A recent NY Times blog presents a website that details the measured radiation from different cellphones (you can search for yours by its manufacturer and model). The web site also ranks the highest and lowest emitting phones. 1.6 w/kg is the highest allowed in the U.S.

The highest was Motorola V95s (below.) The lowest was the LG 6G800. I’ve never heard of either of them.

Other popular examples: LG Chocolate (1.29 or 1.13 depending on model.

Apple iPhone, both 4GB and 8GB (.974 w/kg)

T-Mobile Sidekicks (From .5-.89 w/kg)

Razr phones varied, but seemed to be low for the most part. (maybe because the phone is lightweight…I don’t know if that has anything to do with it).

My Nokia 6215i, a fairly popular phone (because it was one of Verizon’s free phones last year) came in at .83 w/kg. It is shown at the right.

Now how does this translate to cell phone risk? I don’t know that we can actually pin-point that yet. A couple of things to think about though: First, just because the FCC caps the limit at 1.6 w/kg doesn’t mean that anything lower than that is safe. We also don’t know how much your chance of getting a tumor increases based on small wattage jumps (i.e. 1.3 compared to 1.34). They have found there to be changes in biological activity based on low levels of radiation though. I’m not familiar with exact numbers yet…

Studies have definitely linked tumors to cell phone use. Now that we know that there is a link, we need to be smart consumers. If you must buy a cell phone, for now, stick with one that emits the least radiation possible and try not to talk too much. I don’t know what else we can really do besides stop using them.