A consolidated lawsuit against Apple and Samsung filed by national consumer-rights law firm FeganScott is alleging that independent testing from a Federal Communications Commission-accredited laboratory has confirmed that radio-frequency (RF) radiation levels from Apple and Samsung smartphones far exceed federal limits.
According to FeganScott’s managing partner Beth Fegan, Apple and Samsung must take responsibility for misleading consumers about the levels of RF radiation emitted by their smartphones.
“The manufacturers told consumers this was safe, so we knew it was important to test the RF radiation exposure and see if this was true,” Fegan noted.
Fegan added that results confirm the RF radiation levels are well over the federal exposure limit, sometimes exceeding it by 500% “when phones are used in the way Apple and Samsung encourage us to.”
The FCC-accredited lab tested six different brand-new smartphone models at various distances, ranging from zero to 10 millimeters to measure the amount of RF radiation released when touching or in close proximity to the body. When tested at two millimeters, the iPhone 8 and Samsung Galaxy S8 were more than twice the federal exposure limit. At zero millimeters, the iPhone 8 was five times more than the federal exposure limit, and the Samsung Galaxy S8 was more than three times the federal exposure limit.
Filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, the lawsuit seeks to represent Apple and Samsung smartphone owners and wants the court to order the defendants to pay for medical monitoring and damages.
