Fda Consumer Update - LG -TM510 Operator's Manual

FDA Consumer Update

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Devices and Radiological Health
Consumer Update on Mobile Phones
FDA has been receiving inquiries about the safety of mobile phones, including cellular phones
and PCS phones.
The following summarizes what is known –and what remains unknown—about whether these
products can pose a hazard to health, and what can be done to minimize any potential risk.
This information may be used to respond to questions.
Why the concern?
Mobile phones emit low levels of radiofrequency energy (i.e., radiofrequency radiation) in the
microwave range while being being used.
They also emit very low levels of radiofrequency energy (RF), considered non-significant, when
in the stand-by mode. It is well known that high levels of RF can produce biological damage
through heating effects (this is how your microwave oven is able to cook food). However, It is
not known whether, to what extent, or through what mechanism, lower levels of RF might cause
adverse health effects as well.
Although some research has been done to address these questions, no clear picture of the
biological effects of this type of radiation has emerged to date. Thus, the available science does
not allow us to conclude that mobile phones are absolutely safe, or that they are unsafe.
However, the available scientific evidence does not demonstrate any adverse health effects
associated with the use of mobile phones.
What kinds of phones are in questions?
Questions have been raised about hand-held mobile phones, the kind that have a built-in antenna
that is positioned close to the user's head during normal telephone conversation. These types of
mobile phones are of concern because of the short distance between the phone's antenna—the
primary source of the RF—and the person's head. The exposure to RF from mobile phones in
which the antenna is located at greater distance from the user (on the out side of a car, for
example) is drastically lower than that from hand-held phones.
Because a person's RF exposure decreases rapidly with distance from the source. The safety of so-called
"cordless phones," which have a base unit connected to the telephone wiring in a house and which
operate at far lower power levels and frequencies, has not been questioned.
How much evidence is there that hand-held mobile phones might be harmful?
Briefly, there is not enough evidence to know for sure, either way; however, research efforts are on-going.
The existing scientific evidence is conflicting and many of the studies that have been done to date have
suffered from flaws in their research methods. Animal experiments investigating the effects of RF
exposures characteristic of mobile phones have yielded conflicting results. A few animal studies, however,
have suggested that low levels of RF could accelerate the development of cancer in laboratory animals. In
one study, mice genetically altered to be predisposed to developing one type of cancer developed more
than twice as many such cancers when they were exposed to RF energy compared to controls. There is
much uncertainty among scientists about whether results obtained from animal studies apply to the use of
mobile phones. First, it is uncertain how to apply the results obtained in rats and mice to humans. Second,
many of the studies that showed increased tumor development used animals that had already been treated
with cancer-causing chemicals, and other studies exposed the animals to the RF virtually continuously—
up to 22 hours per day.
For the past five years in the United States, the mobile phone industry has supported research into the
safety of mobile phones. This research has resulted in two findings in particular that merit additional
study:
31 M510 Ver. 1.1.5