Panasonic EB-TX310 User Manual

Consumer Update 81

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(Published by U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Devices and Radiological 
Health, October 20, 1999.)
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.

Mobile phones emit low levels of radiofrequency energy (i.e., radiofrequency radiation) in 
the microwave range while being used. They also emit very low levels of radiofrequency 
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.

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. 

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 of mobile phones. First, it is uncertain how to apply the results 
obtained in rats and mice to humans. Second, many of the studies that showed increased 
tumor development used animals that had already been treated with cancer-causing 
chemicals, and other studies exposed the animals to the RF virtually continuously — up to 
22 hours per day.
For the past five years in the United States, the mobile phone industry has supported 
research into the safety of mobile phones. This research has resulted in two findings in 
particular that merit additional study: