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For Your Safety 120
The National Institutes of Health participates in some interagency working
group activities, as well.
The FDA shares regulatory responsibilities for wireless devices with the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC). All devices 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 devices.
The FCC also regulates the base stations that the wireless device networks
rely upon. While these base stations operate at higher power than do the
wireless devices themselves, the RF exposures that people get from these
base stations are typically thousands of times lower than those they can get
from wireless devices. Base stations are thus not the subject of the safety
questions discussed in this document.
3. What kinds of devices are the subject of this update?
The term “wireless device” refers here to handheld wireless devices with
built-in antennas, often called “cell,” “mobile,” or “PCS” devices. These types
of wireless devices can expose the user to measurable Radio Frequency (RF)
energy because of the short distance between the device 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 device 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 devices,”
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 (RF) energy exposures
characteristic of wireless devices 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
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