Motorola 120T User's Guide download pdf (Page 80)

157

Additional Health and Safety Information

The U.S. Food and Drug

Administration's Center for

Devices and Radiological Health

Consumer Update on Mobile Phones

Additional Health and Safety Information

FDA has been receiving inquiries about the safety of mobile

phones, including cellular phones and PCS phones. The

following summarizes what is known—and what remains

unknown—about whether these products can pose a hazard

to health, and what can be done to minimize any potential

risk. This information may be used to respond to questions.

Why the concern?

Mobile phones emit low levels of radio frequency energy (i.e.,

radio frequency radiation) in the microwave range while being

used. They also emit very low levels of radio frequency energy

(RF), considered non-signiﬁcant, when in the stand-by mode.

It is well known that high levels of RF can produce biological

damage through heating effects (this is how your microwave

oven is able to cook food). However, it is not known whether,

to what extent, or through what mechanism, lower levels of RF

might cause adverse health effects as well. Although some

research has been done 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 any adverse health effects associated

with the use of mobile phones.

158

Additional Health and Safety Information

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. 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

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