A Case Study from the EMF Trenches

One of the things that used to keep me up at night was when my kid couldn’t sleep. She may have been fussy or didn’t feel well. The reality was, if my kid wasn’t sleeping well…neither was I!

This is when I love to be called in to people’s homes and put on my “Toxic Sleuth” hat to look for clues of hidden toxins that are the culprits in impacting our health and our sleep. And the good news is, once the problem is detected, the solutions are often very simple.

Let me give you an example…

I was called into the home of a 7-year-old boy, who, according to his mom, had woken up with headaches for the past two years. When I entered the home, I checked to see if the boy was exposed to air fresheners, artificial fragrances, or harsh conventional household cleaners—big culprits in triggering headaches.

I was happy to see that white vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, and baking soda were used for cleaning and no air fresheners were used. Clearly, this mom had educated herself and was doing many of the right things to remove headache triggers in her home.

My next step was to check to see whether the child had been tested for allergies. Yes, he was, and they discovered he was allergic to grasses and pollen. That led me to his bedroom, where I found a 3-foot-tall air purifier placed about 3 inches from the boy’s headboard.

The mom told me that she wanted to get the unit as close to him as possible so that he’d breathe the cleanest air possible. That might seem very commonsense to do; however, what many people don’t realize is that devices like air purifiers can emit sting electromagnetic fields as far as four feet away, and these fields can disrupt sleep and trigger headaches.

Over a thousand research studies have linked EMFs to important biological effects by influencing or interfering with sensitive “bio-electromagnetic” processes within our cells, brains, and bodies. We are learning that the human body is an amazing living “bio-electronic” machine, utilizing many sensitive electromagnetic processes for the proper functioning of our brains, nervous systems, immune systems, and other organs. For example, EMFs have been shown to suppress the secretion of melatonin at night. This is important because melatonin is the main hormone that initiates our sleep cycle. 

I took out my Gauss meter, which measures magnetic fields in units called milligauss (mG). A safe level is considered to be between 0.5 to 1.0 mG. But when I took the measurement at the boy’s headboard, it measured over 60 mGs!  

I moved the air purifier about 6 feet away. When I checked the electromagnetic fields again with the Gauss meter at the boy’s headboard, no electromagnetic fields were detected!

Now the big question was, would it work?

The next morning, the mom called me in tears. She said, “This is the first morning in two years my son awoke without a headache. Do you think I might have given him a brain tumor?” Thankfully, he is fine and he continues to be headache-free three years later.

This is just one of many situations I’ve encountered during my Home Assessments, where I have found very simple solutions that minimized or eliminated troubling—and often costly—health issues by reducing exposure to toxins and other environmental factors such as EMFs in the home.