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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 Radio
Frequency 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.