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in late 2000. This standard will allow manufacturers to ensure that cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators
are safe from wireless phone EMI.
FDA has tested hearing aids for interference from handheld wireless phones and helped develop a
voluntary standard sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). This standard
specifies test methods and performance requirements for hearing aids and wireless phones so that that no
interference occurs when a person uses a compatible phone and a compatible hearing aid at the same time.
This standard was approved by the IEEE in 2000.
FDA continues to monitor the use of wireless phones for possible interactions with other medical devices.
Should harmful interference be found to occur, FDA will conduct testing to assess the interference and
work to resolve the problem.
10. What are the results of the research done already?
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 radio frequency 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.
