63
H
ealth an
d s
afet
y i
nfor
m
ati
on
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 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
Summary of Contents for SGH-X530
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