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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s
Center for Devices and Radiological Health
Consumer Update on Mobile Phones
FDA has been receiving inquiries about the safety of mobile
phones, including cellular phones and PCS phones. The fol-
lowing summarizes what is known—and what remains un-
known—about whether these products can pose a hazard to
health, and what can be done to minimize any potential risk.
This information may be used to respond to questions.
Why the concern?
Mobile phones emit low levels of radiofrequency energy (i.e.,
radiofrequency radiation) in the microwave range while being
used. They also emit very low levels of radiofrequency energy
(RF), considered non-significant, when in the stand-by mode.
It is well known that high levels of RF can produce biological
damage through heating effects (this is how your microwave
oven is able to cook food). However, it is not known whether,
to what extent, or through what mechanism, lower levels of
RF might cause adverse health effects as well. Although some
research has been done to address these questions, no clear
picture of the biological effects of this type of radiation has
emerged to date. Thus, the available science does not allow
us to conclude that mobile phones are absolutely safe, or that
they are unsafe. However, the available scientific evidence does
not demonstrate any adverse health effects associated with
the use of mobile phones.
What kinds of phones are in question?
Questions have been raised about hand-held mobile phones,
the kind that have a built-in antenna that is positioned close to
the user’s head during normal telephone conversation. These
types of mobile phones are of concern because of the short
distance between the phone’s antenna—the primary source
of the RF—and the person’s head. The exposure to RF from
mobile phones in which the antenna is located at greater dis-
tances from the user (on the outside of a car, for example) is
drastically lower than that from hand-held phones, because a
person’s RF exposure decreases rapidly with distance from
the source. The safety of so-called “cordless phones,” which
have a base unit connected to the telephone wiring in a house
and which operate at far lower power levels and frequencies,
has not been questioned.
How much evidence is there that hand-held mobile phones
might be harmful?
Briefly, there is not enough evidence to know for sure, either
way; however, research efforts are on-going. The existing sci-
entific evidence is conflicting and many of the studies that have
been done to date have suffered from flaws in their research
methods. Animal experiments investigating the effects of RF
exposures characteristic of mobile phones have yielded con-
flicting results. A few animal studies, however, have suggested
that low levels of RF could accelerate the development of can-
cer in laboratory animals. In one study, mice genetically al-
tered to be predisposed to developing one type of cancer de-
veloped more than twice as many such cancers when they
were exposed to RF energy compared to controls. There is
much uncertainty among scientists about whether results ob-
tained from animal studies apply to the use of mobile phones.
First, it is uncertain how to apply the results obtained in rats
and mice to humans. Second, many of the studies that showed
increased tumor development used animals that had already
been treated with cancer-causing chemicals, and other stud-
ies exposed the animals to the RF virtually continuously—up
to 22 hours per day.
For the past five years in the United States, the mobile phone
industry has supported research into the safety of mobile
phones. This research has resulted in two findings in particu-
lar that merit additional study: