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Safety Guidelines
Safety Guidelines
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 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 studies
demonstrated the existence of any harmful health
effects from wireless phone RF exposures. However,
none of the studies can answer questions about long-
term exposures, since the average period of phone use
in these studies was around three years.
5.What research is needed to decide whether RF
exposure from wireless phones poses a health risk?
A combination of laboratory studies and
epidemiological studies of people actually using
wireless phones would provide some of the data that
are needed. Lifetime animal exposure studies could be
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