San Francisco mulling phone radiation requirements

San Francisco has long been a city that has prided itself on being open minded and accepting. With that attitude sometimes comes a bit of paranoia.

This week the city council and mayor are expected to pass a new law forcing mobile phone vendors in the city to include labels that disclose the amount of radiation each handset emits.The measure has already been passed by the City Council 10-1 and now all that is left is for the Mayor to sign it into law.

While it's good for consumers to have information about what they're buying, I can't help but fear that this measure will do nothing more than further stoke paranoia about phones and push theories that have long been debunked (i.e. the 'cooked egg' hoax.)

It also shows an issue that has been an epidemic for San Francisco in recent years: misplaced priorities. As anyone who has spent any amount of time in San Francisco as either a pedestrian or driver will tell you, the most dangerous thing your phone can do to your brain in this city is get it splattered onto a windshield. While radiation dangers are at best an unproven theory, there is a very real everyday danger for auto accidents and hit pedestrians due to people not paying attention to their surroundings while talking on the phone.

If the city of San Francisco really wanted to protect citizens from the dangers of mobile handsets, they should spend less time wringing their hands over theoretical dangers and more time addressing real-world risks.