There's some total nonsense in this thread with some people clearly knowing nothing about SAR testing or legal limits.
SAR testing has nothing to do with causing cancer, so that's a red herring. SAR (specific absorbtion rate) is about the heating effects on the body/head. Radios cause heating of surrounding stuff due to absorbtion of the RF enegy. This is exactly how a microwave oven works: it's non-ionising radiation heating stuff/water/blood/animal-juice up, but obviously in the case of a microwave oven that's a far higher power in a farage cage for safety. But clearly no-one wants to cook their head well-done in a couple of minutes and suffer brain damage, so there's still heating effects from the lower power radios found in phones/laptops/etc, but at a far lower level.
So experts have worked together for years to work out what is deemed a safe level of heating you can have without it being detrimental to your health. There's worldwide limits on this set by FCC for the US and ETSI for the EU (amongst others). So it would have had to pass those limits when originally going on sale and usually confirmed by a 3rd party independent test house on behalf of Apple. So either the radio power has "accidentally"(?) been turned up over time via software updates, or Apple and/or the test house screwed the original testing, or failed to test it to all the different head/body requirements it should have been. Or the ANFR have screwed something up with the testing, but you can bet they'd be retesting multiple times if they found it to fail to be sure it's definitely failed before announcing this and going this far.
So this isn't ANFR/France being to blame for some weird law. This is France noticing that it fails the limits for the whole of Europe and any other parts of the world who share the same ETSI limits. This is obviously why they say they'll be sharing info with other regulatory bodies from other countries that use the same standards.
How did it happen? I dunno? But if it does fail, then Apple can likely check/retest and presuming they find the same results, turn the power down slightly.
So, should you all be terribly worried? Probably not massively. There's no magical limit where zero harm is caused or definite harm is caused. It's based on years of research to try determine what is a safe bet. So using this a normal amount is still probably better than being on a lower power phone for an excessive amount of time. It's like the speed limit: 30 mph isn't inherently guaranteed 100% safe, whereas 31mph will suddenly mean accidents and certain death! Sticking any radio/phone next to your head/in your hands will cause some heating effect. There's no way around it. Are the limits exact? No, of course not. They're no doubt set very much on the safe side. But there's a limit enshirined in law that's deemed safe, and Apple have to meet it, as does every other phone manufacturer.
Other thoughts: yes, the world is full of radio signals, but they die off roughly with the square of the distance (partly dependant on antenna directionality/gain). So a very high power transmitter 100m away isn't going to be nearly so bad for you as a low power one a couple of millimeteres from your head. So the "but there's lots of radios about and they're fine" argument is bollocks, because you're not holding the antenna or putting it right next to your head in those other cases.
And no, you don't have to make the phone heavier to pass the test. The W/kg is per kg of your head/flesh, not the phone. 😂
So if I had an iPhone 12 would I keep using it? Yeah. Anywhere I'm in good signal coverage it'll never be transmitting at max power anyway. If I'm somewhere with poor reception I'd probably try not chat for hours with it pressed as hard against my head as possible (like I'd probably do with any phone)! But if it breaks the law of what is legally deemed safe, it breaks the law. And ironically in this case, if you really are that worried, you can always make a tinfoil hat (but that could apply for any radio use)...
