
Cell Phones With the Most Radiation
- Author:
- Greg Emerson
- Publish date:























A New Way to Kill Brain Cells
Some people spend way too much time on their phones. Besides annoying those around them in line at Starbucks or wreaking havoc behind the wheel of a Mercedes, those heavy users are exposing themselves to another danger: radiation from their cell phones, emitted every time the device connects to the network. A new report from the Environmental Working Group ranks all phones from major carriers in the United States based on the Specific Absorption Rates, or SAR, of each model. The numbers, measured both by manufacturers and by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), represent the amount of radiation absorbed by the body when the phone sends a signal to its network. Some smartphones are able to connect to several types of networks, each with a different associated SAR, but since these phones tend to switch on the fly to whatever network is fastest, users are rarely able to control which one their phone is running on. For this reason the rankings presented here are based on the highest-measured SAR for each model. Among the results, a few makers stand out for their high or low performance on this metric: Motorola manufactures four of the 10 highest-radiation phones, with Blackberry following closely at three in the top 10. On the other side of the spectrum, Samsung occupies five of the 10 least-radiation honors, mainly thanks to their low-radiation basic phones. Conspicuously absent from these rankings are Apple’s two iPhone models, which sit in the middle of the list with average radiation emissions. Photo Credit: Endlisnis