specific absorption rate

[Sarton O'Brien]

On Tuesday 02 September 2008 15:51:00 Robin Paulson wrote:
> i was looking through planet earlier, when i saw this blogpost, which
> i'm sure others of you have read:
>
> http://blogs.thehumanjourney.net/finds/entry/20080901
>
> i gather it's a report on the effects of emitted radiation when the
> freerunner is used near to a person's body. is there anyone here who
> understands these things. would it be possible to explain what this
> means, in a more condensed terms and understandable way?
>
> i'm not looking for 'The Idiot's Guide to Mobile Phone Radiation', or
> anything like that, but something a bit simpler to understand. I'm
> sure there are others here who would be interested to here this too

I don't know the specifics now but I looked into it years ago. The end result 
was that any mobile with an internal antenna is more damaging to human cells 
than one with an external antenna. The theory being that the transmission is 
taking place further away from your body.

The only use I can see for the findings is to compare existing antenna models 
to pick the lowest value.

From memory the motorola startac, like 7 years after it's release, was still 
the lowest. Ericsson tended to have the higher values with nokia falling 
somewhere in between.

The way I see it is, there is a required/acceptable amount of power required 
to reach the nearest tower. Anything lower would be unacceptable and the 
findings then fall on the antenna design.

Currently nearly all phones omit an antenna and therefore increase the SAR 
(and decrease the signal quality). I admit, I've never understood why an 
antenna like the startac's han't been included in newer phones. It did retract 
after all. The alternative these days is to use a headset/ear piece (and 
probably leave the phone near other important parts of you body!).

The overall effect is that nearly all current mobile phones have a similar 
SAR, as far as I can tell anyway (give or take, usually based on the design of 
the internal antenna).

It's been a while so thing may have changed ...

Sarton