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Section 12
180
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 primary subject of the
safety questions discussed in this document.
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
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