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Safety
The FDA belongs to an interagency working group of the
federal agencies that have responsibility for different aspects of
RF safety to ensure coordinated efforts at the federal level. The
following agencies belong to this working group:
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Environmental Protection Agency
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The National Institutes of Health participates in some
interagency working group activities, as well.
The 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. 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.
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