By Paul de
Bendern
HELSINKI (Reuters)
- Mobile phone manufacturers plan to start labelling mobile phones
next year with the amount of radiation they emit in response to
concerns from consumers and organisations, leading producers said
on Monday.
Finnish Nokia,
the world's largest mobile phone maker, US Motorola and Sweden's
Ericsson, are working on developing a standard for measuring specific
absorption rates (SAR), a measure of radiation from cellphones.
``We are going
through the harmonisation process at the moment and waiting for
an SAR measurement standard which is expected to be finalised
by early next year,'' Nokia Mobile Phones spokesman Tapio Hedman
told Reuters.
``Once that
standard is in place, we plan to publish SAR value consistently
for all our phones globally.''
The move comes
as questions still linger about whether there is a link between
mobile phone usage and cancer or other risks to human health.
``This is
an issue consumers feel strongly about and we want them to get
the relevant information,'' Ericsson Mobile Phones spokesman for
health and safety issues Mikael Westmark told Reuters.
``With the
huge increase in mobile phone users more and more people want
information about the products they use.''
Years of research
have not found health risks from mobile phone radiation, but experts
say more research is needed.
There are
currently about 570 million mobile phone users globally and Telefonaktiebolaget
LM Ericsson expects this figure to grow to 1.4 billion in five
years' time.
The Cellular
Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA), the US trade body
which represents the industry, has urged mobile phone producers
to disclose radiation levels.
Ericsson said
it plans to start labelling its phone packages with SAR values
by April next year, while Nokia Oyj Abp has not given a specific
date but said it would do it once a global measurement standard
was in place.
Motorola said
it expected an agreement early 2001 and would then start labelling
its products as soon as possible.
Manufacturers
do not plan to label the actual phones with SAR values but rather
the packages that the phones come in.
``All research
conducted for several years has not shown any evidence of a correlation
of health effects and the use of mobile phones,'' Nokia's Hedman
said, adding that all Nokia phones fulfilled relevant safety standards
set by public authorities.
The British
Stewart inquiry, which published its findings in May, concluded
there was no evidence of danger from mobile phone radiation but
recommended tough controls be implemented, including dissuading
children from using cellphones too much.
The US Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) already requires cellphones to
meet radiation safety standards and all manufacturers are required
to give their phones SAR levels to the commission before they
are approved for sale nationally. Consumers can already get the
radiation absorption numbers for specific models from the FCC,
Hedman said.
But he said
the challenge for manufacturers was to agree on how SAR values
-- which was the best way of measuring radiation -- could be explained
simply to consumers and that all manufacturers agreed on one single
measurement standard.
Some nine
manufacturers, industry bodies such as the CTIA, governments and
other groups were now talking about moving away from using the
current two standards -- one for Europe and one for the US --
to a single global SAR standard.
SAR measures
the maximum quantity or radiation absorbed by a kilogram of tissue
from a cellphone.
Mobile phones
are, in effect, tiny radio stations that send and receive.
Earlier this
month, a neurologist in the United States filed an $800 million
lawsuit against Motorola Inc as well as eight other telecommunications
companies and organisations, claiming his use of cellphones caused
a malignant brain tumor.
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