[d]U.S. Food and Drug Administration
FDA Consumer magazine
November-December 2000
Table of Contents
What's the Food and Drug Administration--specifically, its Center for Devices and Radiological Health--doing regulating cell phones? The Radiation Control for Health and Safety Act gives FDA the responsibility for monitoring electronic products to ensure that the radiation emitted from them doesn't pose an unacceptable risk.
FDA doesn't review the safety of radiation-emitting consumer products before marketing as it does with new drugs or medical devices. But if mobile phones or other radiation-emitting products--CD players, laser pointers, or microwave ovens, for example--exceed radiation guidelines, FDA can require their makers to tell users about the hazard and to repair, replace or recall the products.
With mobile phones, as with many radiation-emitting products, FDA works with other federal agencies that have responsibility for complementary safety aspects.
The Federal Communications Commission is the agency that places limits on radiation emissions from all mobile phones sold in the United States. Starting next year, mobile phone packaging will contain information to help consumers find out a particular phone model's "specific absorption rate," or SAR--that is, a number that reflects the amount of radiofrequency energy theoretically absorbed by the body, determined by laboratory tests.
The FDA and FCC also coordinate with these other agencies through a government working group on radiofrequency radiation: the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
---T.N.
[d]
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