The world's major mobile phone makers will start in October to include information about the level of radiation emitted by their phones, a spokesman for Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson has said.
Mikael Westmark, responsible for health issues at Ericsson, said the move is the result of a recent agreement by the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization CENELEC on a common way to measure radiation absorption.
Westmark said the world's leading handset manufacturer Nokia of Finland, the second-biggest Motorola of the US and fourth-biggest Ericsson had cooperated with the committee to come up with a common standard.
Reports have alleged that radio waves from mobile phones affect the human brain.
US neurologist Christopher Newman filed last year a lawsuit against leading US phone companies, including Motorola, saying that the use of his mobile phone had caused a malignant brain tumor. Neither Ericsson, nor Nokia were named in the Newman lawsuit. All three rejected allegations that their products caused health hazards.
The new measure, or Specific Absorption Rate (SAR), shows the absorption of energy by the human body in watts per kilogram. The maximum safety limit is 2.0, while most phones on the market now showing values between 0.5 and 1.0.
"The SAR value that will be included in the phone package will be the maximum value, rather than the average one. When you talk, you very seldom reach the maximum level in a properly constructed network," said Westmark.
He said the SAR value was highest when dialling and then dropped steeply off after the connection was made.
