Many symptoms of exposure to electromagnetic radiation can occur within seconds or minutes of exposure, such as dizziness; asthma and tightening or pain in the chest; irregular or rapid heartbeat; or skin responses (redness, itching, hives).  Other symptoms may not make an appearance until hours later, such as a sudden feeling of exhaustion, or a headache.  Some symptoms can even take days after an EMR exposure to appear.  Serious diseases are correlated with prolonged exposure to EMR, such as cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's Disease, fibromyalgia, MS, and ALS, as shown in the list of long-term diseases on the Health Symptoms and Diseases Correlated with EMR Exposure page.

It becomes much easier to connect one’s symptoms to an EMR exposure if one’s home environment has been sanitized of wireless signals.  Then, the symptoms can become more noticeable when one is in a different environment.  With the use of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) and radiofrequency (RF) meters, one can often connect the dots as to the quantity and type of EMR present in a particular environment, or what one encountered in their environment recently that could have contributed to an onset of health symptoms.  Unfortunately, many of the places people believe to be best for recreation and relaxation, such as a community or state park, are often the most dangerous.  These locations, uninhabited by humans, are regularly used as cell tower sites, with the tower often obstructed from view while one is enjoying the trails in the park.

Since no one can know every electromagnetic event occurring in their environment unless they carried around an expensive spectrum analyzer everywhere they went, it will be impossible to connect every health symptom to an exposure.  Don’t forget that some exposures are natural, such as the EMR produced during a thunderstorm or solar storm.  One may be surprised to observe that these too may cause noticeable health symptoms. 

Keeping a log of activities, locations, health symptoms, and RF measurements is a good way to determine what places may not be safe to spend time and may be contributing to the way one felt at the location or afterwards.  To conduct a more science-based study, it would be best to first log one's activities and symptoms at different locations for a few weeks without a RF meter, then go back to those locations on a later date to measure the RF intensities to see if there is any correlation.

Understand that even if the RF levels register on the low end in an area that seemed to bring on health symptoms, there still may have been other frequencies present in the environment that one's particular RF meter was not sensitive to and therefore did not detect (RF meters are each very specific in their detectable frequency ranges).  It is also possible that a “window effect” exists, whereby a weak signal of a specific frequency is causing greater health effects than a strong signal of a different frequency.  A radiofrequency (RF) meter will only help a person to avoid the strongest signals.  Unfortunately, not enough scientific research has been performed to determine definitively which frequencies are most dangerous to human health and at what intensities. 

Fortunately, in general, when it comes to the wireless signals emitted by cell phones, wi-fi, Bluetooth, cell towers and masts, it does appear that a greater intensity results in a sooner onset of symptoms and stronger symptoms.  Therefore, avoiding areas of high RF intensities is still the best practice.

Below is a list of devices, activities, and environmental sources of RF EMR that are correlated with noticeable health symptoms:

Some technology which could elicit health symptoms due to the RF EMR produced, may be present in one's home environment, on one's person, or is something that one can control.

Refer to the Remediation Page for more information about some of the devices listed below that one can choose not to own or use, or at least minimize their use; and learn what alternatives exist:

·         Cell phones, Pagers, Cordless Phones

·         Watches connected to the mobile network

·         Wi-fi routers and wi-fi generated by tablets, laptops and desktop computers

·         Wireless computer peripherals (i.e. mouse and keyboard)

·         Smart appliances

·         Smart or Bluetooth-enabled exercise equipment

·         Wi-fi medical devices (hearing aids, bronchial inhalers, medical alert systems)

·         Wearable fitness trackers

·         Wireless cameras/surveillance systems, baby monitors, and doorbell cameras

·         Gaming consoles that require wi-fi to operate

·         Smart utility meters (electric, gas and water)

·         Bluetooth in one's vehicle

·         Livestreaming video for social media

·         Drones

·         2-way radios including ham, CB, and walkie-talkies

One may not have the immediate choice to avoid exposure the case of these other common RF sources in the environment outside the home.  It is also possible these sources may be required for one's job or occupation:

·         Cell towers, masts, range extenders, and small cell transmitters

·         Other types of RF-transmitting antennas on towers or buildings nearby

For example:  AM/FM radio, Automatic Meter Infrastructure (AMI) base stations for the utility companies to obtain meter reads from the municipality's smart utility meters, emergency services and police radio transmitters, a neighbor with a ham radio hobby.

·         Doppler Radar

Many of the powerful radars operated by the National Weather Service operate by sending pulses of 750,000 Watts.  Although a Doppler Radar such as the commonly used Weather Surveillance Radar 1988 (WSR-88) is only transmitting EMR for a total of about 7 seconds of each hour, and the rest of the time is spent "listening" for the return of the pulses; considering that pulsed radiation is more biologically active (causes more health effects), at this high of intensity, it would not be recommended to live in the sight lines of one of these large domed radars.

