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Health and safety information
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.
What research is needed to decide
whether RF exposure from wireless
phones poses a health risk?
A combination of laboratory studies and
epidemiological studies of people actually
using wireless phones would provide some
of the data that are needed. Lifetime animal
exposure studies could be completed in a
