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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 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 hand-held wireless phones with built-in
antennas, often called "cell, " "mobile, " or "PCS" phones. These types of wireless
phones can expose the user to measurable radiofrequency energy (RF) because of
the short distance between the phone and the user' s head. These RF exposures are
limited by Federal Communications Commission safety guidelines that were devel-
oped with the advice of 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 radiofrequency 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 acceler-
ate 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 predisposed 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, glioma, meningioma, or acoustic
neu-roma, 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.
5. 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
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