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For Your Safety
109
A
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 tablets with the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC). All tablets 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 tablets.
The FCC also regulates the base stations that the tablet networks rely
upon. While these base stations operate at higher power than do the
tablets themselves, the RF exposures that people get from these base
stations are typically thousands of times lower than those they can
get from tablets. 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.
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
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