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 

A

between the phone s antenna  the primary source of the RF  and 

dd

the person s head. The exposure to RF from mobile phones in 

ition

which the antenna is located at greater distances from the user 

al

(on the outside of a car, for example) is drastically lower than that 

 H

from hand held phones, because a person s RF exposure 

eal

decreases rapidly with distance from the source. The safety of 

th an

so called "cordless phones," which have a base unit connected 

to the telephone wiring in a house and which operate at far lower 

d Sa

power levels and frequencies, has not been questioned. 

fety I

How much evidence is there that hand held 

n

mobile phones might be harmful?

form

Briefly, there is not enough evidence to know for sure, either way; 

ati

however, research efforts are on going. The existing scientific 

o

evidence is conflicting and many of the studies that have been 

n (FD

done to date have suffered from flaws in their research methods. 

Animal experiments investigating the effects of RF exposures 

A)

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 

125