San Francisco Cellphone Radiation Law Unconstitutional, Claims CTIA

San Francisco passed a new law last month that requires all retailers to display the amount of radiation a cellphone emits. Predictably, that law is now coming under fire from CTIA, the wireless industry group. CTIA has filed a lawsuit to block enforcement of the ordinance.

“The ordinance misleads consumers by creating the false impression that the FCC?s standards are insufficient and some phones are safer than others based on their radio frequency emissions,” says CTIA, which seems geared up for this battle.

CTIA has already canceled plans to hold future conferences of its ‘Enterprise and Applications’ show in the city. The event this October will be the last one CTIA will have in San Francisco in the “foreseeable future,” it has said.

The effect of radiation from cellphones on users has become a highly contentious issue. As consumers become increasingly glued to their phones, researchers, environmental organizations and cellphone industry groups are debating the question of what exactly is the impact of the radiation emitted from the phones. So far, there has been no conclusive answer.

In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sets the acceptable radiation standards for cellphones. As part of the device certification process, all handset makers have to use an independent lab to test radiation emissions from the phone. The certificates and radiation levels are displayed on the FCC’s site along with the product details but they are not easily accessible to consumers.

Earlier this year, a non-profit organization called the Environmental Working Group created a database where customers can look up the Specific Absorption Rate–the rate at which energy is absorbed by a mass of tissue, a measure of radiation emitted–for their phones. San Francisco’s ordinance steps it up by requiring retailers to display this information in stores.

That doesn’t help consumers, says CTIA.

“The problem with the San Francisco ordinance is not the disclosure of wireless phone SAR values–that information is already publicly available,” says CTIA Vice President of Public Affairs John Walls in a statement. “CTIA?s objection is that displaying a phone?s SAR value at the point-of-sale suggests to the consumer that there is a meaningful safety distinction between FCC-compliant devices with different SAR levels.”

“The ordinance is not only scientifically unsupported, it violates the Supremacy Clause in Article VI of the United States Constitution and must be stricken,” says CTIA.

San Francisco city officials are fighting back.

“I am disappointed that the association representing the wireless communication� industry has decided to challenge our landmark consumer information law in court,” Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco says in his statement. “This law is not an attack on the wireless industry or their products.”

See Also: