Health and Safety Information 123
Appendix C: Consumer Update on Wireless Phones
medical device manufacturers, and many other groups, was completed in
late 2000. This standard will allow manufacturers to ensure that cardiac
pacemakers and defibrillators are safe from wireless phone EMI.
FDA has tested hearing aids for interference from handheld wireless phones
and helped develop a voluntary standard sponsored by the Institute of
Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). This standard specifies test
methods and performance requirements for hearing aids and wireless
phones so that no interference occurs when a person uses a compatible
phone and a compatible hearing aid at the same time. This standard was
approved by the IEEE in 2000.
FDA continues to monitor the use of wireless phones for possible
interactions with other medical devices. Should harmful interference be
found to occur, FDA will conduct testing to assess the interference and work
to resolve the problem.
10.
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 the 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, gioma,
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 phone 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.