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Safety
belong to this working group:
• National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Environmental
Protection Agency
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration
• 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 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
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