Mobile Phones - Motorola StarTAC Owner's Manual

understand that this type of cancer also occurs among
people who have not used mobile phones. In fact, brain
cancer occurs in the U.S. population at a rate of about 6
new cases per 100,000 people each year. At that rate,
assuming 80 million users of mobile phones (a number
increasing at a rate of about 1 million per month), about
4800 cases of brain cancer would be expected each year
among those 80 million people, whether or not they used
their phones. Thus it is not possible to tell whether any
individual's cancer arose because of the phone, or whether
it would have happened anyway. A key question is whether
the risk of getting a particular form of cancer is greater
among people who use mobile phones than among the rest
of the population. One way to answer that question is to
compare the usage of mobile phones among people with
brain cancer with the use of mobile phones among
appropriately matched people without brain cancer. This is
called a case-control study. The current case-control study
of brain cancers by the National Cancer Institute, as well as
the follow-up research to be sponsored by industry, will
begin to generate this type of information.
What is FDA's role concerning the safety of

mobile phones?

Under the law, FDA does not review the safety of radiation-
emitting consumer products such as mobile phones before
marketing, as it does with new drugs or medical devices.
However, the agency has authority to take action if mobile
phones are shown to emit radiation at a level that is
hazardous to the user. In such a case, FDA could require
the manufacturers of mobile phones to notify users of the
health hazard and to repair, replace or recall the phones so
that the hazard no longer exists.
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