Personal Communicator User's Guide

FDA Update for Mobile Phones
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does not demonstrate any 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 development of cancer in laboratory animals.