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15
seguridad y salud laborales)
Occupational Safety and Health
Administration
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 builtin
antennas, often called ‘cell’, ‘mobile’, or
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‘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 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.
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 accelerate the
development of cancer in laboratory animals.
However, many of the studies that showed
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