The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs Read online

  Any amount of electricity that runs in a wire or any other metallic object (like a water pipe, or a gas line — we’ll address those later) creates an electro-magnetic field. As the name implies, this field contains both a magnetic field and an electric field that’s perpendicular to it. It’s science!

  As Oram Miller, Certified Building Biology Environmental Consultant and Electromagnetic Radiation Specialist based in Los Angeles explains,8 the most common sources of magnetic field exposure are from what he calls ‘point sources’ — including: “transformers, electric motors and your breaker panel and electric meters (whether it is a digital smart meter or an older analog mechanical meter). Point sources have high magnetic field exposure levels, but the good news is the field strength drops off rather quickly.”

  What Oram means by “transformer” is obviously not “giant robot saving the planet”, but that any electronic or electric charger or motor which transforms the alternating current (AC) coming out of a standard 120/240v wall outlet into the direct current (DC) electronic devices need to properly run creates a magnetic field that can irradiate for up to several feet around it.

  These transformers include the chargers you use for your smartphone and your laptop, just to name two.

  The Magnetic Fields I’ll focus on throughout this guide about are those in the 50-60 Hz range — mostly created by the electricity running through any appliance or electronic device inside your home and that can be a problem if you spend too much time getting exposed to high levels.

  To help you understand the difference between Magnetic Fields (MF) and Electric Fields (EF), imagine that you’re watering your garden with a water hose.

  How much water is currently flowing out of the hose corresponds to the current of the electrical wire — and creates a magnetic field around it.

  The water pressure inside the hose corresponds to the voltage of the electrical wire, which creates an electric field all around it. Problems arise because this electric field is absorbed by the natural antenna that’s your body — basically giving you a constant low-level electric shock that (in the long-run) can make you sick even if you don’t feel it.9

  This means that just like the pressure inside a hose, the electricity inside the cord of a lamp that’s not even turned “ON” constantly emits an electric field.

  Normally, the electricity inside the wires running through the walls of your home, workplace or anywhere else is supposed to oscillate at a frequency of 60 Hz (North America) or 50 Hz (Europe, most of Africa, most of Asia, most of South America and Australia10).

  The problem is that a ton of modern electrical equipment has been specifically designed to operate by interrupting the current flow of electricity many times per second. A dimmer switch, for example, basically messes around with the ON and OFF button of your light bulb around 120 times per second. While your eye can’t detect this very fast flicker, the end result is that this reduces the intensity of the light in your room.

  Anything “energy efficient” works the exact same way. A compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL), for example, saves energy by going ON and OFF at least 20,000 times per second.11

  While interrupting current this way can help us dim lights or save energy, this also corrupts the electricity, or as Dr. Sam Milham — an epidemiologist who has published dozens of research papers on the subject in the world’s most prestigious journals for the last 50 years — puts it, “creates Dirty Electricity”.

  Instead of staying within the usual 50-60 Hz range, Dirty Electricity is a bum who likes to emit a lot of EMFs in what are called the intermediate frequencies — ranging from 300 Hz to 10 MHz.12

  What this all means in plain English: when the electricity in your home or workplace is dirty, it constantly irradiates these spikes of intermediate frequency Electric Fields which can have serious health effects according to Miller — especially those between 2 kHz and 100 kHz in the Radio Frequency (RF) range.

  We Live In A Big EMF Soup

  Unless you decided to live off the grid, never use a smartphone, destroy your wifi router and stick to candlelight inside your home — you’re constantly getting exposed to man-made EMFs, at levels millions of times higher than what you would naturally be exposed to in nature.

  As I’m writing these lines, my cool-looking wireless mouse is emitting a 2.4 GHz RF signal at a pulse of 500 times a second13 in order connect with my MacBook Pro laptop. This radiation is likely going all the way through my right hand.

  My headphones are producing a weak magnetic field that reaches the outer layer of my brain. The Starbucks where I’m doing most of my writing nowadays has at least one powerful wifi router, and I estimate that there is a minimum of 30 different devices (smartphones, laptops, tablets, e-readers, etc.) connected to it — each of which emits a back-and-forth RF signal with the router in order to provide us coffee drinkers with some Internet goodness.

  Next to my legs, there are dozens of power strips and my laptop charger — all of which emit Electric Fields just from being plugged into the wall, and Magnetic Fields whenever they are actively charging a device like my laptop.

  I haven’t measured the levels of Dirty Electricity in the room, but judging by the amount of CFL lightbulbs that are used — it’s safe to say that they’re pretty high — irradiating everyone in the room with a good dose of intermediate frequency-EMFs.

  Feeling overwhelmed yet? Yeah, let’s leave this place and get some air.

  Just outside Starbucks, there are high voltage power lines emitting both magnetic and electric fields that are very strong when you stand right under them — but that also irradiate for at least 80-100 meters on each side.18

  I have a hard time figuring out where the closest cell towers or antennas are, but as I’m in a fairly large city I’ll probably find a handful of them within my line of sight if I pay close attention — and each one of these generates one or multiple focused beams of RF radiation.

