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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. FCC relies on FDA and other health agencies
for safety questions about wireless phones.
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 hand-held wireless phones with built-in antennas,
often called cell mobile or PCS phones. These types of wireless phones can expose the
user to measurable radio frequency energy (RF) because of the short distance between
the phone and the user’s head. 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 radio frequency 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 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 long-term exposures, since the average
period of phone use in these studies was around three years.
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