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Safety
●
National Telecommunications and Information
Administration
The National Institutes of Health participates in some
interagency working group activities, as well.
The FDA shares regulatory responsibilities for wireless
phones with the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC). All phones that are sold in the United States must
comply with FCC safety guidelines that limit RF exposure.
The FCC relies on the FDA and other health agencies for
safety questions about wireless phones.
The FCC also regulates the base stations that the wire-
less phone networks rely upon. While these base sta-
tions 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 ques-
tions discussed in this document.
3. What kinds of phones are the subject of this
update?
The term “wireless phone” refers here to handheld wire-
less phones with built-in antennas, often called “cell”,
“mobile”, or “PCS” phones. These types of wireless
phones can expose the user to measurable Radio
Frequency (RF) energy 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 pro-
duce 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 investigat-
ing the effects of Radio Frequency (RF) energy exposures
characteristic of wireless phones have yielded conflict-
ing results that often cannot be repeated in other labora-
tories. 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 stud-
ies that showed increased tumor development used ani-
mals 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.
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