Health and safety information37FDA continues to monitor the use of wireless phonesfor possible interactions with other medical devices.Should harmful interference be found to occur, FDAwill conduct testing to assess the interference andwork to resolve the problem.9. What are the results of the research done already?The research done thus far has produced conflictingresults, and many studies have suffered from flaws intheir research methods. Animal experimentsinvestigating the effects of radio frequency energy(RF) exposures characteristic of wireless phones haveyielded conflicting results that often cannot berepeated in other laboratories. A few animal studies,however, have suggested that low levels of RF couldaccelerate the development of cancer in laboratoryanimals. However, many of the studies that showedincreased tumor development used animals that hadbeen genetically engineered or treated with cancercausing chemicals so as to be pre-disposed to developcancer in the absence of RF exposure. Other studiesexposed the animals to RF for up to 22 hours per day.These conditions are not similar to the conditionsunder which people use wireless phones, so we don’tknow with certainty what the results of such studiesmean for human health.Three large epidemiology studies have been publishedsince December 2000. Between them, the studiesinvestigated any possible association between the useof wireless phones and primary brain cancer, gioma,meningioma, or acoustic neuroma, tumors of the brainor salivary gland, leukemia, or other cancers. None ofthe studies demonstrated the existence of any harmfulhealth effects from wireless phone RF exposures.However, none of the studies can answer questionsabout long-term exposures, since the average periodof phone use in these studies was around three years.10.What research is needed to decide whether RFexposure from wireless phones poses a healthrisk?A combination of laboratory studies andepidemiological studies of people actually usingwireless phones would provide some of the data thatare needed. Lifetime animal exposure studies could becompleted in a few years. However, very large
