
Phones Emitting the Most Radiation - ausjke
https://www.statista.com/chart/12797/the-phones-emitting-the-most-radiation/
======
ShorsHammer
Eating a banana entails more radiation exposure if this is something you live
in fear of.

World Health Organisation:

> A large number of studies have been performed over the last two decades to
> assess whether mobile phones pose a potential health risk. To date, no
> adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone
> use

FDA:

> the current safety limits are set to include a 50-fold safety margin from
> observed effects of radiofrequency energy exposure

FCC:

> There is no scientific evidence that proves that wireless phone usage can
> lead to cancer or a variety of other problems

National Cancer Institute:

> Studies thus far have not shown a consistent link between cell phone use and
> cancers

[https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-
sheets/detail/electrom...](https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-
sheets/detail/electromagnetic-fields-and-public-health-mobile-phones)

[https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation-
exposu...](https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation-
exposure/cellular-phones.html)

[https://xkcd.com/radiation/](https://xkcd.com/radiation/)

~~~
sigi45
Bananas have different radiation than mobile phones.

Atomic vs. Electromagnetic

~~~
ShorsHammer
Bananas give off ionizing radiation which has been extensively proven to be
dangerous for humans in large enough doses.

The radiation from phones is non-ionizing and from my previous comment you'll
see even the most cautious health agencies in the world aren't willing to
claim it's harmful.

Suggest you look at the xkcd chart.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation#Radiation_e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation#Radiation_exposure)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
ionizing_radiation#Health_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
ionizing_radiation#Health_risks)

~~~
ohiovr
Forget for a moment the proported damage allegedly caused by cell phone
radiation. Can you think of other kinds of real radiation that can indeed
cause harm to living tissue besides ionizing radiation?

~~~
jdietrich
A photon emitted from a mobile phone's antenna has ~4 orders of magnitude less
energy than a photon of visible light (E = hc/λ). If you're worried about your
mobile phone, you should be _terrified_ of light bulbs.

~~~
kakarot
Just for clarity, is that energy measured at the source, or at a certain
distance?

~~~
jdietrich
That's the energy carried by each individual photon. In terms of the number of
photons, a typical lightbulb emits one two to orders of magnitude more; the
number of photons illuminating a surface will reduce with the square of
distance (assuming an isotropic radiator).

The illuminance in direct sunlight is two or three orders of magnitude greater
than in an artificially lit room; sunlight also contains photons at UV
wavelengths, which can carry up to two orders of magnitude more energy than
visible photons.

Sunscreen is opaque at UV wavelengths but effectively transparent at visible
wavelengths, partly for aesthetic reasons but mainly because the lower-energy
visible photons cause negligible damage to skin. UV photons are sufficiently
energetic to break apart bonds in DNA, but visible photons only carry enough
energy to heat the skin.

Mobile phones are utterly feeble radiators, both in terms of photon energy and
the quantity of photons. In terms of your exposure to electromagnetic
radiation, they're a rounding error.

~~~
kakarot
If it's per-photon, isn't that a useless metric without discussing the amount
of photons being pushed out?

I'm not worried about non-ionizing radiation. I'm not even worried enough
about actual ionizing radiation sometimes. I'm just interested in the details
behind the typical phone antenna.

~~~
turbo_fart_box
You didn't read all the above replies

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weinzierl
This is just a collection of published maximum SAR values. The FCC has an
excellent article [1] about the reasons why these numbers are completely
unsuitable to estimate radiation exposure a user receives from a particular
phone model.

[1] [https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/specific-absorption-
rat...](https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/specific-absorption-rate-sar-
cell-phones-what-it-means-you)

------
BuildTheRobots
"'Clear evidence' of mobile phone radiation link to cancers in rats, US health
agency concludes"

I think the truth is more complicated than "nah, it's fine..."

