What’s Your Cell Phone SAR?

Do you know what your cell phones SAR is?  Do you know what SAR stands for?  I did not know until a recent piece on CNET brought it to my attention.  SAR stands for Specific Absorption Rate.  SAR is a measure of the rate at which energy is absorbed by the human body when exposed to a radio frequency (RF) electromagnetic field.  Basically, it is how much radiation you are being exposed to by an electronic device.  In this case we’re talking about your cell phone.  CNET’s piece covered the top five worst smart phones.  Phones like the Palm, Blackberry, Android, and iPhone were covered.  For all of you iPhone users, and I place myself in that group, you can relax.  The iPhone did not make the top 5 worst smart phones.  It actually had one of the best ratings for least amount of SAR we are being exposed to, a rating 0.78.  I guess Apple wants us to live a little longer and to keep buying their stuff.  SAR is determined by the power absorbed per mass of tissue and has units in watts per kilogram (W/kg).  SAR is normally averaged over the whole body, but in this case they looked at its localized activity near your ear.  The worst smart phones with the highest SAR were two Blackberry’s.  The Blackberry model Bold 9000 came in at 1.51 W/kg, and the Blackberry Curve 8330 was at 1.54 W/kg.  The other smart phones in the top five were the T- Mobile Dash G3, at 1.47 W/kg,  the Pixel Plus from Palm at 1.47 W/kg, and the Motorola Droid at 1.46 W/kg.  The current maximum U.S. limit standard is 1.6 W/kg, so you can see just how high these top five smart phones come in at.  Best defense, use a headpiece, preferably a non-powered one.  I’d personally avoid the blue tooth headsets – they emit their own SAR levels.

Photo courtesy of Apple, Inc.