  Like I said... we’re all bathing in a huge, invisible EMF soup. Notice I didn’t say that this is an inherently bad or good thing — we’re not there yet. The goal here is to make you aware of the fact that even if you can’t see, taste or smell them… EMFs are all around you.

  It’s Increasing… Fast.

  The entire world is getting connected. “In India, the world’s second most populous country, government census data reveals that more citizens have cell phones (53.2%) than toilets (46.9%)” reveals Martin Blank in his book Overpowered.19

  It’s projected that from 2013 to 2020…

  The number of tablet users worldwide will go up by 121%20

  The number of cellphone users will go up by 82%21

  We sure love our wireless devices. As EMF engineer Daniel DeBaun reports in Radiation Nation:22 “In 2016, The Total Audience Report released by Nielsen showed the average American spent nine or more hours a day using electronic media. Given that the average human spends seven to nine hours sleeping each night, that means that we spend around two-thirds of our waking hours ‘wired’.” Yeah, this sounds about right.

  Unsurprisingly, a lot more people are looking to join the EMF party. By 2020, an additional 3 to 5 billion people who never had access to the Internet will go online for the first time.23

  All this added wireless traffic requires more cellphone towers, more antennas on those towers, and more wifi routers. In the US alone, the database Antenna Search24 identifies more than 1.9 million antennas or cell towers — a number that’s predicted to explode in the next decade.25

  But towers are costly and cumbersome, which is why a total of 8 large corporations like Facebook, Samsung and Google26 are coming up with creative ways to beam the entire planet with a RF signal — with the philanthropic intention to provide every citizen of this good world with free Internet access.

  But why just connect every human being to the Internet? Our new smart electronics need it too! Experts in the development of what’s called the “Internet of Things” (IoT) predict that by 2020, there will be around 50 billion devices, people or sensors connected with each other.27

  These include your Bluetooth dimmer switches and home appliances, but also wireless traffic lights, light bulbs, cars (GPS, satellite radio, etc.), FM-emitting posters28 and yes! — even wireless sensors placed on trees to be able to monitor which one needs to be watered.29 Why not?

  The Scary Question.

  I can safely say two things at this point:

  We are exposed to a lot of EMF radiation from man-made sources — at levels some say are approximately 10 billion times higher than back in the 1960s30

  These EMF radiation levels will likely be thousands if not millions of times higher in just a few decades — unless we decide there’s a good reason to control them

  With this gargantuan (yes, gargantuan) and incredibly fast increase in the amount EMFs we’re all exposed to, it’ll be a huge relief to hear that science has definitely proven that EMFs cause no harm, and that cell phone manufacturers and anyone creating any kind of device which emits these never-seen-before signals is required to follow stringent Governmental safety standards.

  Because science shows these things are safe... right? … Right?

  * * *

  2wikipedia.com

  3sciencing.com

  4Some would argue that this classification is way too vague, but I took the editorial decision to focus on the 4 types of EMFs most EMF mitigation experts and EMF consultants usually tend to address.

  5Building Biology is a profession which originates from Germany, and whose mission is to “help create healthy homes, schools, and workplaces, free of toxins in the indoor air and tap water, and electromagnetic pollutants.” See hbelc.org/about for more details.

  6wpsantennas.com

  7At the time of this
writing, it’s still very unclear what exact frequencies will be used by 5G networks in the future.

  8createhealthyhomes.com

  9e-options.info

  10en.wikipedia.org

  11Milham, S., MD. (2012). Dirty Electricity: Electrification and the Diseases of Civilization. iUniverse

  12See Magda Havas’ video “Dirty Electricity Explained” at youtube.com/watch?v=vbebpRvwd8k

  13gaming.logitech.com

  14As reported by Michael Bevington in Electromagnetic Sensitivity and Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity. es-uk.info

  15ecfsapi.fcc.gov

  161993 exposure numbers. niehs.nih.gov

  171990 exposure numbers. books.google.ca

  18emf.info

  19Blank, M., PhD. (2015). Overpowered: The Dangers of Electromagnetic Radiation (EMF) and What You Can Do about It. Seven Stories Press.

  20statista.com

  21statista.com

  22DeBaun, D. and DeBaun, R. (2017). Radiation Nation: The Fallout of Modern Technology — Your Complete Guide to EMF Protection & Safety: The Proven Health Risks of Electromagnetic Radiation (EMF) & What to Do Protect Yourself & Family. Icaro Publishing.

  23huffingtonpost.com

  24antennasearch.com The website seems to be down at the time of this writing, unfortunately.

  25rcrwireless.com

  26stopglobalwifi.org

  27diamandis.com

  28washington.edu

  29agrisupportonline.com

  30Olga Sheean, olgasheean.com, page 5.

  Chapter 2

  SCIENCE

  Why Scientists Rarely Agree

  Good VS Bad EMF Science

  Am I A “Cherry Picker”?

  Science Reality Check

  I remember the day my two brothers and I found Christmas gifts in my parents’ closet.

