SAFETY GUIDELINES
These RF exposures are limited by Federal
Communications Commission safety
guidelines that were developed with the
advice of 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 pre-
disposed to develop ca ncer 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 long-term
exposures, since the average period of
SAFETY GUIDELINES
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