AMSTERDAM - The Dutch digital watchdog is looking into a French report saying Apple's iPhone 12 model breaches European Union radiation exposure limits and will ask the U.S. company for an explanation, according to an official quoted by the daily Algemeen Dagblad.

France's Agence Nationale des Fréquences (ANFR) told Apple on Tuesday to halt iPhone12 sales in France after tests that it said showed the phone's Specific Absorption Rate (SAR)- a gauge of the rate of radiofrequency energy absorbed by the body from a piece of equipment - was higher than legally allowed.

"A norm has been exceed. Fortunately, there is no acute safety risk but we will very shortly have a talk with producer," Angeline van Dijk, an inspector with the Nederlandse Rijksinspectie Digitale Infrastructuur (RDI), told the Dutch newspaper.

"The Netherlands attaches as much importance as France to safe use of mobile phones. Mobile phones must comply with Europeans norms."

Germany's network regulator BNetzA said it might launch similar proceedings and was in close contact with French authorities, while Spain's OCU consumers' group urged authorities there to halt the sales of the iPhone 12.

Apple said in a statement the iPhone 12, launched in 2020, was certified by multiple international bodies as compliant with global radiation standards, that it had provided several Apple and third-party lab results proving the phone's compliance to the French agency, and that it was contesting its findings.

  - Reuters