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Abstract
Ms. [Ellen Marks], who said her husband Alan has a brain tumor after 20 years of mobile phone use, said she was active on the issue before San Francisco adopted its ordinance in June. She said the city's law is good for consumers. "It's a right-to-know ordinance," she said. "This ordinance is not talking about cancer. It's not talking about safety."
She said CTIA's decision to pull its show from San Francisco following this year's event amounted to "extortion," adding, "The CTIA was also sending out a threat to other cities not to mess with them."
An FCC official said recently that the agency modified the SAR language in an effort to help consumers, saying it had nothing to do with CTIA's lawsuit against San Francisco. "It's just an effort to show that it's a more nuanced issue than is readily apparent," the official said. But the move has drawn criticism from those who feel the FCC and other government agencies have done a poor job of addressing health concerns from mobile phone use.
The trade group responded to the protesters' complaints. "Every device that operates in the United States today has met stringent, scientifically-based federal safety standards, and are deemed safe by the FCC," said John Walls, CTIA's vice president-public affairs. "According to science, as long as devices are compliant with that standard, there is no comparative difference between their specific absorption rates. Science tells us they are all safe. The input of numerous international and U.S. public health organizations and agencies was considered in the setting of the standards, and they are under constant review. Any dispute with those standards ignores the vast amount of scientific expertise used to formulate them."