What are the results of the research done already – Casio G'zOne Ravine User Manual

Page 182

Advertising
background image

181

Safety

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. FCC relies on FDA and other health agencies for safety

questions about wireless phones.

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 primary subject of the safety questions discussed in this

document.

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 radiofrequency

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

I

Advertising