User's Manual
2. 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 radio frequency 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 antennathe primary source of the
RFand 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.