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For Your Safety 149
The FDA belongs to an interagency working group of the federal agencies that
have responsibility for different aspects of RF safety to ensure coordinated efforts
at the federal level. The following agencies belong to this working group:
Ţ National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
Ţ Environmental Protection Agency
Ţ Occupational Safety and Health Administration
Ţ 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 (RF) energy 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.
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