Minimizing Your Exposure to EMF Emissions

Reducing your exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) is an important part of protecting your health. You can begin by reducing the exposure within your own home.

Long-term, high-level EMF exposure can result in symptoms such as sleep disturbances, headaches, depression, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, changes in memory, and more.

Let’s take a look at ways you can minimize your exposure to EMFs generated within your own home. We’ll take a look at minimizing exposure to other external EMFs in the next article.

Types of EMFs

There are 4 EMF types in the average home—magnetic fields (MFs), electric fields (EFs), dirty electricity (DE) and radio-frequency/microwave radiation (RF). Each of these is a unique type of man-made, non-ion­izing radiation, which means they don’t exist in the natural environment. Remediation strategies differ for each type of EMF.

Bringing wireless technologies into your home is a critical factor. Your proximity to the radiation sources is the most important element in reducing EMFs in your home. This explains why two houses built adjacent to one another, built by the same builder using similar materials, can have different EMF profiles.

Magnetic fields

Magnetic fields are generated whenever electricity is flowing. MF strength is proportional to current use. The more electricity you use, the higher the MF levels. A properly wired house will minimize MF in your home. Even so, certain appliances generate strong MFs.

Creating distance between the MF source and yourself will reduce the field strength that you experience. For example, the MF around an electric toaster in use is significant, but just three to six feet away, the levels return to the ambient level of the home. How often an appliance is in use is another consideration.

All man-made radiation passes through most building materials easily. Keeping your distance from the sources of man-made radiation, particularly in areas where you spend the most time (such as bedrooms, home office or reading area), will have a con­siderable effect in reducing radiation exposure. You might want to make your bedroom the highest priority because you want the most natural environment possible for your body’s nighttime repair and restoration.

It only takes a little extra effort and thought. Your baby’s crib should not be located beneath the main electrical panel. Nor would you want that electrical panel on the other side of the wall from the crib. Keep it away from the Wi-Fi router. The more power (watts, not volts) an appliance uses, the larger the MF surround­ing that appliance when in use. The worst offenders are the appliances with the highest duty cycle, meaning they are most often in use.

Guess what? This also means electric blankets. They are so cozy in winter, and most likely more efficient than heating your whole home, but the radiation is in contact with your body. Ditch the electric blankets.

All sleeping areas in your home should be reevaluated. Then, look to other high-use areas where you spend four or more hours per day. Once you’ve reduced MF expo­sures in your high-use areas, you’re ready to move on to the next chal­lenge, electric fields.

Electric fields

Your home has a tremendous amount of electrical wiring behind the walls, in the ceiling, and sometimes under the floorboards. Electric fields emanate from all of this wir­ing, including extension cords and power cords; the field strength is proportional to voltage, not current. This means that EF exposure occurs whether you have an item turned on or not. The closer you are to electric wiring, the greater your EF exposure.

In your high-use areas, keep your distance from the wiring, power cords, and extension cords as much as possible. Look at electric appliances in the sleep area—there should be none near the beds. Use a battery-powered clock if you need a clock next to the bed. Don’t run extension cords near the bed.

The family room is also a high-use area for many people. Try to keep high-use chairs and couches away from the corners of the walls. An electric powered recliner is comfy, but it will emanate EFs.

Challenging our desire for convenience

By plugging your entire home entertain­ment system (including the TV) into a switched outlet (an electrical outlet controlled by a dedi­cated light switch), you can minimize electric and magnetic fields until you’re actually using these appliances. If there is no switched outlet, choose a power strip that has a little onboard switch to control all the compo­nents plugged into the strip. Keep it turned off when not in use.

If your home office is a high-use area, you will want to keep peripherals (printer, fax or scanner) as far from your work area as possible, with none of the power cords near your body. You can use the same switched out­let or switched power strip technique to keep all peripherals switched off until needed. Push your desk out from the corner.

Dirty electricity

The third type of man-made radiation in the average home is called dirty electricity. DE is comprised of itinerant frequencies and voltage transients not necessary to the delivery of electric power for your appliances. As these itinerant frequencies and transients travel through your home’s wiring, they modify the EF surrounding the wiring in novel ways, thereby creating an unnatural electromag­netic environment.

To reduce the DE in your home, evaluate your appliances first. A“dirty” appliance will use more power and produce more DE. “Clean” appliances produce far less DE, or possibly no DE. Note that even low-wattage appliances can create significant DE if you many them throughout the house.

Careful choice of lighting helps maintain a low level of DE. Replacing LED and fluorescent lighting with traditional incandescent lighting will make a big difference. Full-spectrum incandescent bulbs for general use create zero DE, have no flicker (or less noticeable flicker) and provide a more natural spectrum of light.

Chargers for various electronic devices adversely affect DE and should be left unplugged unless in use. Create a charging station in your home by plug­ging all your chargers into one or two power strips and then controlling the power to the strips with a dedicated switch. Put your charg­ing station far from high-use areas and charge devices at a time when people are not sleeping.

When purchasing new appliances, favor appliances with electric rather than electronic control systems. Any type of microprocessor in an appliance will necessitate a DC power supply, which will increase DE.

Radio frequency and microwave radiation

Now let’s look at radio-fre­quency and microwave radiation, or RF. RF comes from devices within the home that emit this form of man-made radiation: baby monitors, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices, portable phones, cell phones. If you’re concerned about your family’s exposure to man-made radiation, the obvi­ous solution is to eliminate all of these technologies from your home. If this isn’t possible, change their proximity to you and your family.

Wireless baby monitors emit man-made radiation constantly—twenty-four hours a day. Because of its close proximity, the baby monitor is perhaps the most significant radiation exposure for a young child. Obviously, parents feel more secure with a wireless baby monitor, but consider the cost. We kept babies warm and safe for millennia before monitors existed.

Prenatal exposure should be considered as well. The greatest source includes smartphones and tablets. Resting a cell phone or tablet on your pregnant belly maximizes exposure to baby. It’s also important to know that a cell phone may radiate continuously, even when you’re not using it. Because they’re generally close by even when not in use, the radiation exposure is maximized. Keep them away from your body.

If you wish to continue using social media and messaging, you are safer with a wired computer. Replace Wi-Fi connections with wired connections. Wired connections are faster and more secure. In addition, they use less power.

Replace Bluetooth connections with more appropriate solutions. Wireless speakers may be replaced with wired speakers. Likewise, you can replace a wireless connection to your printer with a wired connection.

Other steps to reduce EMF exposure in your house

All of the above are things you can do on your own with hiring a professional EMF consultant. These are measures that will provide a strong foundation for minimizing your exposure to man-made radiation. By following these steps, you can measurably reduce exposure to man-made radiation in your home.

Once you have the foundation in place, you may wish to pursue more advanced methods to significantly reduce RF from radiation sources right outside your home, like your neighbor’s Wi-Fi or cell towers. At that point, hiring a professional EMF consultant can make sense and help ensure you have good results from your remediation techniques.