  At that very moment, I was faced with a dilemma… either live in denial and continue to believe Santa is real, or face the reality that Santa doesn’t actually exist, but that what really counts about Christmas is getting to see people you love and the genuine joy you feel when giving or receiving a gift.

  This is pretty much what’s going to happen in the next few seconds — because I’m here to tell you the guy called “Science” doesn’t actually exist.

  Even though I personally make that mistake more often than I’d like, saying stuff like “science says...” or “science has proven” makes no sense whatsoever.

  Science is not a thing, or a person. If it were a real person, it would be the weirdest bipolar guy I’ve ever met — someone who’s clearly unstable, unpredictable, probably dangerous and who seems to change his mind every other day.

  Sounds familiar? One day, a study comes out that definitely proves that cellphones cause brain cancer. The next day, it seems that freaking tomatoes cause cancer too. Guess that means we’ll eat dry spaghetti tonight...

  Then, the next week, FOX News, CNN and a thousand media outlets start quoting a different expert from a different study who tells the world how “there’s no link between cellphone use and cancer.”31 So… who’s right?

  Stop believing that science is black or white. It’s not. Like all of us, it’s a hot, imperfect mess — that hopefully does most things right, but that makes a ton of mistakes, wastes time doing the wrong things, says things it regrets, and is struck with inner conflict way more often than it’d like.

  Good EMF Science VS Bad EMF Science

  If you want to learn all about the history of how our current EMF safety standards came to be, how researchers, policy makers and scientists are imperfect, often biased human beings too, and how science isn’t all about sparkles and unicorns — you have to read Andrew Marino’s Going Somewhere. It’s so eye-opening it almost hurts.

  This guide isn’t about politics, but talking about what science is and is not is essential to open your mind to the rest of the book — the fact that there’s such a gap between what the latest EMF science shows, and the so-called “safety” standards protecting you, your children and the entire planet from their potential health effects.

  If you feel like skipping this entire chapter, go ahead. But please don’t send in hate mail ([email protected]) before you do so and understand where I’m coming from.

  Still here? Good. To help you spot bad science from good science, simply ask yourself these 4 questions...

  1) Are Researchers Really Independent?

  When looking at all the studies demonstrating the health effects of EMFs (or lack thereof), we have to consider who’s providing the funding.

  As Martin Blank, PhD reports in Overpowered: “Since 1990, Lai has been tracking the studies of the health effects of RF radiation on humans published around the world. He has hundreds of such studies in his database. Approximately 30% of the studies are funded by the wireless industry and 70% are funded by other sources that are presumably more independent.

  Of the industry-funded studies, 27% demonstrated a biological effect in humans resulting from RF exposure; whereas independently funded studies found such effects in 68% of the studies. As Lai explains, ‘a lot of the studies that are done right now are done purely as PR tools for the industry’.”

  Now, this doesn’t mean that all industry-funded studies are wrong, and that all independent studies are right — but it’s an important observation nonetheless.

  Another interesting observation is that a lot of different EMF researchers originally hired by the Telecom industry to prove that EMFs aren’t harmful to the human body got “fired” (in other words… their funding disappeared nearly overnight) the second their studies showed the opposite.

  Allan Frey

  In the 60s, a biologist named Allan Frey working at General Electric’s Advanced Electronics Center at Cornell University32 clearly demonstrated that cell phone radiation can open up the blood-brain barrier (I’ll get into what this means later).

  As he explains in Radiation Nation:33 “After my work appeared and others supported some of it, effectively everything in the US on these topics was shut down. Today you can’t get funding to do anything of consequence.”

  George Carlo

  Dr. George Carlo headed the $28.5 million research program funded by the cell phone industry from 1993 to 1999.34 In 99’, he started getting attacked and discredited by the same industry who had originally hired him. There’s a lot more controversy around Carlo, and some of his critics argue he committed serious fraud,35 but the fact is that these days he’s trying to warn the world about the dangers of cell phones.

  Om P. Gandhi

  P. Gandhi is a researcher who worked with the industry to develop the “SAR” testing all cell phones need to go through before hitting the market.

  When he started talking about the fact that children could be at risk from cell phone radiation because their head is smaller than the one used during testing, he gently got informed that “if he did not discontinue his research on children his funding would be cut off”.

  Fortunately for humanity, he didn’t choose the dark side and stuck to his values even if this meant a serious salary cut and a shorter and less prestigious career.

  2) What Does A Study Actually Mean?

  Mainstream media is famous for reporting studies with bold titles that simply make no sense — but that sure sell copies.

  In 2016 — when the results of an Australian study looking at more than 34,000 brain cancer sufferers from the past 30 years, trying to see if there’s a clear link between their cancer and cell phone use,36 the media went wild…

  The problem? As the authors of the study reveal in the conclusion… “The data the researchers had was about having a mobile phone contract – they didn’t have individual patterns of use in terms of how often the phone was pressed up against users’ heads emitting different strengths of radiation, for example. As such, it’s probably wise to use the term phone ownership, rather than phone use – used in the media – when talking about this study.”