EMFs: The Invisible Toxin

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. — Genesis 1:3

I want to begin with the radiation we cannot see. Out of sight, yes, but by the end of this chapter, not out of mind.

When the Creator spoke light into being on the first day, the light He made was a particular thing: the visible spectrum, a narrow band of wavelengths that the human eye is built to detect and the human body is built to thrive in. Sunlight contains this light. So does the flame of a candle and the fire in a hearth. For almost all of human history, the body lived in the light of the sun, the earth’s magnetic field and little else.

That is not the world a modern body lives in. For about a century, and at an accelerating pace since the 1980s, we have been immersed in electromagnetic radiation that did not exist on this planet before: from the wiring of our houses, the phone we keep against our bodies, the wireless router, the smart meter on the side of the house, the cell tower down the road and the satellites overhead. We swim in it the way a fish swims in water, and we notice it about as often.

This chapter is deliberately short. If you want to go deeper, the book I recommend is EMF*D: 5G, Wi-Fi & Cell Phones: Hidden Harms and How to Protect Yourself by Dr. Joseph Mercola (Hay House, 2020). It tells how the wireless industry and its safety standards developed, why Dr. Mercola says those standards are out of date, the health conditions he links to EMFs, what he says about 5G, and his full program for protection and repair. Read it for depth; consider this chapter the trailer. Here I will give you the framework: what EMFs are, how researchers believe they affect cells, what the studies show, what the other side says, and the steps that lower a household’s exposure, in order of impact.

What EMFs Are

Electromagnetic fields (EMFs) are energy that moves through space as waves, ripples in a pond nobody can see. They are sorted by frequency on the electromagnetic spectrum, and the spectrum has two halves.

• Ionizing radiation (X-rays, gamma rays and the high end of ultraviolet) has enough energy to knock electrons out of atoms and break DNA directly. Everyone agrees it is harmful in excess. On this point, at least, there is no argument.
• Non-ionizing radiation has less energy. It includes visible light and infrared, and the man-made fields this chapter is about:
  • radiofrequency (RF) radiation from cell phones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, smart meters, cordless phones, baby monitors and cell towers;
  • low-frequency magnetic and electric fields from household wiring, appliances and power lines;
  • “dirty electricity,” high-frequency noise that rides piggyback on household wiring from electronics and dimmers.

What the body was designed to live in. The natural electromagnetic environment of the earth has three main sources: the light of the sun; the earth’s magnetic field; and the Schumann resonance, a faint low-frequency wave of about 7.83 hertz, generated continuously by lightning around the world. The brain’s own electrical activity runs in roughly that range. We came, you might say, pre-tuned to the planet.

Man-made RF radiation began with radio and grew rapidly from the 1980s with mobile phones, then Wi-Fi in the 2000s, smart devices in the 2010s, and 5G and satellite networks in the 2020s. Researchers Priyanka Bandara and David Carpenter, writing in The Lancet Planetary Health in 2018, estimated that RF exposure at common frequencies is now many orders of magnitude above natural background levels. The body that grew up inside the natural spectrum is being asked to live inside one it has never met. It is a bit like moving overnight from a quiet village into the front row of a rock concert.

Why “Non-Ionizing” Is Not the Whole Story

For decades, the argument for safety has been simple. RF radiation is non-ionizing, so it cannot break chemical bonds, and the only harm it can do is to heat tissue. If it does not cook you, the reasoning goes, it cannot hurt you. U.S. safety limits, set by the FCC in 1996, are based on that heating effect, measured as the specific absorption rate, or SAR.

Dr. Mercola, in EMF*D, and the researchers he cites argue that biological effects happen far below the level that heats tissue, through a different mechanism. That mechanism is the heart of this chapter, so stay with me.

The Calcium Channel

The researcher whose work Dr. Mercola builds EMF*D around is Dr. Martin Pall, professor emeritus of biochemistry at Washington State University. In a series of papers from 2013 onward, he described how he believes non-ionizing EMFs cause harm. I want to explain it in terms anyone can follow, no biochemistry degree required.

1. Every cell in your body is enclosed by a membrane, and the membrane is studded with tiny gates that let specific substances in and out. One family of these gates is the voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs). They are normally closed and open only on specific signals, like a door with a strict bouncer.
2. Dr. Pall argues that EMFs, at intensities far below the safety limits, act on these channels and open them. The bouncer, in effect, steps aside.
3. Calcium floods into the cell faster than the cell can handle, like a crowd through a broken turnstile. Excess calcium raises nitric oxide, which combines with superoxide to form peroxynitrite, one of the most damaging oxidizing molecules in the body.
4. Peroxynitrite damages the mitochondria, DNA and cell membranes, producing the oxidative stress you met in Chapter 1.