·         RF radiation from sensors on one's own vehicle and others’ vehicles

·         Check-out Registers at a store

Because the registers process credit card transactions, they transmit wireless signals.  The area near the registers often has the highest levels of radiation in the store.

·         Automatic doors to enter/exit a store

These doors often use millimeter waves to control their operation.  Millimeter waves and the RF testing device required is discussed in detail on the Remediation Page at the end of Step 2.

·         Body-cams

A body-cam that is live-streaming video data to the 4G network transmits heavily modulated frequencies, known to be especially biologically active.

·         Pagers that operate on a paging network

A traditional pager operates on a specialized network of towers with antennas, similar to a mobile phone network.  While certainly not common like in the 1990’s, they are often still used in the health care industry.

·         Restaurant pagers (to alert restaurant personnel, or to let patrons know when their table is ready)

Restaurant systems are different from traditional pagers in that they have a base transmitter on site at the restaurant that communicates with the paging units.  Different models have different power levels, depending on how far the pagers can be from the base unit and still receive a signal.

·         High concentration of people and cell phones in one area

Places like stadiums, arenas, auditoriums, theaters, bars, schools, universities, where many people are congregated, can be highly polluted with electrosmog because numerous cell phones are sending signals to and receiving signals from towers and masts nearby.  When many people in one area are livestreaming, or performing other data-intensive tasks, this can further increase the background EMR levels and worsen the electrosmog.

Sometimes, if it is a large establishment with newer infrastructure, there are cellular masts on the inside of the building, which improves the situation since people’s phones don’t need to blast a stronger signal through a thick-walled building to an outdoor cell tower. 

A basement bar or lounge with no windows without this kind of indoor infrastructure can be dangerous because everyone’s cell phone will be struggling to make contact with the nearest tower.  Their phones will be emitting radiation in the phones' maximum capacities to maintain a signal.

·         Airport and air traffic radar

Many people are reactive to the radar and other signals coming from airplanes and helicopters flying overhead.  Most people seem to find it thrilling to watch a plane fly directly over them.  They probably don’t realize that much of that excited feeling is simply the brain's response to being blasted with radar from the plane.  Since these electromagnetic waves from the radar are introducing energy into the brain, they excite neurons, similarly to how a cell phone’s signals or other wireless radiation can also initiate an excited feeling, similar to a caffeine high.  This EMR "high" can be just as addictive as a drug.

People that live near an airport or in a flight path where the air traffic is at low altitude, preparing for landing or taking off, are more at risk of suffering health symptoms, particularly cancer, due to their prolonged exposure.  Signals from airplanes are sometimes detected on RF meters in the range of 200 MHz to 8 GHz, but airplanes also use much higher frequencies.  In August 2023, a new 60 GHz frequency for aircraft was just approved (untested for biological effects, of course).  Unfortunately, at this time, there are no consumer-grade meters to test for this high of a frequency, so one will not be able to determine the levels in one's environment.

The website, flightaware.com/live, can indicate if there is a lot of plane activity in one's area in near real-time.  Enter a city in the top search box, and it will show the closest airports.  The airport one selects will then display in a new window, showing outbound planes in green, and inbound planes in blue.  All other planes not coming or going from that airport will be white.  Hovering over each plane icon will indicate its altitude on the second line of text, preceded by an up or down arrow, indicating if it is increasing or decreasing in altitude, respectively.  Aircraft that is way up in the sky at 24,000 ft or more are probably not going to cause noticeable health effects, but aircraft flying low near an airport may.  Most air traffic will appear on this website, except for military-related, but if one observes a sensitivity to the regular planes, a military jet roaring overhead will most definitely elicit immediately noticeable health symptoms.

It is not just the planes emitting RF radiation.  Depending on the size of the airport, there may be a few hundred antennas at the airport (if a smaller, community airport), or 1000+ antennas if it is a larger, regional airport.

·         Company trucks with GPS trackers (i.e. UPS, FedEx, USPS, garbage trucks, Amazon vehicles)

One may notice parts of one's body suddenly hurting (like a big toe), leg muscle cramps, or a sudden onset of dizziness, confusion, forgetting what one was just doing, or just a strange feeling in general, when one of these GPS-tracked trucks is lingering around one's home.  Some of these company trucks have very strong transmitters.  If the dog or cat goes crazy every time certain trucks come through or linger in one's neighborhood, it is possible their GPS tracker is making them feel unwell in some way.  If one is driving or riding in one of these trucks for a living, they need to be aware of this exposure.  The commercial GPS trackers often appear to operate at a frequency lower than 200 MHz, and are therefore not always detected on the RF meter one would use to detect cellular and wi-fi radiation, but this radiation is just as dangerous as the higher frequencies of electromagnetic radiation.

Continue to Health Symptoms and Diseases Correlated with EMR Exposure -->

<-- Return to Health Effects of Non-ionizing Electromagnetic Radiation