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Health and Safety Information
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aids and wireless phones so that no interference occurs when a
person uses a compatible phone and a compatible hearing aid at the
same time. This standard was approved by the IEEE in 2000.
FDA continues to monitor the use of wireless phones for possible
interactions with other medical devices. Should harmful interference
be found to occur, FDA will conduct testing to assess the interference
and work to resolve the problem.
10.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 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 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, gioma, 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 phone 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.