\- also, bear in mind a class 1 mobile phone (3g) could be putting out 2 watts
of power [2]

[https://web.archive.org/web/20181101184440/https://www.indep...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181101184440/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/mobile-
phone-cancer-radiation-rats-tumours-research-science-toxicology-
study-a8612641.html)

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/14/mobile-
ph...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/14/mobile-phones-
cancer-inconvenient-truths)

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181101133924.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181101133924.htm)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm)

~~~
raynr
I'm not a scientist and it's difficult to parse these things sometimes but
from the links you posted it looks like, despite the headlines, the takeaway
is still "nah, it's fine..."?

They put rats and mice through 9 hours of 10m on, 10m off high power radio
exposure over their entire body. For the rats, the exposure started from when
they were in the womb.

After all of that, only the male rats were found to have a higher incidence of
heart tumours. The male rats also lived longer due apparently to fewer kidney
problems.

In female rats and the mice of both sexes, evidence of any cancers were
"described as "equivocal", meaning there were measurable increases in
molecules sometimes linked to cancer but no actual evidence."

I'm not trying to start anything and I think more research is always good, but
based on those linked articles the substantive conclusion still seems to be
that it's fine? I don't understand how the conclusion from those articles is
that there is "clear evidence" that radiation from mobile phones causes
cancer. Can someone explain this to me?

~~~
remote_phone
The point is, if there is no effect from ionizing radiation, then there would
not have been an effect no matter what the dose of RF was. But there was a
statistically relevant relationship between heart tumors and RF exposure.

So now that we know there is a relationship, the task is to dial down the RF
radiation and see at what levels it’s not safe.

~~~
Junk_Collector
You seem very invested in this but the results from the study don't make much
of a case I'm afraid. They found that rodents living their entire lives (from
gestation) in what is effectively a low wattage (100 Watts from the article)
microwave oven showed some higher instances of tumors in the heart, but only
in some specific portions of the population (males) and not enough to impact
their mortality rate which was for whatever reason higher in the control
group.

Also from the FDA quoted in the article, "We reviewed the recently finalized
research conducted by our colleagues at the National Toxicology Program (NTP),
part of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences within the
National Institutes of Health, on radiofrequency energy exposure. After
reviewing the study, we disagree, however, with the conclusions of their final
report regarding 'clear evidence' of carcinogenic activity in rodents exposed
to radiofrequency energy."

------
rplst8
E-M radiation is NOT the same as ionizing radiation.

~~~
beckler
So lets lay it all out there.

E-M radiation is non-ionizing, but you can still get burned by it. One of the
few major safety topics you'll learn in getting an HAM radio license is about
RF burns. However, you have to use a fairly large amount of wattage (like more
energy than a cell phone can even hold), and you have to stay located very
close to the antenna. So it is _possible_ to receive a burn from a device
emitting non-ionizing radiation, but you will not develop cancer from it. The
wavelength is just too low to damage your DNA.

[https://mirion.s3.amazonaws.com/cms4_mirion/files/images/con...](https://mirion.s3.amazonaws.com/cms4_mirion/files/images/content-
images/learning-center/what-is-radiation_002.jpg)

~~~
13years
However, there are possible links with burn damage to cancer.
[https://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20180206/hot-tea-linked-
to...](https://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20180206/hot-tea-linked-to-
esophageal-cancer-risk#1)

------
netjiro
Meh. The largest single radiation source in most peoples' everyday environment
are probably the ubiquitous H.sapiens ambulating all around them, emitting in
excess of 100W per unit at around 12 micron wavelength.

The things people are afraid of. Makes me sad.

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yjftsjthsd-h
So everybody here is focusing on the health angle. But what I want to know is:
is this a list of the phones that will always get the best reception?

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eqqn
Interesting to see the W/kg measurement all over the place between the same
manufacturer and same series phones.

Huawei P8 Lite 0.39, Huawei P8 - 1.72.

It doesn't seem to be a manufacturing requirement for some, as long as it is
below a certain threshold. Pricing, release dates, amounts of SIM cards
supported have little correlation at a glance.

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tekproxy
Turn the screen brightness down.

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t0mbstone
"Watts per kilogram"

Why does the weight of the phone have anything to do with radiation emitted?

By this measure, you could have an extremely heavy phone that emitted a high
amount of radiation, but it would be on the end of the list?

