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.

  • orclev@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.