20 Proven Ways to Lower Your Family’s EMF Exposure Today!

If you read the fine print in user manuals, cell phone manufacturers themselves warn against holding the phone directly up against your head.

The user, by holding the cell phone against his or her head, receives the highest amount of EMF radio frequency exposure during the call.

This is especially problematic with children, as their smaller head sizes mean greater brain exposure.

For lower exposure, when you have to take a call, put the phone in “speaker phone” mode and set it down on a surface, so there is increased distance and no direct phone-to-skin contact.

There are a number of studies on the benefits of limiting screen time for children (and adults). We won’t go into the weeds regarding that here.

We also recognize there are times when a child is being disruptive in a difficult circumstance and the distraction of the phone may the only thing that will settle the child down.

In these circumstances, just take a second and make sure the phone is in airplane mode.

It is possible to have the phone in airplane mode, but also have the wireless or bluetooth turned on, so make sure these are turned off, as well.

Many current baby monitors utilize Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to transmit the audio and video to the receiver. This subjects your baby to differing levels of radio frequency radiation.

To avoid this exposure for your child, you can purchase baby monitors that have ethernet ports and then “hardwire” your baby monitor.

Please see our EMF Field Guides for more information on low-EMF nurseries and children’s rooms.

We recommend limiting your exposure to RF fields as much as possible and that includes the use of Wi-Fi routers.

As we mentioned in our section on baby monitors, hardwiring your internet is a great way to limit your RF exposure.

Hardwiring can be achieved by running grounded ethernet cables through your home, by utilizing a powerline adapter kit that connects to your router via your home’s electrical wiring, or by using an adapter kit that uses pre-existing co-axial or cable tv lines.

We’ll have a guide on the pros and cons of each out soon.

To put it simply, we recommend getting rid of your cordless telephones. This is especially the case with DECT phones (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications).

DECT phones produce a large amount of radio frequency radiation. These can be especially problematic as many of the docking stations are placed right next to sleeping areas.

We recommend you go old-school with a corded land-line. 

Yes, they still make landline phones and many have very long stretchy cords, so you can maneuver about the house.

Some lighting choices are better than others. Here are a few examples of ones you want to look out for in order to have a low-EMF home:

01 – A CFL bulb (the ones that look like pig tails) can refresh 10-40,000 times a second. It’s amazing engineering and significant energy savings, but unfortunately leads to dirty electricity.

CFL bulbs also contain mercury that will be released in your home if the bulb breaks.

02 – Dimmer switches are also notorious culprits in the production of dirty electricity

03 – Fluorescent lighting ballasts, commonly found in offices and workshops, can produce elevated magnetic fields.

When in doubt, go old school with incandescent light bulbs and have a certified electrician swap out your dimmer switches.

Wrist-worn fitness trackers, such as FitBit and Garmin, may have bluetooth capabilities that are not able to be turned off. This can mean constant RF radiation.

Our advice would be to purchase a model where the bluetooth can be turned off. If that’s not possible take it off when not in use.

We’ll break down what we mean by this:

By hardwiring your laptop with grounded ethernet cable it enables you to turn off your Wi-Fi router and not subject your family to the RF radiation.

Grounding your laptop using a 3-prong, grounded charging plug helps mitigate AC electric fields around your computer.

Having your computer in airplane mode keeps the wireless and bluetooth chips from attempting to communicate. This reduces your RF EMF exposure.

Using a corded keyboard and mouse helps with RF fields, too.

Entertainment centers can have a wide variety of devices that produce RF radiation.

Smart TVs, media devices, gaming systems, smart speakers, cable boxes, DVD players, audio systems, wireless speakers, and media recorders all have wireless capabilities.

The combination of all these in close proximity can lead to elevated RF levels, even when the devices aren’t actively in use.

Our recommendation is to connect to these with grounded ethernet and forget the wireless entirely.

If that’s not possible, put these electronics on power strips, so that you can easily turn them off entirely when not in use.

Smart meters are simply digital utility meters that can transmit the usage data back to the utilities.

This is most commonly achieved through use of a cellular transmitter that transmits the data at regular intervals, so that a “scanning” vehicle can drive by and receive the information.

There are different smart meter models that produce different levels intensity and frequency of RF signals. As such, we recommend contacting an EMF specialist or purchasing a RF capable meter to ascertain these variables if the meter is close to sleeping or frequented areas of the home.