More on Protecting Yourself from EMFs

August 5, 2019

I got a couple of questions about my previous article on how to protect yourself from EMFs (and both pretty much have the same answer), so I thought I would send my responses out here, in case more of you wondered the same things.

In reference to the suggestion to keep your cell phone at least one foot away from your body when you're not using it -- someone asked, "What difference does a foot or two make?" and "Why is speakerphone better?"

The questions actually made me realize that I should have focused more on the whys of keeping your cell phone at least one foot away from your body whenever you're using it.  Having some distance between you and your cell phone when you're not using it does significantly reduce your EMF exposure.  But it is even more important to reduce the radiation exposure you get when you're actually using your phone.  The rule that the further away your phone is from you, the better, applies in both cases.  When you use speakerphone, your phone is not pressed up against your ear/brain, which helps protect your very delicate and important brain from that dangerous EMF exposure.  My science geek husband is always mentioning the inverse-square law when it comes to this.  Here's a great explanation of what that is -- and how it can help you use your cell phone more safely -- by Dr. Andrew Weil:   

"The saving grace of cell phones is that, like all point-sources of radiation, they obey the inverse-square law: the strength of an electromagnetic field is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source point.  This means that if you move the phone twice as far away from your head, you get one quarter the RF (a form of EMF); move it three times farther, you get one-ninth the RF.  So rather than clasping the phone to your ear (roughly one inch from your brain), use the phone in speaker mode (roughly 15 inches from your brain) and you’ll drop the RF to your brain to a mere 1/225th of the against-the-ear dosage."

Another option is to keep your (wired) headphones nearby at all times so you can quickly pop them in if someone calls you.

Back in 2018, I mentioned that we borrowed a Gauss meter and measured the EMF levels of a few things around the house and it was eye-opening -- here are some of the results (keep in mind that a SAFE level of EMFs has been determined to be 600 mA/m (milliamperes per meter) and under):

Cell phone on airplane mode - 217 mA/m
Cell phone on (cellular on) up close - 13,605 mA/m
Cell phone on (cellular on) but 3 feet away - 921 mA/m
Microwave off - 158 mA/m
Microwave ON - 12,083 mA/m

So basically, holding a cell phone up to your ear is the same thing as pressing your head against a microwave while it's on.  DON'T DO EITHER ONE OF THOSE THINGS.

You can read more about this in Dr. Weil's article.