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Holy crap, yeah you don't want to be near something dropping 500W ERP.

If I recall correctly most cell phones are on the order of 1-2W since more would tear through your battery.

Quick Google searches indicate about three watts. To a first approximation, you are not concave when talking on a cell phone, so figure at most 1.5W travelling in your direction. Humans are definitely not opaque to radio, but let's suppose I am. Personally, I weigh 90kg, so for me it's something like 15mW per kg at most, for the small handful of minutes per day I spend on the cell phone.

My level of concern about this could not be lower.

Keep in mind if they're doing CDMA the power is dialed down to keep it uniform at the receiver(otherwise the code XOR doesn't work) so unless you're at the limits of reception it's probably not at 3w.

Agreed though, the power seems really low.

100-500mW/Kg might still be appropriate, though, if you are dissipating a significant fraction of that 1-2W in your body. I have to imagine that most meat-power-dissipation would be pretty well concentrated near the transmitter.

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