Damn you, Cell Phones!

A few weeks ago, we learned Mistermayor will endorse a plan to require radiation levels to be listed next to cell phone prices at stores. In reading about this problem, I learned that one way to avoid the supposedly harmful effects of cell phone radiation is to keep the device away from you (read: text, don’t call) so part of me is glad to have a “real” reason to avoid human interaction.

But at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, The City’s war on radio frequency energy went to a new level.

First, Supervisor David Campos introduced a resolution urging “the federal Environmental Protection Agency to study the health impacts of wireless facilities and if appropriate to establish a safe level of exposure to radio frequency radiation emissions.” According to Campos, “There remains considerable debate and a degree of uncertainty within the scientific community as to possible health effects to people, especially children, from exposure to extremely low frequency electromagnetic and radio frequency radiation.”

Campos also is a co-sponsor of legislation proposed by Supervisor John Avalos on Tuesday that would “create new aesthetic standards for cell phone antennas.” The reason for the new rules is a “concern about proliferation of unsightly, ungainly cell phone antennas placed on our telephone poles.” Apparently, a working group that involves the Department of Public Works and the Planning Department has been drafting new guidelines and we can expect hearings on the proposed rules in the coming weeks.

To sum up City Hall and cell phone radiation:

They do not like it in our phones.

They do not like it near our homes.

They think antennas should look pretty.

These are the problems of our city.

Comments

[vansmack]

Looks like the Supes need a lesson non-ionizing radiation versus ionizing radiation. Cancer causation is not by large quantities of power and waves, but by the high intensity of the electromagnetic radiation. High intensity would be a nuclear reactor, an xray machine or you know, the sun! Not the power generated from my cell phone battery.

Yet another wasted study...

[DJTennessee]

I do not like absorption rate, I do not like the cancer fate.

I do not like 2 watts per kilogram, I do not like it Sam I am!

[Grant H]

Would you use your phone in bed?

Would you use it by your head?

Would you use it near your child?

Even if gamma levels were mild?

[Howard Epstein]

Record budget deficits.

Record unemployment.

Panhandlers on every corner.

Homeless using doorways and sidewalks as toilets and taking over the main library.

Campos and Avalos fiddle while San Francisco burns.

[Fredo]

Being decidedly non-creative (STOP JUDGING ME), I cannot, sadly, render this comment in verse.

That having been said, I suspect that adding "Wi-Fi" to this debate would shut this down, fast.

[Steve G]

John Avalos is my new favorite supervisor with no point. People with nothing to say in meetings should stick to saying nothing, lest they look stupid when they try to appear smart.

[Cell phone reviews]

Many scientific studies have investigated possible health effects of mobile phone radiations. These studies are occasionally reviewed by some scientific committees to assess overall risks. A recent assessment was published in 2007 by the European Commission Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks. Part of the radio waves emitted by a mobile telephone handset are absorbed by the human head. The radio waves emitted by a GSM handset, can have a peak power of 2 watts, and a US analogue phone had a maximum transmit power of 3.6 watts. Other digital mobile technologies, such as CDMA2000 and D-AMPS, use lower output power, typically below 1 watt, UVA.

[generic]

@Cell phone reviews

Wow. That was a damn-near useless comment. Are they harmful or not? Yes or no? I'm sure we could find a fairly definitive answer to this with a comprehensive internet search, but frankly, that's what I rely on these blogs for: to outsource my research.

I thought cell-phone radiation from individual mobile units was something only tin-foil hat wearers were scared of. I thought this question was settled. Why is SF fucking around in this issue? Don't make me fire up my online google machine.

[Anna Conda]

Why do you use it?

That's what I ask.

Cell phones in public,

Make you an ass.

Get off your phone,

for don't you see?

All those around,

called humanity.

The real cost is to all of our environments. Cell Phone use is a social disgrace and phones should be kept at home where personal matters should be aired. If you people could see yourselves!

[Tertius Tiercel]

If by "harmful" you mean to relate to our health, they "may" be harmful in some ways, but there is evidence to suggest that they "may" also prevent the spread of certain types of dementia (Alzheimer's).

If by "harmful" you include socially/behaviorally, yes.

[DJTennessee]

@ Anna Conda

I would like it if you would more frequently bring the phrase "If you people could see yourselves!" into the public discourse.

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