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98
For Your Safety
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 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 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 devices, so we do not know with certainty what the results of such studies
mean for human health. Three large epidemiology studies have been published since
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