CTIA sues San Fran over SAR rates ordinance

CTIA is suing the City of San Francisco, saying an ordinance that requires retailers to post Specific Absorption Rates in a large font misleads consumers into thinking some SAR levels are unsafe.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court Northern District of California San Francisco Division, misleads consumers to believe that some SARs are unsafe, the trade association said. “CTIA has filed this lawsuit to prevent consumer confusion. The problem with the San Francisco ordinance is not the disclosure of wireless phone SAR values – that information is already publicly available. Consumers can learn a device’s SAR value from a number of public sources, and the value is often included in user manuals and listed on the websites of manufacturers and the FCC,” CTIA said. “CTIA’s objection to the ordinance is that displaying a phone’s SAR value at the point-of-sale suggests to the consumer that there is a meaningful safety distinction between FCC-compliant devices with different SAR levels.”
The association already has said it will no longer have its fall show in San Francisco, although the 2010 show still will be located in the city by the Bay because it was too late to change venues. The city passed an ordinance in June that requires retailers to post SAR levels in their signage alongside pricing and other information. When Mayor Gavin Newsom introduced the proposal in January, he compared it chemical companies and toxic levels of chemicals in products. “In addition to protecting the consumers’ right to know,” said Newsom, “this legislation will encourage telephone manufacturers to redesign their devices to function at lower radiation levels. This is similar to Prop 65, which dramatically reduced public exposure to toxic materials because chemical companies removed toxic ingredients from their products in order to avoid product warnings.”