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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 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 (RF)
energy 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