Nokia 6310i Quick Manual page 138

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:
• In a hospital-based, case-control study, researchers looked for an
association between mobile phone use and either glioma (a type of
brain cancer) or acoustic neuroma (a benign tumor of the nerve
sheath). No statistically significant association was found between
mobile phone use and acoustic neuroma. There was also no association
between mobile phone use and gliomas when all types of types of
gliomas were considered together. It should be noted that the average
length of mobile phone exposure in this study was less than three
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