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18Safety Guidelines
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 ‘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 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
neuroma, 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 longterm exposures,
since the average period of phone use in these studies was around three years.
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