The chain is: EMF → open calcium channels → excess calcium → peroxynitrite → oxidative damage. One domino tips the next.

Dr. Pall also teaches that the body responds to the pulsed pattern of digital signals more than to their raw power. That is why a low-power digital device can matter: it is less about the volume than the drumbeat. Tissues rich in these channels, such as the brain, the heart and the testes, may be the most affected.

The repair cost. Dr. Mercola explains that cells repair DNA damage with enzymes (PARP) that use up NAD+, a molecule the mitochondria need to make energy. Constant damage and constant repair can drain NAD+, leaving people tired and aging faster. Think of a roofer patching in a storm that never ends: the patching itself wears him out.

What the Research Shows

• Cell phones and brain tumors. The Swedish oncologist Dr. Lennart Hardell, who has studied this question since the late 1990s, found higher rates of glioma, an aggressive brain tumor, on the side of the head where heavy users held their phone, with the highest risk in those who started young, whose skulls are thinner and whose nervous systems are still developing.
• The NTP study. In 2018 the U.S. National Toxicology Program, in the largest animal study of cell phone radiation ever done, reported “clear evidence” of malignant schwannomas (nerve-sheath tumors) in the hearts of male rats exposed to cell phone radiation, and some evidence of brain gliomas. “Clear evidence” is the strongest finding on the NTP’s own scale.
• IARC. In 2011 the World Health Organization’s cancer agency classified RF radiation as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2B). Some researchers, including Dr. Hardell, argue it should be raised.
• Fertility. A 2014 meta-analysis in Environment International found that men who carried phones in their pockets had lower sperm motility and viability. A laptop on the lap exposes the same area.
• Sleep and other symptoms. Studies, and the experience of many of my students, link evening and bedroom exposure to poorer sleep, headaches, poor concentration and anxiety. Some people describe a sensitivity they call electromagnetic hypersensitivity.

The Other Side of the Debate

You will hear the mainstream view, and you should know it. The FDA, the FCC and the WHO say there is no consistent evidence that phones used within the safety limits harm health. A large systematic review commissioned by the WHO and published in 2024 found no link between mobile phone use and brain cancer.

Critics answer that much of the reassuring research is industry-funded, that phone use is too recent to show long-term cancer rates, and that the limits ignore non-thermal effects. And in 2021, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled in Environmental Health Trust v. FCC that the FCC had failed to explain why its 1996 limits still protect health, including for children, and sent the question back to the agency, homework unfinished.

You do not need to settle the science to act. Most of the steps below cost little or nothing, and they improve sleep and focus whatever the final answer turns out to be. You can buckle a seatbelt without predicting a crash. Distance is a precaution both sides accept.

The EMF–Heavy Metal Loop

Wendy Myers, a detoxification practitioner whose work focuses on heavy metals, describes a loop between EMFs and the metals you met in Chapter 4. It is a loop, and not the fun kind.

1. Metals in the body, such as mercury from amalgam fillings, may act like antennas that concentrate EMF energy in the tissues where they are stored.
2. EMF-driven oxidative damage weakens the mitochondria that power the liver and kidneys, so the body detoxifies metals more slowly.
3. A heavier metal load makes the body more sensitive to EMFs, and round and round it goes.

The practical lesson: reducing EMF exposure and supporting detoxification work best together. And please remember from Chapter 4 that amalgam fillings are removed only by a properly trained biological dentist using a safe-removal protocol, never in a rush (see also Chapter 12).

What to Do, in Order of Impact

Behind every step is one principle: distance is your friend. The strength of a field falls off quickly the farther you are from its source, so a few steps back buy you a great deal. If you can do only some of these, start at the top.

