Wow, look at all those wires in the picture above. Is that utility worker being exposed to EMFs? You betcha.
If you are new to the EMF world, you may understand about cell towers and smart meters, but there are three other EMFs that are equally important to know about.
There are, in total, four EMFs in our modern world with a fifth that is just being understood which I will go over at the end of the series. The four types are AC electric, AC magnetic, Multi Surge Electrical Pollution (dirty electricity), Radio Frequency (microwave radiation, wifi, cell phones).
AC Electric Fields
Look at the picture below. There are smooth waves repeating. This is the idea you want when visualizing AC Electric Fields. AC stands for Alternating Current. It's a river of waves of electricity flowing over the wires in your home that alternate. That is they go back and forth. Think of a bowl of water being rocked side to side as the waves go from one direction to the opposite direction They go back and forth 60 times per second. That is rather slow in the world of EMF. Your router oscillates in the billions of cycles per second, though in one direction.
If you are of a certain age, you might remember a band called ACDC. They were popular in the 1980's. As bands go, they chose a name that was just as esoteric as any other band, and it represented the two forms of electricity. This would make sense since the guitars they used were electric. Well, the DC stands for Direct Current, meaning the flow just goes in one direction, not back and forth. DC current is not biologically harmful in most instances. Our bodies' use and generate weak DC currents to do many things including rebuilding tissue. AC current is foreign and harmful to our bodies' which is why we want to limit our exposure. The more powerful, the more harmful. We call the power or watts, in the EMF world, power density. For electricity it is measured in Voltz. A 7,000 Voltz transmission line is more harmful than a 9 Volt battery. The transmission line has more power density and it is alternating 60 cycles per second, double duty harmful.
Everyone knows you don't want to live under utility transmission lines because of EMFs. The farther you are away, the better. Distance is your friend as we say. However, most people don't know that electric wiring in your house can bring some of those EMFs into your home. Some homes are more power dense than others, and some circuits within a home are more power dense than others. It all depends on how the house is wired. It wouldn't be a problem if the voltage was contained in the walls, but unless it is contained with MC metal conduit, that voltage spreads out, always seeking lower potential or ground or you as a conductive surface. There are tiny little hair like electrical lines sprouting from the wires in the wall and coupling onto you every day 24/7. We call this AC electric fields. You can measure how much you are being affected by using a simple multimeter. I give instructions on how to do this in a previous blog.
The Building Biology Institute has established exposure guidelines that give an idea of how much of this is unhealthy in a range from "no concern, slight concern, severe concern, extreme concern." There are a variety of solutions you can use to block them, the number one being turning off a certain circuit.
If you were to use a multimeter to assess your own body voltage, you would find that your body can hold as much as 2 to 7 Voltz of AC electric energy from just your electric wiring in your house, sometimes more, sometimes less depending on how your home is wired. When we look at the BBI Exposure Guidelines for body voltage, we use milliVoltz, so we would move the decimal over to the right three times. So that 2 to 7 Voltz would translate to 2,000 to 7,000 milliVoltz. As far as how much is too much, over 1,000 milliVoltz is considered extreme, and under 10 milliVoltz would be no concern. Most people are living in the extreme range unknowingly.
What can you do about this? Even without a meter, just knowing some basic principals, you can immediately lower your body voltage. Pulling beds away from the walls of the bedroom can create distance between the house wiring and your body. Not hugging the walls of the house creates distance and lowers the fields.
Grounding laptops and computers will bleed off some of that voltage onto the grounding system of the house. Here is the PDF I created to show how to ground computers and laptops. Most lamps do not have a grounded plug and thus radiate big electric fields from the house wiring. You can have an electrician rewire the lamp with a grounded plug, and you can also spend money for Mucord that will replace the existing lamp electric cord to create no fields--rewiring requires an electrician. This is only if you love your lamp and want to spend money on it. Otherwise create distance and unplug when not in use or use an outlet wall switch that will prevent the fields from radiating in the cord and lamp even when it is off. Yes, anything that is plugged into the wall outlet is bringing that voltage up to the appliance even when it is off. It's like a hose that is under pressure. The water will not come out until you depress the nozzle, but the pressure is still there when the water is not flowing. Turning on the light switch is like depressing the nozzle and letting the pressure flow, or the current to flow in the case of the light switch. Whether current is flowing or not the voltage, or pressure, is always there.
Another easy solution is to move the cords. I bet your feet, right now, at your desk, are right next to about 5,000 milliVoltz of cords. Computer power cords, printer cords. Anything that plugs into an outlet is brining the voltage from the house wiring to your body. Power strips are extremely high. Just by moving those a couple feet away from your body will uncouple so much energy, energy that belongs to you not to the house electrical grid. This is why we say electric fields wear you down. Voltage coupling is a contributing factor to why so many people are so tired after "doing nothing" all day.
The bedroom is the most significant place to have low electric fields because that is where you regenerate at night. We talk about a Sleep Sanctuary where there is no or very low electric fields. With the help of a Building Biologist, you can find out which circuits are creating high fields. If it is in the bedroom, you can turn off the bedroom circuit breaker that is creating the field. It is not always the labled bedroom circuit on the panel that is making the fields high. You need to test with a body voltage meter or a calibrated and certified AC electric meter from a reliable source that is sensitive enough to do the job. I wrote a previous blog that tells how to use a multimeter to find out which circuits are causing the problem. Turning off the circuits to the bedroom at night is a very good way to lower your exposure.
The last option is to use shielding foil or fabric that is grounded to block the field from entering the room. You want to capture the field onto the foil or fabric, and drain it out via the house grounding system so to speak. Radiant barrier foil can be pinned or stapled to the wall which will block the electric field. It must be grounded to the outlet electrical system or ground outside. Here is a good source to find that. It's a plug to gator clip wire. You use the gator clip to attach to the foil or fabric you want to use and the other end plugs into the grounding system. Radiant barrier foil can be found at Safe Living Technologies. You can also use special fabric called Ex-Static found here at LessEMF.com. The picture above shows you what the fabric looks like. It has wires woven into the fabric that pick up the electric fields. Just tack it up near the ceiling and drape it down. You'll want to overlap it about an inch and clip it together with metal clips so it is all connected to go to the gator clip to ground. Same with the foil. Use painters tape to overlap about an inch and keep the surfaces touching each other to go to ground.
Last Tips
1) Do not sleep on the other side of the wall to the circuit breaker or sub panel.
2) Do not sleep on the other side of the wall to the smart meter (dirty electricity, another blog)
3) Use a battery powered alarm clock next to your bed. If you must use your cell phone, turn off blue tooth, put on airplane mode, and check with a meter that no other antennas are enabled. You might be replacing one EMF with another EMF.
As you work with finding solutions to high electric fields, you will become more knowledgeable and figure out what you need and want to do to create an electrically peaceful home. In the beginning, it may take some work, but you only need to monitor the environment from time to time, as family members bring things into the home or the electric appliances start to stack up and fill the home. It's amazing how they multiply as if they are actually breeding. What it really is is that we just tend to collect things in our home. Hopefully, we are collecting things that bring us closer to nature not separating us from her.
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