Why EMF Shielding Doesn't Work

First do no harm + practical ways we can minimize damage from EMF.

I’ve never worn a tin foil hat, although I’ve been accused of this fashion offense many times. Tin foil hats, as it turns out, can actually work, just not in the way we think they do.

In the 1960s, biologist Allan Frey conducted experiments for the US military, showing that a protective aluminum wire mesh could shield from electromagnetic fields, otherwise known as EMFs.

These EMFs are a complex animal, and can often exacerbate harm when shielding is employed, since there are a multitude of frequencies and currents that constantly surround us. In today’s world of consumerism we like to apply band aid solutions, rather than look at the root of our bleeding.

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

-Albert Einstein

In my previous post about EMFs, I listed shielding with a bed canopy as a potential solution, however I would like to add that this should be approached with caution, and is usually not the right solution for many of us.

Marketeers and “healers” try to sell us on everything from pendants, bed sheets, to even EMF-protective clothing for our pets.

The only tin cats want are tin cans full of tuna!

Why is shielding difficult?

We like to think that EMFs from our phones and Wi-Fi will be stopped by a wall of metal. However our phones do not shoot bullets or cannonballs.

Our devices emit both visible and non-visible light, which is harder to catch than a fly with chopsticks.

Some reasons that shielding from EMF is difficult:

1. Frequency Soup

There are plethora of frequencies being constantly emitted along the electromagnetic spectrum. Cell towers, satellites, and our neighbors’ phones all transmit at varying speeds. The millimeter wave frequencies of 5G, for example, are the size of a rain drop. If there are any defects in EMF shielding fabric, this could easily allow more EMFs to penetrate and surround us while we sleep, making matters worse.

5 Things You Need to Know About 5G

2. Electrical Wiring

Many homes have wiring errors, and can often be improperly grounded, which creates stronger magnetic fields.¹

For instance, this will happen if there is a large distance between the “hot” and “neutral” electrical wire, or if the current does not cancel itself through grounding, as a result creating what is called a net current. ² The magnetic field that is created by this excess current could then easily pass through any shielding fabric.

Alternating current (AC) magnetic fields that are produced and exacerbated by our home wiring affect our blood cell reproduction, and can be a precursor to leukemia.³ Unless the magnetic field is highly localized, it's virtually impossible to address with shielding, whereas electric fields are more easily shielded. Magnetic fields can even pass through lead.

3. Magnetic Field Coupling

Ever wonder how incandescent light bulbs were made to glow? Any time you have a metal such as copper, in a certain mass and geometric formation such as a loop (below) you can generate wireless electricity by creating a magnetic field.

Credit: Khan Academy; created by Mahesh Shenoy

Let’s say you sleep close to your refrigerator, which is on the opposite side of your bedroom wall. Not only will the wall not shield you from the magnetic field, the field generated by the refrigerator’s transformer coils could couple with the metal shielding fabric of your EMF canopy or protective clothing.

In electrical engineering, this coupling is known as mutual inductance. When mutual inductance occurs, currents will then travel along the surface of wires and conductive surfaces such as metal, rather than being evenly distributed. This is known as the skin effect. In this example, the skin effect isn’t referring to our skin, but the surface of conductive materials such as wiring.

At higher frequencies (400KHz, right side of picture), there is a greater skin effect, as the current is less evenly distriubuted through the body of the metal conductor, and radiates along the “skin” of the wire.

The illustration above shows an increasing skin effect as frequencies (Hz) also increase. Our homes use 60 Hz for electricity, however radiowaves and Wi-Fi operate at much higher frequencies.

For example, Wi-Fi typically runs at 2,450,000 kHz. (2.45 GHz) This frequency would generate a substantially greater current along the surface / skin of wires, which could lead to even more mutual inductance by attracting additional EMFs to a protective metal canopy. Basically you’re creating another EMF by introducing more metal into the environment.

For a basic understanding of EMFs, please check out my article below:

What You Need to Know About EMF

This is why building biology advocates such as myself discourage metal bed frames, as they can create their own EMF, and throw off our body’s immune system and circadian rhythm while we sleep.

