Mixed mobile messages

Today, the British Medical Journal published a study that concluded “There is no association between risk of early childhood cancers and estimates of the mother’s exposure to mobile phone base stations during pregnancy.”

An accompanying editorial goes further, setting out a recommendation to physicians to reassure patients:

Meanwhile, clinicians should reassure patients not to worry about proximity to mobile phone masts. Moving away from a mast, with all its stresses and costs, cannot be justified on health grounds in the light of current evidence.

This is an important statement by a leading medical journal that directly challenges much of the junk science and hysteria that is being promoted by some who appear at community town hall meetings who lack any credentials in relevant medical, engineering or epidemiological fields.

So it was somewhat ironic that yesterday the city of San Francisco decided that the US, already suffering from 51 different telecom regulatory authorities, needed yet another level of telecommunications red tape. Its city council voted 11-1 to require mobile devices to be sold with a disclosure to consumers of the specific absorption rate (SAR).

It seems to me that there are already bodies at the federal level who have the responsibility to ensure consumer safety, and provide clear consumer labelling where appropriate.

San Francisco’s vote threatens to cause confusion in the marketplace and raise the cost of doing business by adding a third tier of regulation to an industry that is already hobbled by state regulation of intra-state communications and federal regulation of other matters. 

What is the relevance of a higher or lower SAR number? Is a lower number safer?

If the federal agencies aren’t doing their job, that is a different matter – but there is no evidence of failure by the national authorities.

One of the reasons that I enjoy watching World Cup soccer is that is provides such a wonderful metaphor for organizational excellence. Unlike the games we see at neighbourhood parks, players at the top tier don’t converge on the moving ball. The panoramic camera angles show the choreography as team members back away and trust their mates to defend or attack, pass and dance around the field. Players know their jobs and they know what the roles are for the other members of the team.

Government bodies, at all levels, need to know their own job and trust their team mates to do the same. You can’t perform at a world class level if you can’t get each player to understand this. The consumer labelling and information requirements of the San Francisco ordinance isn’t what troubles me; it is the dysfunctional balkanization of regulatory authority that the ordinance represents.

In the end, this additional level of red tape could be an inhibitor to world class performance of the US communications sector.