By Amateur Radio Standards, Cellphones Can Be Unsafe

According to the FCC, Amateur Radio operators should calculate their RF exposure regularly to ensure station safety and be in compliance with accepted safe levels.
So I thought, why not do this with my cellular telephone?
Considering that the signal strength declines logarithmically as distance from the antenna increases, having the phone against your head must really give you a full dose of RF power.
So on this lark, I plugged in the following parameters into the handy RF Safety Calculator at U. Texas.
Watts: 0.25
Gain: 2.2
Distance: 0.8 (about 1″ or 2.5cm)
Frequency: 850mhz
This results in Estimated RF Power Density 5.5530 mw/cm2 which is about 10 times the Maximum Permitted Exposure limit in an uncontrolled environment (0.57 mw/cm2)
These numbers reflect a phone operating in a region of spotty coverage, when its power is at a maximum. So let’s see what we get with 0.1 watts. 2.2212 mw/cm2, still four times over the limit considered safe.
You can further tweak the numbers by reducing gain, reducing power and lowering frequency and you still end up with an excess dose. The only thing that will get it out of the unsafe range is to hold the phone several inches from your head.
Considering that frequencies used by phones are only increasing, this is going to be a bigger problem in the future.
So all those folks crying “cellphones cause cancer” may be on to something. As for me I’m using my speakerphone mode, or a headset which moves the transmitter away from my head.