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Safety Guidelines
Safety Guidelines
The FDA belongs to an interagency working group of the federal agencies that have responsibility for
different aspects of RF safety to ensure coordinated efforts at the federal level. The following agencies
belong to this working group:
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National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
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Environmental Protection Agency
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Occupational Safety and Health Administration
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National Telecommunications and Information Administration
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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.
3. What kinds of phones are the subject of this update?
The term ‘wireless phone’ refers here to handheld wireless phones with built-in antennas, often called
‘cell’, ‘mobile’, or ‘PCS’ phones. These types of wireless phones can expose the user to measurable
radio frequency(RF) energy because of the short distance between the phone and the user’s head.
These RF exposures are limited by FCC safety guidelines that were developed with the advice of the
FDA and other federal health and safety agencies.
When the phone is located at greater distances from the user, the exposure to RF is drastically lower
because a person’s RF exposure decreases rapidly with increasing distance from the source. The so-
called ‘cordless phones,’ which have a base unit connected to the telephone wiring in a house, typically
operate at far lower power levels, and thus produce RF exposures far below the FCC safety limits.