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Mobile Phones In India To Display Radiation Levels Soon!
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The Government is enforcing strict norms, under which handset manufacturers will have to display prominently the radiation level emitted from the cellphone.
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Friday, December 23, 2011:
The Indian Government is now looking at enforcing stringent norms to control harmful radiations emitted by mobile handsets. According to reports, the present radiation levels emitted from a cellphone are injurious to health and this new move is expected to benefit over 900 million cellphone subscribers.
The Government is looking at educating people about the various ways in which a cellphone can be avoided. It wants to enforce the benefits of hands-free, usage of SMSs instead of voice calls and also issue health warnings for adolescents, children, pregnant women and others who have any kind of medical implants. The general consumers are unaware of the harm that cellphone radiations can cause to them. Mobile handsets emit harmful Electro-Magnetic Frequency (EMF) radiation, which can cause severe health hazards.
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Mobile communication uses Radio frequency (RF) as a medium and the rate at which RF energy is absorbed by the body is called Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). As per global studies, too much exposure to RF energy, which is beyond a threshold SAR value can cause significant health issues.
At present, India follows an SAR limit of 2 watts/kg in accordance with International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection Association (ICNIRP) norms. But recently, an inter-ministerial committee has now curtailed the SAR level for mobile handsets further to 1.6 watts/kg average over a six minute period and taken over a volume containing a mass of 1 gram of human tissue, states a TOI report. According to these latest norms, the handsets will now have to display the SAR level.
The guidelines that have been prescribed by the committee will lead to guidelines and legally binding provisions under the Indian Telegraph Act. Under this, the cellphones to be sold in India will have to comply with relevant BIS standards. It will also be compulsory for them to be sold with hands-free devices.
The manufacturer will also have to necessarily display the SAR value information of the mobile handset on its website along with the handset manual. Also, it will be compulsory to provide information on SAR values to mobile subscribers when they are buying the handset.
All the mobile handsets that will be manufactured or sold in India or even imported from other countries will have to be checked for compliance of the SAR limit. The companies manufacturing handsets in India will be required to self-declare SAR value of each handset.
In case of imported handsets, apart from self-declaration of SAR value, manufacturers will have to specify the SAR information in their documentation and an appropriate authority will verify them.
R Chandrashekhar, Secretary of the Department of Telecom (DoT), had earlier indicated that handsets will be covered by BIS standards and the DoT needs to approach them. However, the Indian Telegraph Act does not give any provisions for such compliance.
Now, amendments would be made in the Indian Telegraph Rules under the Indian Telegraph Act 1885. This is necessary for the government to enforce mandatory certification of SAR limit on mobile handsets.
According to the latest enforcements, the booklet along with the handsets or the user manual will have to contain five new safety precautions:- "Use a wireless, hands-free system with a low power Bluetooth emitter; ensure that cellphone has a low SAR; keep voice calls short or send text messages instead - an advice that applies especially to children, adolescents and pregnant women; use cellphone when signal quality is good; and finally people with active medical implants should preferably keep mobile handsets at least 15cms away from the implant."
The DoT and TEC websites will display a final list of SAR values of different mobile phones. India, along with Europe, Japan, Taiwan and Australia has followed ICNIRP standards, while other countries like the United States, Canada and South Africa follow IEEE standards.
Upasana Rajpal, EFYTIMES News Network
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