“When shielding or grounding against high frequencies, the current return path of the shield must be of suitably low inductance in order to be effective (otherwise, the shielding may become a secondary radiator). Calculated resistances using properties of the bulk of the metal are often inadequate at high frequencies, because of the skin effect.”

-Paul Héroux BSc, MSc, PhD, Associate Professor of Public Health, Toxicology, & Electromagnetism, McGill University

4. Body Voltage

Scientists and physicians such as Robert O. Becker, James Oschmann, and Dr. Beverly Rubin have shown how our bodies not only produce their own electricity through a DC (direct current) electric circuit, but also act as antennas for our environment through what is known as the biofield.

Biofield practices such as acupuncture work on our energy meridians, which run along the same lines as our nervous system, and have even been shown to not only be electrically conductive, but also contain large amounts of DNA.

Our bodies are extremely sensitive to minor changes in our electrical environment, so introducing another medium such as an EMF fabric may be potentially disruptive. In addition, our bodies also contain metals such as copper and we may even have toxic metals in our organs like aluminum, which would interact with the the additional EMF created by clothing or a canopy.

An example of a faraday cage - which can’t let in EMF, but what about the EMF that’s already in the cage? (body voltage, bed springs, bed frame etc.)

Clothing with metallic fibers can keep direct radiation exposure off the area being protected, however the clothing can also magnify that radiation to other parts of our body, called hot spots. According to building biologists such as Bill Cadwallader, the question we need to consider when wearing this clothing is “which body part isn’t important to you?” Any exposed areas will still receive the light signal from WiFi, and all metabolic process ultimately begin in our skin and eyes.

The video below shows how EMFs are actually increased by protective clothing, when in the vicinity of a cell phone:

Do EMF shields for cell phones work?

Cases may amplify our EMF exposure:

All cell phones, ranging from flip phones to modern-day smartphones, are designed to provide network coverage even in the most remote of areas. To accomplish this, companies encode a radiation boost feature in your phone in case of a weak signal.

Do EMF-blocking phone cases work?

There is no perfect Faraday cage (metal enclosure that eliminates all non-native EMF) as some amount of radiation will always get through. faraday cage). When even the tiniest amount of radiation seeps in through the cage, our phone can detect this weak spot and boost its signal to better connect with the tower.

In this example, using an EMF blocking phone case can cause you to face an increased level of EMF emissions.

More Problems with EMF Blocking Phone Cases

Another problem with such phone cases is that they implicitly encourage the notion that it’s somehow “safer” to hold your phone against your head if you use their product. Never hold a cell phone against your head.

What about airplane mode?

Practical Ways to Limit EMF exposure:

1. Address the wiring in your home - All homes in theory should have a zero net current. Have an electrician you trust inspect the premises to make sure that all wires are grounded all the way back to the breaker. You can tell them that you’d like a zero net current, which is a term they should know. Even once you disable Wi-Fi and hardwire your devices, your ethernet cables should also be enclosed in metal in order to reduce magnetic fields⁴, which is a cheap solution compared to buying an EMF shielded bed canopy.

2. Remove any EMF that you can control in your home. You can shut off the electrical breaker at night, and even have a kill-switch installed by an electrician so you don’t have to walk into the cold garage before bed like I do. Put your cell phone away on airplane mode, and into a tin box that is also sound-proof (yes you are being recorded constantly). You can at least test to see if the box is blocking the wireless signal by calling your phone.

3. Increase distance from the towers - as radio waves travel outward from their source - a transmitter - they lose intensity, and rapidly. The intensity of radio waves over distance obeys the inverse-square law, which states that intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from a source.  For example: when you double the distance, you get four times less power being emitted to your body.  

4. Subscribe to our publication! We’ll be sharing some practical, counterintuitive and holistic ways to address EMF pollution in our environment and our bodies in future articles!

1. P. Héroux: "60 Hz Electric and Magnetic Fields Generated by a Distribution Network",
BioElectroMagnetics, Vol 8, pp 135-148, 1987. DOI: 10.1002/bem.2250080204

2. Laporte, Paula 2014. Prescriptions for a Healthy House, 3rd ed. New Catalyst Books.

3. Becker, Robert O. 1990. Cross Currents. New York: Penguin Group (USA)

4. Kalanjati, 2019.