Nokia 6100 User Guide

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Appendix B Message from the FDA 

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 subject of the safety questions discussed in this document.

The term wireless phone refers here to hand-held 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 

Federal Communications Commission safety guidelines that were developed with 

the advice of 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, typically operate at far lower power levels, and thus 

produce RF exposures far below the FCC safety limits.

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 brain cancer, glioma, meningioma, or acoustic 

neuroma, tumors of the brain or salivary gland, leukemia, or other cancers. 

None of the studies demonstrated the existence of any harmful health effects 

from wireless phone RF exposures. However, none of the studies can answer 

questions about long-term exposures, since the average period of phone use in 

these studies was around three years.