What's the most common EMF in our home?
Common Sources of EMF - Part 1: AC Electricity
This is Part 1 of a series on Common EMF contaminants in our home.
Here’s what we’ll learn in this article:
1. How our homes are a living organism
2. What are the 4 natural elements of our home?
3. How do we experience EMFs as energy?
4. Two main biological systems disrupted by EMF
5. How EMFs affect epigenetics
6. How AC electricity affects us
7. Common sources of AC electricity
8. What is dirty electricity?
9. What can we do about dirty electricity?
10. Simple ways we can create a safe sleeping environment
11. Register for ElectroHealth Rx!
I like to think of our house as a third type of skin, with clothing being the second.
In previous articles, we learned how we can use the natural electromagnetic fields of infrared and UV light to build a skin that’s more environmentally resilient to non-native EMF.
How do EMFs affect us through the third layer of skin we take for granted, our home?
Many of us are afraid of 5G and radiation from satellites, while we take for granted what we can control right underneath our feet.
Building our Biology
If our homes are our skin, what qualities would we want it to have?
If we were in outer space and dependent on a space suit to be our life support, what would we want it to do for us?
We’d want it to let out stale air, and bring in oxygen. We’d want that spacesuit to be electrically quiet and a shield against cosmic radiation, so that we can perform optimally. How else can we save humanity from asteroids if we have brainfog?
When I became a Building Biology Advocate (BBA)1, I learned not only to treat our house as a permeable living organism, but as a home that supports our spirit - a stage, rather than a cage, for every day experiences.
I started to tap into my intuition and ask “how does this room make me feel?
Where do I feel most relaxed? Where do I feel most productive?
Instead of using the assigned office to study, I sought shelter in my cool, quiet basement, where I could focus as well as meditate.
Instead of eating in the dining room, my wife and I would find ourselves eating outside on the deck nine months out of the year.
After measuring electric and magnetic fields with my EMF meter, I found that the rooms that I was least comfortable in coincidentally had the highest readings.
The 4 Elements of Housing
Before the Industrial Age, houses and shelters were built from natural materials, allowing air and energy to circulate in and out, refreshing our living environment. Our homes were automatically grounded to the Earth and in tune with the Schumann resonance.
Then the Age of Electricity of the 1800s arrived, bringing momentous change to our homes and health. The light bulb brought progress, however it also came with AC (alternating current) electric and magnetic fields. Since then, all homes in industrialized nations have been bathing in non-native EMF.
Water, Earth, Wind & Fire
Building Biology is a study of how each element interacts and cycles with the next in its natural sequence. For example, the Sun’s energy (fire) is stored by nature in wood, plants, oil, and natural gas. When burned, this energy is released into the air. The air then carries it down to the water, then to the Earth.
There are 6 major types of EMFs that can cause toxicity in indoor environments, which we’ll cover in future articles.
In this article we’ll give a basic overview of energy, in the form of AC electric fields.
What is Energy?
The only place where equilibrium exists is death. Otherwise energy is constantly working through us, in the form of sound, light, magnetism, or manmade EMF. If you ask a quantum physicist, they might tell you that our bodies are more energy (empty space) than matter.2
“Outside of an atomic nucleus, there are only two fundamental forces in nature: gravity and electricity.
The electromagnetic force is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times stronger than the gravitational force. Yet much of western science pretends that it does not exist.”
en·er·gy : in physics - the capacity for doing work
Before we can learn to harness the energy of our body to make it work for us, I believe we must reduce the energy in our living spaces that is working against us.
How do we make our energy environment work smarter, so that we don’t have to live harder?
Our physical environment is the most controllable, thus easier to address before we move onto more complex healing modalities on the mental or spiritual plane. For example, it’s easier to unplug your Wi-Fi than trying to meditate or pray that the radiation doesn’t harm you.
How do we experience EMFs as energy?
If you’ve ever had an electrocardiogram or electroencephalogram, you’re well aware of the electrical nature of our hearts and brains. Traditionally our bodies were thought to be only electrical (transmitting power). Mainstream science has since recognized that our bodies use a much more sophisticated operating system that is electronic (transmits power and communicates information).
It’s not what you say, it’s how you pulse it
External pulses from from electrical and electronic equipment obscure the normal bioelectrical pulses of our organs, making it difficult for cells to understand the signals they’re receiving from our hearts and brains.
We can hear these irregular patterns play out in our homes when we install a CFL (compact fluorescent) bulb that emits distorted, higher frequencies. These frequencies are caused by what is known as electromagnetic interference (dirty electricity), and emits electrical fields that are thousands of times more powerful than our standard 60 Hz wiring. To put this into perspective:
An average human heart pulses one beat per second = 1 Hz
Our home wiring pulses at sixty times per second = 60 Hz
Dirty electrical fields can pulse up to 100,000 times per second = 100 kHz
Our skin isn’t only a surface that can feel electricity, but a semi-conductor, akin to that of a computer chip, that sends information in the form of electrons to other parts of the body. Electronic equipment can be disrupted or destroyed by power surges - our organs are no different.
Vibrating our cells
The speed of our communication is determined through vibration, with various cell-types oscillating at frequencies ranging from 0-75 Hz.3 This range corresponds to Earth’s Schumann resonance and native electric field.
When we’re exposed to abnormal frequencies from energy stressors like smart meters, cell phones, or airpods, our bodies fight back, attempting to resonate with the frequency of Earth, just as a tuning fork to a certain tone.
Vibration tells our cells when to divide. When our cells encounter unusual vibratory patterns, they don’t know what to do or how to divide.4
Biological problems associated with EMF stressors fall into two major categories:
Brain (behavioral abnormalities, learning disabilities, altered hormonal cycles and stress responses)
Growing tissue (embryos, genetics, and cancer)5
An Electric Power Couple
Our bodies act like antennas, receiving, and coupling with energy of ambient electric fields. Since the electromagnetic communication systems of our own body run very efficiently at extremely low voltages, even miniscule changes from external EMFs can cause muscle and nerve cells to fire incorrectly.
Research from 1989 showed that “long distance cell-to-cell or organism-to-organism communications” can occur by transmission and reception of electromagnetic signals.6
The concept of the 'electroconformational coupling' proved that electric signals can change how the proteins of our cell membranes behave.
Why is this important?
Epigenetic changes occur at the level of our cellular membrane proteins.
Stem cell biologists like Bruce Lipton and many others have discovered that only 1% of chronic diseases are genetic, whereas 99% are epigenetic and based on our environment.
What kind of signals do we need to be aware of that may be trying to couple with us, without our consent?
Those outlets always try to jump our bones with their magnetic personality.
AC Electricity: a common EMF offender
An alternating current (AC) by definition is not static, and switches polarity, or direction, at regular intervals.
The number of times these switches or reversals occur are referred to as frequency, which is expressed in hertz (Hz). In North America, electric power is supplied at 60 Hz, whereas in other countries it is 50 Hz. '
Alternating electric fields cause an electric potential to occur. The electric potential between two points is defined as voltage.
The strength of the electric field is determined by proximity. The further away you are from the source, the lesser the field strength. This is why it’s prudent to keep our bed away at least one foot away from walls.
DC Electricity
Direct current is safer, more stable, and is the same type used by our bodies to regenerate and heal.
Unfortunately, AC electricity was adopted worldwide since it was a more economical way to deliver power to the grid in the 1800s, despite being recognized as more dangerous.7
Common sources of AC electricity
Live wires generate voltage, and will produce EMF, even without anything plugged in. The only way to eliminate this is by shutting your power off at the circuit breaker. This is why Bohdanna and I power OFF at night.
Some common sources include:
bedside lamp, radio
overhead lighting
wiring in the walls
wiring in flooring or ceiling
extension cords
Commercial vs residential electricity
Electric fields generated by wiring can be shielded in metal conduit, is costly, and not required by the electrical code. This practice is standard in commercial construction, however even when metal conduit is used, electric fields will still be generated by appliances when plugged in unless they have been specially wired.
Some Power Couples play dirty
Power utility companies, cell towers, and laptop chargers operate and are powered by a switch mode power supply. Again, this method is used because it is more economical however not biologically-efficient.
Switch mode power supply regulates voltage more precisely by converting AC to DC electricity, but to do this it has to interrupt and “chop-up” the electrical current flow up to hundreds of thousands of times per second. When an AC field is converted to DC, this creates electrical pollution known as dirty electricity which then flows back into the grid.
The 60 Hz current of our AC outlets is transformed into much higher frequencies as a typical switch mode power supply operates between 30 to 60 kHz, or 60,000 pulses per second!8
What does this do to our bodies?
Samuel Milham, M.D. is an epidemiologist, or a scientist who verifies that the results obtained by other labs and researchers are actually happenning to the masses of people in the real world. He studied historical US mortality and electrification data of the 1930s and 40s.
