68
VX3200
Safety
●
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
●
Environmental Protection Agency
●
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
●
National Telecommunications and Information
Administration
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
energy (RF) because of the short distance between the
phone and the user’s head.
These RF exposures are limited by FCC safety guidelines
that were developed with the advice of the 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 telephone wiring in a house,
typically operate at far lower power levels, and thus
produce RF exposures far below the FCC safety limits.
4. 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-
*MT3200-(E)_new.qxd 5/16/05 12:45 PM Page 68
