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Health and Safety Information
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specifies test methods and performance requirements for hearing aids and
wireless phones so that no interference occurs when a person uses a
compatible phone and a compatible hearing aid at the same time. This
standard was approved by the IEEE in 2000.
FDA continues to monitor the use of wireless phones for possible
interactions with other medical devices. Should harmful interference be
found to occur, FDA will conduct testing to assess the interference and
work to resolve the problem.
10. 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, gioma,
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.
However, none of the studies can answer questions about long-term