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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 primary
subject of the safety questions
discussed in this document.
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 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 phones 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.
What research is needed to
decide whether RF
exposure from wireless
phones poses a health risk?
A combination of laboratory
studies and epidemiological
studies of people actually using
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