Why mobile phone users must be aware of SAR?

Today, like never before, mobile phones, smartphones, have penetrated the nook and corner of the country like no other product. Some villages which do not even have sanitation, potable water are "proud" to announce that they have mobile phones. Connectivity, Convergence, and all the catch words are buzzing in the industry circles and all other spheres of the society like never before.

Today's kid's are very much aware of what each model of phone has what "games" and how to play them! I was stumped to know that a pre-teen kid could handle all the features of a mobile phone better than me - honestly, I must be too backward in adopting technology, if not being a part of the R&D.

With the manifold increase of the mobile phones and users, concern is nowhere seen about how they can and/or affecting our lifestyles.

In this regard, the foremost thing that we must keep in mind is the Specific Absorption Rate or SAR for short, of a mobile/smart phone that we are using.

SAR is the measure of of the rate at which the body absorbs energy when exposed to a radio frequency and is used to measure the power absorbed from mobile phones (as per My Mobile magazine article).

The maximum SAR value for mobile phones has been set to 2 Watts/Kg by the ICNIRP (International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection) localised for the head and the trunk in the frequency range of 10MHz to 10 GHz. The SAR of each and every phone sold in the country supposedly "should" be below the value of 2 Watts/Kg.

Fcc and FDA are the regulatory authorities in US. If you wish to know the SAR value of any product, you can punch the FCC ID of that product and get the required product. A very good article on SAR on the FCC website is shared here for reference (http://www.fcc.gov/guides/specific-absorption-rate-sar-cell-phones-what-it-means-you).

Here is the link where you can find the SAR of a specific mobile handset - http://transition.fcc.gov/oet/ea/fccid/

While DoT (Department of Telecommunications) is the authority in India that has to take care of regulations, not much is done in practical terms. While it is supposedly required by the mobile manufacturers to publish the SAR values of the mobile phones, the standard set of values published are somewhat like this:

1. Model Name
2. Dimensions
3. Weight
4. Battery strength (Number of hours standby)
5. Screen size
6. Inbuilt and Expandable memory
7. Bluetooth
8. Wifi
9. 2.5G/3G/GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA, etc for smartphones
10. Camera (Front/Back) resolution
11. Video Capability
    
12. Accessories
13. GSM/CDMA/Dual(?)
    

The new fad is to add the availability of always-on functionalities like social networking plug-ins including but not limited to Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Twitter, etc.

Some external links posted on the wikipedia page of SAR are very good for further reading.
So, before you plan to buy, test your next mobile or smartphone, be sure to read about SAR and how it might affect your health.

Salud :-)