- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- technology@lemmy.world
France halts iPhone 12 sales over radiation levels::Apple has been told it must recall every iPhone 12 sold in the country if it cannot fix the problem.
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Fair play to France. It’s above legal levels, properly threatening tech giants is what they need to comply.
Frances is notable for being very strict about cell phone radiation. They require every phone sold to include a headset with mic, not for hand free driving, but because the government says that talking on the phone normally exposes your head to dangerous levels of radiation.
We have no evidence of health danger when it comes to wifi & co, but customers should be able to choose if they want the phone away from their head or not is more how I understand it. Consumers here are indeed well protected, it’s quite nice tbh
Apple stopped selling the iPhone 12 yesterday, not because of France’s regulations, but because it is so old that it has been bumped out of the line by the iPhone 13.
As for why
EMR radiation isn’t the type that can cause cancer (which happens when the radiation wavelength is low enough to ‘ionize’ genetic material), but it can heat up tissue the same way a microwave might. With tissue heating, standards are likely set based on the risks / concerns that a country’s health authority thought were reasonable enough. This might also vary depending on different parts of the body.
If they set a standard and a malfunction is causing the phone to exceed that limit, it’s worth stopping sales so that it can be fixed.
Has there been any cause of RF leading to burns or fever? The idea that a cell phone could transfer enough energy to make even the slightest difference seems insane to me. I can’t imagine it’s physically possible for the health risk to be any worse than raising your thermostat by 1° would be.
This seems like nothing more than pandering to psuedoscientific quakery.
This is literally like if France said, “your flashlight is too bright; it’s causing cancer and must be stopped”. The use of the term, “radiation” in this context is disingenuous because they’re basically saying, “the wifi is too strong”. Technically visible light is the same kind of radiation as microwaves, radiowaves, wifi and x-rays. The reason why x-rays are considered harmful and wifi/microwaves/radio/visible light isn’t is because x-rays are much higher energy than the others, and are able to ionize materials they come into contact with. This can cause cancer. You know what doesn’t cause cancer? Wifi. Unless you’re shitting out enough microwave radiation (also not cancer-causing) to cook an egg, it’s pretty harmless. This is the kinda shit anti-vax Facebook moms get upset about. They hear “radiation” and their knee jerks so hard it shatters their jaw.
‘Here is a hard limit. Don’t exceed it’
Apple alone out of every mobile phone manufacturer, including themsleves as this is a single model in question exceeds
You: YOUR LIMIT IS BAD
My point is that the limit is goofy. Other manufacturers may not exceed it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s goofy to begin with.
I feel like the limit itself COULD be reasonable (there’s more to the potential harms than ionizing radiation /cancer), but popscience news sites are going to make misleading headlines anyways
Can you provide me with articles about that? Afaik the general scientific consensus is that as long as it’s not shoving out >100watts or is releasing EM radiation on an ionizing band (UV and higher), then it’s pretty harmless.
Can you warm up a chicken with wifi? Yeah, but afaik a signal that strong would probably already violate various international treaties regarding radio communications long before it got strong enough to have a noticable affect on the chicken.
Think about how many watts your microwave needs to cook food. That’s the amount of power it takes to heat up food using EM radiation that’s been roughly tuned with the intention of penetrating and heating physical matter by generating friction between water molecules. If I understand the article, the iPhone is putting out less than 6 watts. That’s almost nothing. Should there be a limit? Yeah, but to my knowledge, you’d start accidentally jamming communication frequencies around you long before it became a threat to personal health.
Ah ok that makes sense, that’s what I was wondering in another thread. If a phone COULD output a dangerous level of EMR.
Can you provide me with articles about that?
I was referring to the stuff you described, just didn’t know the specifics. Edited my comment to stress that
It’s perhaps helpful to realize that the difference between visible light and radio isn’t really that much, they’re both on the EM spectrum. You can generally think about non-ionizing EM radiation like you would light and not be too far off in terms of intuition on danger. How dangerous would you consider a 5W lightbulb? 60W? 100W? 500W? You probably wouldn’t want to press your face up to a 60W bulb, but you wouldn’t worry about having one sitting in your ceiling, or even a couple feet away from you. For reference FCC rules limit wifi access points to under 5W of power in most cases (there’s exceptions for point-to-point radios, but those are VERY uncommon except in some specific commercial settings). Likewise a phone sitting in your pocket, or even held up to your face that’s putting out even 10W while over double the power limit really isn’t anything to worry about.
The current limits for RF devices are VERY conservative, in part due to the massive fear mongering caused by article titles like the above one. The limits are set in such a way that there is absolutely no risk whatsoever, even for devices that massively exceed the limits. In fact I’d argue the limits have far more to do with interference than any actual health concerns. Nobody wants to have to battle their neighbors for wifi signal and a big way to accomplish that is to mandate very low power limits. Many lower power devices are far easier to manage in terms of interference than a few high power devices.
doesn’t matter if it is or not. No one else has a problem maintaining the requested safety level.
Letting things slip because “hurr goofy regulation” is why the US has exploding trains
A Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) of 5.2 W/kg technically does exceed limits and device manufacturers agree to meet regulations. However, SAR values are not constant and can vary with real-world usage. Phones often operate at lower power levels, reducing actual SAR exposure.
A weak microwave, for theoretical comparison, would likely put out hundreds of Watts per kg.
People are way more likely to get heat damage from the battery than the radio waves from a cellphone
Right, but a microwave is surrounded by a faraday cage, and the cell phone is next to you head. Does that make any difference?
Honestly asking, I have no clue.
Me browsing this on a 12Pro:
“Phew”
Cancer Pro Max
Radio waves are on the other end of the electromagnetic spectrum from cancer-causing light. It’s very well settled that radio waves cannot cause cancer.
It was a joke but yea
Next step: France bans the Sun
This is the best summary I could come up with:
On Tuesday, the French watchdog which governs radio frequencies also told the tech giant to fix existing phones.
The ANFR has advised Apple that if it cannot resolve the issue via a software update, it must recall every iPhone 12 ever sold in the country.
But the World Health Organization has previously sought to allay fears about radiation emitted by mobile phones.
Apple told the BBC it was contesting the ANFR’s review, and said it had provided the regulator with lab results from the tech giant itself and third parties which show the device is compliant with all the relevant rules.
France’s digital minister Jean-Noel Barrot told French newspaper Le Parisien the decision was due to radiation levels above the acceptable threshold, according to Reuters.
It comes as the Chinese foreign ministry issued a rebuttal against media reports which claimed government agencies had told staff to stop using iPhones.
The original article contains 477 words, the summary contains 149 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Did my 12 mini turn into a rare collectors item over there???
I bought iPhone 12 when it came out but returned it due to having yellow screen issues which have never been fixed. I bought 11 pro instead as it actually takes better pictures than the 12. I knew something was wrong with that phone 😅
Ever since I saw camera reviews online I crossed the 12 out from my options. The 11 (and 13) pictures were considered better and more color accurate in most blind test reviews.
Thoughts on 15?
I suppose there isn’t yet videos with camera comparisons, but this one has some good information about the 15 Pro.
I smell a class action lawsuit
Not sure. The EU legal systems are different to the US. You can’t just sue for millions of damges willy nilly you’d need to display how you’ve been out of pocket by some value and then sue for that. This kind of thing is very hard to put a finger on, also if apple update and/or recall the devices there is nothing to be wronged for (assuming they give refunds, updates, replacements).
I’m assuming in the US you can just sue apple for the fact it was above the limit and gain damages even when it’s had no measurable impact on you?
Sure, you can sue for damages which is…
*checks notes*
Nothing apparently, this is completely safe.
