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Health and Safety Information 72
the federal level. The following agencies belong to
this working group:
•
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
•
Environmental Protection Agency
•
Federal Communications Commission
•
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
•
National Telecommunications and Information
Administration
The National Institutes of Health participates in some
interagency working group activities, as well.
FDA shares regulatory responsibilities for wireless
phones with the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC). All phones that are sold in the
United States must comply with FCC safety
guidelines that limit RF exposure. FCC relies on FDA
and other health agencies for safety questions about
wireless phones.
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 of wireless phones and primary
brain cancer, glioma, 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 phones RF exposures.
However, none of the studies can answer questions
about long-term exposures, since the average period
of phone use in these studies was around three
years.