The world's leading mobile phone makers said today they will start publishing information later this year about the level of radiation emitted by their phones in response to consumer concern.
The largest cellphone maker Nokia, the second-largest Motorola and the fourth-largest Ericsson, have agreed with a European standards-setting body on a way to measure radiation absorption on phones globally.
"There have been requests by some consumers that this information should be readily available," said Nokia Mobile Phones spokesman Mr Tapio Hedman. "We are providing them with information they feel is important."
The agreement with the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization's (CENELEC) comes after years of lobbying from consumer and other organizations for companies and regulators to agree on a global standard of measuring radiation emitted from handsets.
Reports have alleged that radio waves from mobile phones can affect the human brain. Last year, a UK government-sponsored scientific inquiry, chaired by Sir William Stewart, warned children to avoid excessive use of mobile phones because their thinner skulls made them prone to absorbing radiation.
"We have worked together with Nokia and Motorola on this. It will not be any kind of warning label, but specification information included in the phone package together with other technical measures," said Mr Mikael Westmark, responsible for health issues at Ericsson.
The issue has come to the fore in recent years as the usage of cellphones around the world has risen sharply and consumers spend an increasing amount of time talking or sending messages on their wireless devices.
At the end of March this year, there were 770 million mobile phone users globally and Nokia expects that figure to rise to one billion in the first six months of 2002.