1. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
2. Environmental Protection Agency
3. Occupational Safety and Health Administration
4. National Telecommunications and Information Administration
The National Institutes of Health participates in some interagency working group activities, as well. The 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.
The FCC relies on the FDA and other health agencies for safety questions about wireless phones.
The 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 subject of the safety questions discussed in this document.
2. Do wireless phones pose a health hazard?
The available scientific evidence does not show that any health problems are associated with using wireless
phones. There is no proof, however, that wireless phones are absolutely safe. Wireless phones emit low levels
of Radio Frequency (RF) energy in the microwave range while being used. They also emit very low levels of
RF when in standby mode. Whereas high levels of RF can produce health effects (by heating tissue), exposure
to low level RF that does not produce heating effects causes no known adverse health effects. Many studies of
low level RF exposures have not found any biological effects. Some studies have suggested that some
biological effects may occur, but such findings have not been confirmed by additional research. In some cases,
other researchers have had difficulty in reproducing those studies, or in determining the reasons for
inconsistent results.
3. 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 (RF) energy 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 the 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 do not 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
