Safety Guidelines
on the FDA and other health agencies for safety questions
about wireless phones.
The FCC also regulates the base stations that the wireless
phone networks rely upon. While these base stations
operate at higher power than do the wireless phones
themselves, the RF exposures that people get from these
base stations are typically thousands of times lower than
those they can get from wireless phones. Base stations are
thus not the subject of the safety questions discussed in this
document.
3. What kinds of phones are the subject of this update?
The term 'wireless phone' refers here to handheld wireless
phones with built-in antennas, often called 'cell', 'mobile', or
'PCS' phones. These types of wireless phones can expose
the user to measurable radiofrequency energy (RF) because
of the short distance between the phone and the user's
head.
These RF exposures are limited by FCC safety guidelines
that were developed with the advice of the FDA and other
federal health and safety agencies. When the phone is
located at greater distances from the user, the exposure to
RF is drastically lower because a person's RF exposure
decreases rapidly with increasing distance from the source.
The so-called 'cordless phones,' which have a base unit
connected to the telephone wiring in a house, typically
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operate at far lower power levels, and thus produce RF
exposures far below the FCC safety limits.
4. What are the results of the research done already?
The research done thus far has produced conflicting
results, and many studies have suffered from flaws in their
research methods. Animal experiments investigating the
effects of radiofrequency energy (RF) exposures
characteristic of wireless phones have yielded conflicting
results that often cannot be repeated in other laboratories.
A few animal studies, however, have suggested that low
levels of RF could accelerate the development of cancer in
laboratory animals. However, many of the studies that
showed increased tumor development used animals that
had been genetically engineered or treated with cancer
causing chemicals so as to be pre-disposed to develop
cancer in the absence of RF exposure. Other studies
exposed the animals to RF for up to 22 hours per day. These
conditions are not similar to the conditions under which
people use wireless phones, so we don't know with
certainty what the results of such studies mean for human
health. Three large epidemiology studies have been
published since December 2000. Between them, the studies
investigated any possible association between the use of
wireless phones and primary brain cancer, glioma,
meningioma, or acoustic neuroma, tumors of the brain or
salivary gland, leukemia, or other cancers.
None of the