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Health and Safety Information
134
from wireless phones. Base stations are thus not the subject
of the safety questions discussed in this document.
What kinds of phones are the subject of this
update?
The term “wireless phones” refers here to hand-held
wireless phones with built-in antennas, often called “cell,”
“mobile,” or “PCS”. These types of wireless phones can
expose the user to measurable radio frequency energy (RF)
because of the short distance between the phone and the
user’s head. These RF exposures are limited by Federal
Communications Commission safety guidelines that were
developed with the advice of 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
phone wiring in a house, typically operate at far lower per
levels, and thus produce RF exposures far below the FCC
safety limits.
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