emissions levels of the phone is extremely misleading. It conveys the idea that radio emissions are somehow harmful, which they aren't. Consumers in general are very poorly informed, and DON'T know anything about the actual studies which have shown no even correlation between cell phones and disease. So this idea that's out their that people can "make their own decision!" is just plain wrong, since the vast vast majority of consumers don't have the required knowledge or background to start making those informed decisions.
Remember, information and labels exist in a context, not an information vacuum. How many products tell you about how they have "more fiber" or "less sodium" or simply the required nutrition labels? All those labels are regulated by the FDA and have to have some scientific backing for health effects. The point being, people have come to expect that labeling the product itself has backing, ESPECIALLY if it's a government mandate like in SF.
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even worse, this is an area where there is a significant faction convinced that the truth is being covered up, much like the tobacco companies successfully did for years with the relationship between smoking and cancer. The prior success of this strategy by powerful corporate interests means that people have a justifiable lack of faith in the published science.
So give people the information, let them make their own decisions, and if they don't get cancer while the rest of us do, they can say I told you so, and the rest of us can feel like the idiot smokers with lung cancer did. Or not. Whichever outcome happens, the labeling seems like a minimally intrusive requirement.
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:1, Insightful)
China doesn't give a shit about the environment and coal is cheaper.
Why the lawsuit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why exactly is telling people MORE about the product they are buying a bad thing?
Sure just writing how many watts each phone emits might not reveal the whole picture, but the manufacturer can always include the frequency of the emissions and any other relevant information in the product description. It's not like the law prevents you from revealing anything except the power.
The manufacturer could also try to *gasp* educate the public - You have a study that shows the frequency of your phones emissions is not harmful while another phone will cause you to grow an extra ear within the next 2 years? Publish it, include it in your add campaign,... It might actually give you a bigger market share.
I don't see why any court should limit the amount of information customers have about products they are buying.
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually an educated consumer is bad for the market as it functions today. Just like it's bad for today's politician who depends on deceit and FUD to win the election. There's a reason they're making all those cutbacks in education.
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Think about your statement. If you have to list not only all the real, but additionally all the imagined hazards, or not just the contents, but the imagined non-contents, of a product, the packaging/labeling will have to be more mass than the product itself. At what point is this an unfair onus on the producer? Equal protection under the law implies that producers should have rights, too.
Re:Oh noes! Radiation! (Score:4, Insightful)
In any case, consumer choice and information is a good thing.
It's a good thing when the information is relevant, sure. It's a bad thing when you're misleading people. Next you'll be wanting warning about autism placed on all vaccines. Sorry, but when your "information" is only there as a way of furthering the agenda of insane conspiracy theorists, it's definitely not a "Good Thing".
Re:It's non-ionizing and harmless (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, how do you think your microwave oven works? It uses dielectric heating to rapidly vibrate (and thereby heat) the water molecules in food. Guess what - dielectric heating works on you too, and there is no cut-off range; even low frequency RF has some dielectric heating effect on the water and some body tissues. Just throwing some actual facts into this discussion. ...
Just throwing some actual facts into this discussion.
Right on man! Btw, did you know that your oven - you know, the normal kind that cooks food - emits infrared radiation? And your lighbulbs also emit infrared radiation? And there's no cutoff range; even low amounts of infrared radiation have some effects on water and some body tissues. You don't want to get cooked like a roast, do ya? Might wanna think about tossing out those bulbs.
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Google, it is your friend. Logic, you can learn it. Math, it has power, doesn't follow politics and can free your mind. Quit being a tool and open your damn mind already.
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because Greenpeace is all about attention whoring instead of actually improving anything. I watched a few years ago as they bashed Apple constantly for their environmental policies. For as long as I can remember, Apple has been several years ahead of pretty much everybody in the industry in terms of reduction of hazardous materials. Greenpeace was still picking on them. Why? Because iPod is popular. They picked their targets not based on what would actually do the most good or who was doing the most harm, but on who would garner the most attention.
The net result of this was that they gave good ratings to companies who treated the environment as a PR opportunity and droned on about all the things they planned to do (with no timeline) to help the environment, while bashing a company that was actually doing many of those things and actively working on many of the others. In short, they were doing precisely the opposite of what a respectable environmental organization does. I lost what little respect I had for Greenpeace when I realized that this was happening. To be fair, I never respected them that much....
Their position on nuclear power is similar. Instead of focusing on the biggest problems---coal, diesel, gasoline---they focus on something that will get them the most attention---nuclear power. In my book, this attention whoring puts them squarely into the "does more harm than good" camp. They've done more to distract the public from the real environmental issues than all the industry-funded think tanks and ad campaigns put together. I would go so far as to say that no single group has done more to *harm* the environmental movement than Greenpeace.
I'd be willing to bet that if you followed the money, an awful lot of really bad polluters are funding Greenpeace (possibly through shell companies). If the BPs of the world aren't funding Greenpeace, they should be. It's an army of people who are so genuinely clueless that they act like corporate tools and work against their own best interests on a regular basis. Those who would harm the environment truly have no greater friend than Greenpeace, and those corporations might as well acknowledge that.
There are countless environmental organizations that actually make tangible improvements to our environment. Greenpeace isn't one of them, and the best thing we as a society can do is to treat them like a misbehaving two-year-old---ignore their tantrums until they get bored/tired. There's really no point in doing anything else.
Because it is a bullshit scare tactic (Score:3, Insightful)
They know people will see "Radiation" and say "Oh shit it is going to kill me!" As the city council well demonstrated, people do not have a good understanding of different kinds of radiation. It will lead to consumer paranoia, perhaps lower sales, and worst of all bogus lawsuits. The hypochondriac types will feel sick, and blame the phones (this happens all the time with WiFi) and they'll want to sue.
Also there's a good possibility the label will be required to be done in a scary manner. So not something like "this device emits up to 3 watts of 1900MHz RF," but more like "this device emits up to 3 watts of radiation which is known to the city of San Francisco to cause cancer."
Over labeling isn't a good thing.
Wow - some push back in the US against cell phones (Score:1, Insightful)
Nice to see. Maybe we'll start moving away from irradiating everyone just so we can play games and talk on the phone everywhere.
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:3, Insightful)
They may not have a direct relationship to coal, but they do their damnest to sway public opinion against nuclear power using outdated facts from the 70s. The fliers they have handed out on that shiny glossy paper that definitely wasn't recycled never one mentioned a modern Lightwater Pressurised Reactor (the kind which can't physically melt down), or designs like the CANDU reactor which could actually make use of the world's current stocks of nuclear waste for power.
No they do things like take people on fancy tours to the Australian outback and show them the pretty sights, then they show them an open cut uranium mine to make the public all teary. They don't ever show them what a coal mine looks like. They do their best to sway public opinion against nuclear power and as a result our only proposed nuclear powerplant was killed off as an election promise by a new prime minister, and worse now it looks like our only research reactor may have no future either. Mean while we now derive 85% of our current power from brown coal, and the further 8 of our 14 proposed future powerplants are coal, and the remaining are coal seam gas, and coal power with carbon sequestration.
People fear nuclear power because they don't understand that it's not the 70s anymore. Governments fear nuclear power because they want to be re-elected. This IS because of greenpeace, and thus they are at least in part directly responsible.
Re:What science is behind this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps these fall outside of your knowledge, but there are advanced techniques such as reading things that were written at the time and talking to old people that can be used to bring the past to life.