Siemens SX66 - Manual (Page 20)

SX66 User Manual 20 SX66 User Manual 21
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 adverse health effects associated with the use of mobile phones.
What kinds of phones are in question?
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 antenna
– the primary source of the RF – and the person’s head. The exposure to RF from mobile phones
in which the antenna is located at greater distances from the user (on the outside 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. Animal experiments investigating
the effects of RF exposures characteristic of mobile phones have yielded conflicting results. A
few animal studies, however, have suggested that low levels of RF could accelerate the develop-
ment of cancer in laboratory animals. In one study, mice genetically altered to be predisposed
to developing one type of cancer developed more than twice as many such cancers when they
were exposed to RF energy compared to controls. There is much uncertainty among scientists
about whether results obtained from animal studies apply to the use of mobile phones. First, it
is uncertain how to apply the results obtained in rats and mice to humans. Second, many of the
studies showed increased tumor development used animals that had already been treated with
cancer-causing chemicals, and other studies exposed the animals to the RF virtually continuously
– up to 22 hours per day.
For the past five years in the United States, the mobile phone industry has supported research
into the safety of mobile phones. This research has resulted in two findings in particular that
merit additional study:
1. In a hospital-based, case-control study, researchers looked for an association between mobile
phone use and either glioma (a type of brain cancer) or acoustic neuroma (a benign tumor of
the nerve sheath). No statistically significant association was found between mobile phone use
and acoustic neuroma. There was also no association between mobile phone use and gliomas
when all types of gliomas were considered together. It should be noted that the average length
of mobile phone exposure in this study was less than three years.