San Francisco's controversial cell-phone law received a setback Thursday after a judge ruled that the city cannot post posters warning of radiation hazards.
The new law would require that all customers who purchased a cellular phone be made aware of the possible risks between cell-phone
San Francisco's controversial cell-phone law received a setback Thursday after a judge ruled that the city cannot post posters warning of radiation hazards.
The new law would require that all customers who purchased a cellular phone be made aware of the possible risks between cell-phone usage and the radiation they emitted. But Judge William Alsup called the warnings "true and misleading", according to a report by The San Francisco Chronicle.
The judge ruled that posters warning consumers of the risks of radiation would force the retailers to essentially transform their walls into billboards, promoting the city's message. That would prevent the retailer itself from speaking to customers itself.
The law would advise consumers to take precautions to avoid cell-phone radiation, which has never been conclusively proven to cause cancer. The city's fact sheet advises limiting cell phone use by children, using a headset, and avoiding cell-phone use in areas of weak signal, because it forces the phone to transmit at full power. A related poster makes similar claims.
"Those measures you can take to protect yourself, include using a headset instead of having the phone next to your ear, or keeping the cell phone in a casing that is less conductive of radiofrequency and there are other measures as well," said Supervisor John Avalos said, while introducing the law in July.
There has been no definitive link that scientists have found linking the radiation emitted by cell phones to cancer. In late May, the World Health Organization classified mobile phones as a possible risk for a specific type of cancer in humans.
The WHO and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) have jointly said that mobile phones show a limited evidence of carcinogenity, which the WHO defines as the following: "A positive association has been observed between exposure to the agent and cancer for which a causal interpretation is considered by the Working Group to be credible, but chance, bias or confounding could not be ruled out with reasonable confidence."
The CTIA, which represents the wireless industry, has opposed the new law, requesting a preliminary injunction from the judge to overturn the law on on Oct. 4. It was denied.
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