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Safety Guidelines
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 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