NEW YORK-SVI Inc., Pompano Beach, Fla., has begun marketing a product it calls SafeTShield, which the company said blocks a significant amount of electromagnetic waves entering the human ear from mobile and cordless phones.
“As a company, we don’t take a position that wireless phones are harmful,” Russ T. Lentol, senior vice president and comptroller, told RCR.
“But if the studies coming out are even partially true, [SafeTShield] might be worth using, and it doesn’t require user behavioral changes, as is the case with headsets.”
SVI has applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a patent on SafeTShield, which is made of a protective mesh the company said “is constructed of materials previously used exclusively for the military.” SVI has configured the mesh so that it fits over the earpieces of cordless and cellular/personal communications services phones.
“The ear canal is the only area of the head not somewhat protected by the skull … The significant role of SafeTShield is (helping) prevent penetration of these electromagnetic waves in the brain through the ear canal,” SVI said.
Lentol said handsets, when enveloped in the mesh, cannot place or receive calls. Because electromagnetic waves are transmitted throughout the entire surface of a phone, SafeTShield could not be designed to help block all emissions without rendering the device useless for its intended purpose.
SVI, he added, bases its claims about the efficacy of the mesh on studies conducted by the Shanghai Measurement Research Institute in China and by an organization he called the KEC, which he described as a “quasi-governmental body in Japan.”
This research found the mesh will block up to 99 percent of electromagnetic waves in frequency ranges up to 2000 MHz, including those emitted by Global System for Mobile communications, Code Division Multiple Access, Time Division Multiple Access, PCS and all indoor cordless phones, SVI said.
“The concern over the harmful effects of wireless phone use that has re-emerged recently within the medical establishment has begun to attract the attention of much of the media and the consumer,” Lentol said.
“As wireless phones are … now part of everyday life, with cordless phones at home and cell phones outside the home, many people have developed new concerns that using their phones may induce potential health hazards.”
SafeTShield is a $25 response to those anxieties, he said.
