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San Francisco backs away from cellphone radiation law, will distribute common sense instead

Science! It's the heady stuff that keeps the looneys in check and our feet planted on the earth. Back it up with a powerful CTIA lobbying effort and science can even move San Francisco policy. The  San Francisco Chronicle  is reporting that The City's law requiring cellphone retailers to label each device's SAR level as tested by the FCC has been put on indefinite hold, with a watered-down version likely taking its place. Surely, this is yet another example of big business and government colluding to the detriment of man? Not really, not this time. As Joel Moskowitz, director at the IC Berkeley Center for Family and Community Health, and even the FCC will tell you, the SAR value is a poor measurement of radiation intake for consumers: "The specific absorption rate isn't a very useful measure because it's the peak reading on a variety of tests conducted on cell phones to measure their radiation, but doesn't indicate the average amount of radiation a user wo...

Inhabitat's Week in Green: magic airplane skin, Japan's nuclear leak, and the circuit board table

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. As the nuclear crisis at Japan's Fukushima power plant continues to devastate the region and one reactor sprung a leak releasing tons of radioactive water, this week Inhabitat reported that green algae could play a critical role in cleaning up the spill. We also brought you Japan's latest radiation-detecting robot , and we took a look at how fallout from the controversial crisis is affecting energy policy around the world -- China is cutting plans for future reactors in favor of solar fields while Germany may trade 17 nuclear plants for wind farms. In other news, green transportation went from the soaring skies to the deep blue sea this week as we looked at NASA's self-healing "magic skin" that will protect planes from lighting, and Sir Richard Branson unveiled a streamlined eco sub that will explore the ...