Come September 1, 2012, India will have stricter regulations to check electromagnetic radiation emission from mobile phones, a step that would address health concerns and also streamline the handset manufacturing industry.
Accepting the report an inter-ministerial committee, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will notify the new regulations in next few days.
The new regulations are mainly those being practised in the U.S. and European nations that mandate all mobile phone manufacturers to comply with a specific absorption rate (SAR is a measure of the amount of radio frequency energy absorbed by the human body while using a mobile phone) so that radiation does not affect human health. The company will also have to mention SAR value clearly on handsets to make customers aware of it. After concerns were raised following some international health studies, the DoT formed an inter-ministerial committee that recommended that mobile handsets should have SAR value of 1.6 Watts per kilogram averaged over a six-minute period and taken over a volume containing a mass of one gram of human tissue.
The committee also said that mobile handsets manufactured and sold in India or imported should be checked for compliance of SAR limit and no handsets of SAR value above the prescribed standard adopted in India should be manufactured or sold in the country.
Confirming that the new mobile handset radiation guidelines would be out soon, Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot told The Hindu that the government was serious on the entire issue and, therefore, was coming out with strict guidelines to ensure that only safe handsets were sold. “We cannot compromise with health issues…companies found flouting new regulations will be severely penalised. All there regulations are important to streamline the telecom sector that is growing at a fast pace.”