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Saturday, December 24, 2011

Mobile phones in India will carry radiation tags and health warnings

The Indian Government is enforcing strict norms to control harmful radiations emitted by mobile handsets. According to norms, handset manufacturers will have to display prominently the radiation level emitted from the cell phone.

As the present radiation levels are injurious to health, this new move is expected to benefit over 900 million mobile phone subscribers.

Mobile phones will soon come with radiation tags and health warnings. The mobile subscribers will be the direct beneficiaries of stringent new government norms.

The general consumers are unaware of the harm that mobile phone radiations can cause to them. Mobile handsets emit harmful Electro-Magnetic Frequency (EMF) radiation, which can cause severe health hazards.

The government is looking at educating people about the various ways in which a cell phone 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 manufacturer will also have to necessarily display the Specific Absorption rate (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.

A final list of SAR values of different mobile phones will be uploaded on the DoT and TEC websites. So far, India along with Europe, Japan, Taiwan and Australia have followed ICNIRP standards, while markets such as the United States, Canada and South Africa follow IEEE standards.

The government also wants the instructions in the consumer handset booklet or user manual to contain five new safety precautions. These include:

• 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.

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