Dr. Milham was astonished as he found that the data suggested many of our modern diseases: cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and suicide are caused by electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure, most likely dirty electricity. Milham would go on to literally write the book on Dirty Electricity.
Dirty electricity was shown to be a potent universal carcinogen in a study of cancer in teachers at a La Quinta, California, middle school. A single year of employment at the La Quinta school increased cancer incidence by 21%.9
What can we do about dirty electricity?
Reducing dirty electricity is trickier than eliminating other sources of EMFs, such as unplugging our Wi-Fi modem to lower radiofrequency (RF) EMF. Dirty electricity can also jump from one circuit to another within our house, traveling along power lines and coming in from neighbors’ homes through wiring, or even through the ground.10
The simplest way to reduce dirty electricity is by installing microsurge power filters, like the ones we have from Stetzer Electric. These filters are portable, meaning you can move them from room to room. For instance, if you’re working in the office during the day, and there is a high dirty electrical field present, plug the filters into the surrounding outlets.
PRO TIP: You first want to plug in these filters to outlets that consume the most power and/or closest to the circuit breaker, so that you can bring down the total amount of dirty electricity in your home.
Here’s a quick video of how I like to use the Stetzerizer filter and meter:
Stetzer filters: the dirty real world
Dr. Magda Havas is Professor Emerita at Trent University, and researches biological effects (both harmful and beneficial) of non-ionizing electromagnetic frequencies. In 2003, Dr. Havas designed and ran an experiment at a school where one of the students was having health and cognitive challenges. She installed Stetzer filters in the classrooms. This study wasn’t staged, and the teachers didn’t know about the filters.
In an interview with
, Dr. Havas recalled:“I was very skeptical that you can put something in an electrical outlet and that would clean the electricity and everyone would be happy and healthy after that. When I finally got to analyzing the data, I was absolutely shocked by what I found…
About 44 percent of the teachers improved while the filters were plugged in, and student behavior improved. Many of the symptoms that improved in the school were those we associate with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).”
Dr. Havas, along with Sheena Symington, founded the Electrosensitive Society, which assists those who are experiencing symptoms of radiation sickness.
Creating a Sleep Sanctuary
Although we shut the power OFF to our bedroom at night, we still keep our bed away from the wall since EMFs magnetize onto electrical currents and any metal that may be in the siding. In the typical sleeping area, electrical exposure from wiring in ceilings, walls, and floors can be thousands of times stronger than our body’s own electrical system.
We’re particularly vulnerable to EMFs when we sleep, as this is the time our rest/ digest nervous system is switched on, and not equipped to handle a barrage of stress. EMFs activate the fight/flight branch of our nervous system instead, putting us in a chronic state of stress when we need to be repairing cellular damage from the day.
Even after we shut the power off, we can still have electrical current running along our ground. This is why plugging in a grounding sheet to our outlets is not a good idea, as our organs are extremely sensitive to even low electric fields.11
The key to power is in our hands.
Will you join us in flipping your switch today?
We are more powerful than we know.
Roman & Bohdanna
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https://buildingbiology.com/about/
https://drjoedispenza.com/blogs/dr-joes-blog/synchronizing-your-energy-to-new-potentials
Oschmann, James. Energy Medicine, London: Churchill Livingstone, 2000.
International Institute for Building Biology & Ecology, Natural Healthy Buildings, 2015.
Becker, Robert O. Cross Currents. New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 1990
Tsong TY. Deciphering the language of cells. Trends Biochem Sci. 1989 Mar;14(3):89-92. doi: 10.1016/0968-0004(89)90127-8. PMID: 2728105.
Firstenberg, A. The Invisible Rainbow, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2000.
Firstenberg, A. The Invisible Rainbow, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2000.
Dirty electricity, chronic stress, neurotransmitters and disease: January 16, 2013.
Mercola, J. EMF’d, Hay House, 2020.
https://derangedphysiology.com/main/cicm-primary-exam/required-reading/cardiovascular-system/Chapter%20011/fast-voltage-gated-sodium-channels-cardiac-muscle
Would a house built of concrete blocks and mortar have less dirty electricity?
We sleep under a ceiling fan 8 months out of the year and have one in each room on during the day.
It's hot in the tropics...
This is a great summary! I am so glad you mention Milham, he was such a friend to humanity.
My local safe technology group came up with a set of recommendations similar to yours and it is available as an easy to use pdf. A bunch of steps folks can follow and where to get the gear, like Stetzer Filters. The link is here: https://familiesforsafetechnology.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/howtoprotectyourhealthfromsmartmeters.pdf