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Safety Guidelines
]Environmental Protection Agency
]Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(Administración de la seguridad y salud laborales)
]Occupational Safety and Health Administration
]National Telecommunications and Information
Administration
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
radiofrequency energy (RF) 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, typicallyoperate at far lower power levels,
and thus produce RF exposures far below the FCC
safety limits.
LG500 ENG Rogers_1026 2005.11.7 10:26 AM ˘`73