EMF's in your home!
EMF's refers to the Electro-Magnetic Fields that are produced by electrical circuits and equipment.
At low levels they are deemed to be harmless but at higher levels they have many detrimental health implications.
The term EMF refers to both Electric and Magnetic fields:
- Electric fields are present whenever electricity is present. - e.g. There will be electric fields around cables to a bedside light even when the light is switched off but the cable is still "live". Electric fields also occur naturally - for example, if you wear insulating shoes, on a dry day a charge will accumulate on your body - sometimes you can see this discharge by touching a conductive object where there may be a little spark!
- Magnetic fields are only produced when electricity is being used: e.g In the above example when the light is off there will be no magnetic fields produced from the cable, but with the light on, and electricity flowing, there will be some magnetic fields produced. With correctly wired "low power" circuits these magnetic fields should be very low and generally not a problem. With high power circuits or electrical power supplies, these fields can become very strong and should be avoided. These fields rapidly reduce with distance so you can avoid them by keeping away. For example we often have chargers and power supplies plugged in under our desk, then we rest our feet on them !!! - this is easy to fix just move them 1/2m away. Metal boxed devices such as PCs are generally pretty good and don't emit many magnetic fields, but the plastic cased devices such as transformers and power supplies are made very cheaply and dont have any shielding so are much worse.
The practical solution to check your home is to either hire a specialist to come and survey your house for you, or buy an EMF meter to check it yourself. This way you can eradicate many of the basic problem devices, possibly replacing them with better made, more modern devices that don’t produce such horrendous fields. There are many potential EMF hotspot causes that you will be able to isolate and fix yourself, but sometimes you will need an electrician to fix any house wiring problems and bring it up to a good standard.
Every home in the western world will be awash with many different radio, TV and phone signals - again at a low level perfectly harmless, but not so good when the levels are too high.
Our electricity supply comes to us from a generating station, by means of powerlines. The majority of these are overhead cables, supported by large transmission towers or pylons. The cables emit magnetic and electric fields. Powerlines carrying smaller loads to meet local power needs are supported on smaller metal towers or wooden poles. Housing developments are often built near an existing line. Power cables can be routed above, or sometimes fixed to, houses.