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Safety Guidelines
131
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