1. Hardwire your home internet. This is the single most impactful change in most homes. A Wi-Fi router broadcasts around the clock through the whole house, like a radio station nobody asked for. Connect computers and TVs with ethernet cables and turn the Wi-Fi off, or at minimum turn the router off at night. A plug-in timer makes it automatic, so you never have to remember.
2. Keep the phone off the body. Not in a pocket, a bra or a waistband. Use a bag, a desk or a counter; it can stay close by without living on you. Keep it out of a pregnant woman’s lap and away from children.
3. Use airplane mode whenever the phone is not in use, and always at night. In airplane mode the phone is not searching for towers or pinging for messages, and you get a little peace too. Use the speaker or a wired headset for calls instead of holding the phone to your head, and text rather than call when you can. Avoid calls when the signal is weak, because that is when phones transmit at higher power, shouting to be heard.
4. Make the bedroom a phone-free zone. Buy a real alarm clock (yes, they still make them) and leave the phone in another room. The night is when the body does its deepest repair and detoxification work, so lowering EMF exposure during sleep, when the body repairs, is the reason for airplane mode at night and a phone-free bedroom. Many of my students sleep better within a week.
5. Use wired accessories. Wired headphones instead of Bluetooth earbuds, which are small radios sitting in the ear canal; a wired mouse and keyboard. Cords are not glamorous, but they do not broadcast. Air-tube headsets carry sound through a hollow tube so no wire runs to the head, and ferrite beads clipped on a headset cord reduce the radiation that travels along it.
6. Address the smart meter. Keep beds and desks away from the wall it is on. Ask the utility about an analog meter or an opt-out, which may carry a fee. Yes, sometimes you pay extra for less technology.
7. Measure. An EMF meter shows where the strongest fields in your home are, so you can move beds and desks away from them. It turns an invisible problem into a number you can see.
8. Keep children’s exposure low. Children have thinner skulls and developing nervous systems. No tablets on laps, no Wi-Fi baby monitors by the crib, and phones or tablets in airplane mode for games and videos.
9. Shield only where needed, and skip the phone case. For people in apartment buildings or near towers, a shielding canopy over the bed can help. But avoid phone cases that claim to block radiation: a phone with a blocked signal often transmits harder, and you can end up with more exposure, not less. The box promises a shield and delivers a megaphone.

Tools I recommend: an EMF reader (meter), a basic wired mouse, air-tube headsets and ferrite beads for headset cords.

Help the body repair.

• Magnesium. Because the damage runs through the calcium channels, magnesium, which helps keep the calcium channels calmer, is the supplement Dr. Mercola and I both recommend. I suggest the glycinate or citrate form, 400 to 600 milligrams a day, in the evening.
• Antioxidant, whole-food nutrition. In EMF*D, Dr. Mercola recommends cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli sprouts, which switch on the body’s own antioxidant defenses (the Nrf2 pathway). Small sprouts, big job.
• Support for NAD+ and the mitochondria, which Dr. Mercola discusses in the book, along with sauna, movement and time-restricted eating.
• Grounding. Spend time outside each day with bare feet on grass, soil or sand, in the sunlight the body was made for. Twenty to thirty minutes is a good start. It costs nothing, and no app is required.

No Fear

If you have read this far and feel something close to despair, I understand. The exposures are everywhere, and you still have to work, shop and live in the world that has been built around you.

So I give you the same instruction I give for every toxin in this book. You cannot reach zero, and you do not need to. Reduce the exposures within your control, especially at night, and do not paralyze yourself over the ones that are not. The body has a great capacity for repair, and when its burden is lowered, its own repair has room to work. You need only to move in the direction of less.

Footnotes and sources for this chapter

Sources and Further Reading

• Mercola, J. EMF*D: 5G, Wi-Fi & Cell Phones: Hidden Harms and How to Protect Yourself. Hay House, 2020. (Recommended for depth.)
• Pall, M. L. “Electromagnetic Fields Act via Activation of Voltage-Gated Calcium Channels to Produce Beneficial or Adverse Effects.” Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine 17, no. 8 (2013): 958–965; and his later papers.
• Bandara, P., and Carpenter, D. O. Estimate of radiofrequency exposure compared with natural background levels, The Lancet Planetary Health, 2018.
• Hardell, L. The Microwave Syndrome: A Preventable Tragedy. WitsEnd Publishing, 2019; and Hardell, L., and Carlberg, M. “Mobile Phone and Cordless Phone Use and the Risk for Glioma.” Pathophysiology 22, no. 1 (2015): 1–13.
• National Toxicology Program. NTP Technical Report on the Toxicology and Carcinogenesis Studies in Hsd:Sprague Dawley SD Rats Exposed to Whole-Body Radio Frequency Radiation at a Frequency (900 MHz) and Modulations (GSM and CDMA) Used by Cell Phones. NTP TR 595, November 2018.
• International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Classification of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), 2011.
• Adams, J. A., et al. “Effect of Mobile Telephones on Sperm Quality: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Environment International 70 (2014): 106–112.
• WHO-commissioned systematic review of mobile phone use and brain cancer, 2024.
• Environmental Health Trust v. FCC, U.S. federal appeals court ruling, 2021.
• Davis, D. Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation. Dutton, 2010.
• The BioInitiative Report. A Rationale for Biologically-based Public Exposure Standards for Electromagnetic Fields. BioInitiative Working Group, 2012, updated 2022.
• Myers, W. Limitless Energy: How to Detox Toxic Metals to End Exhaustion and Chronic Fatigue.
• Chevalier, G., et al. “Earthing: Health Implications of Reconnecting the Human Body to the Earth’s Surface Electrons.” Journal of Environmental and Public Health, 2012; and Ober, C., Sinatra, S. T., and Zucker, M. Earthing. Basic Health Publications, 2010.
• An Invisible Threat (documentary).
• Building Biology Institute, for professional EMF assessment.