Siemens sx56 User Manual page 108

108 Pocket PC Phone User's Guide
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Center
for Devices and Radio-logical Health Consumer Update on Mobile
Phones
FDA has been receiving inquiries about the safety of mobile phones, including cellular phones and PCS phones.
The following summarizes what is know — 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-sig-
nificant, 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 biologi-
cal 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 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 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-go-
ing. 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 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:
1. In a hospital-based, case-control study, researchers looked for an association between mobile phone
use and either glioma (a type of brain cancer) or acoustic neuroma (a benign tumor of the nerve sheath).
No statistically significant association was found between mobile phone use and acoustic neuroma. There