Dr. Ben: On today's episode of The Modern Vital Podcast, we're going to talk about dirty electricity and today we have the return of Kim O'Neill Lear, Director of Education and Communications at Green Wave International, one of my favorite EMF mitigation companies. And she has an extensive background in research, writing and education, developing content and works on product development as well at Green Wave.
And she holds degrees from UC Berkeley and Stanford and I consider her an absolute expert in electromagnetic radiation. I know she's getting certified as well as a specialist in that. Welcome back to the show, Kim.
Kim: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be back.
Dr. Ben: It's great to have you.
So. Dirty electricity. I mean, I know it's a topic, near and dear to both of our hearts and I know especially yours because this is literally the field that you live in. The world you swim in. So for our audience who might think, dirty electricity…Is that emfs, what is that? Can you define it for us?
Kim: Absolutely. So, so yes, dirty electricity is actually one of four different types of EMF pollution. It happens to be the type that we got our start in, we got our start, especially in dirty electricity. As I think we talked before, there are four different types of EMF pollution, but we'll focus today on dirty electricity. And so yeah, what is it?
Basically, you know, dirty electricity, that term became popularized to describe kind of any these kind of surges and spikes of electromagnetic energy that ride our wiring in our buildings. And so, you know, we only kind of clean 50 or 60 Hertz, you know, conventional ac electricity should be and when I say 50 or 60 Hertz, that's just the frequency at which regular electricity oscillates.
And so dirty electricity kind of refers to all these other frequencies, usually higher frequencies that are riding our wiring these days, you know, in addition to what's supposed to be there, we got all this, what I like to call electrical trash there. And it's kind of interesting. It's not a brand new problem, but it is a problem that has increased exponentially in the last I'd say 20 30 40 years.
And primarily with the kind of the advent of energy efficient lighting and appliances and also the whole electronics revolution. And so the way dirty electricity is produced is basically it's, it's kind of a byproduct or a side effect of how a lot of our modern devices use electricity. So lots of things these days don't use electricity as is meaning as it's provided to us by the utility company.
Most devices have to change or manipulate electricity in one way or another in order to operate. So lots of times rather than drawing electricity in a nice continuous stream, they're drawing it in bits or pulses by turning the flow of electricity on and off repeatedly, sometimes thousands or tens of thousands of times per second. They're also having to kind of change the alternating current that's provided to us by utility company to direct current.
And they're also often changing the voltage characteristics. So they're having to lower the 120 volts down to much lower voltages that electronic equipment and other equipment can handle. And so it's all of these types of, you know, processes of, of manipulation and changing electrical current that creates, you know, creates lots of interruptions and that smooth flow of electrical current.
And that is what creates what's known as dirty electricity, which are these surges and spikes of electromagnetic magnetic energy known as harmonics and voltage transients that then get conducted onto our wiring. They travel throughout, you know, homes, you know, via wiring. So once dirty electricity is generated by a piece of equipment, a little bit of it will radiate off into the, into the kind of environment as kind of higher frequency electric and magnetic fields.
But a lot of it is gonna be conducted back onto your wiring where it can spread, you know, throughout the circuits in your house via the wiring. It's also going to travel up and down any power cords that are connected, you know, into electrical outlets and it can even move from one building to another building via power lines. And so in other means, and so the dirty electricity that I produce in my home could get, you know, end up in my neighbor's home and they just can end up in my home.
So that's kind of like in a nutshell, what dirty electricity it is. It's, you know, just to summarize it's kind of all of these higher frequencies that are riding our wiring, they travel, you know, once they're created, they can travel throughout a building. And as they travel, whether it be along, you know, the building wires that are in our walls, kind of ceilings under our floors, along power cords or power lines, they're emitting these higher frequency electric and magnetic fields higher than the 50 or 60 Hertz frequencies that you get from just regular electricity. It these higher frequency fields radiating, radiating out into the environment. And the other thing that kind of makes them, these fields different than your 50 60 Hertz fields is they're not a smooth sine wave. They're a very kind of erratic chaotic wave form, which is what kind of experts believe is what makes them particularly bothersome kind of to our bodies.
And as I know we discussed when I was here last time, there's, there's lots of different health effects that, you know, are associated with dirty electricity and other types of EMF pollution. They can affect us at a cellular level. you know, causing all kinds of, you know, interruption and, and signal and communication that then have downstream effects, unpleasant symptoms like headaches or memory loss or brain fog or, you know, and then downstream effects, you know, potential cancer and other types of diseases. So there are kind of a lot of good reasons for us to be aware of dirty electricity and other types of EMF pollution. And while there's still plenty of research to be done on right now on dirty electricity and other types of EMF pollution, there's certainly enough already to suggest that we should exercise precaution and take steps to both kind of understand what our exposures are.
So we can measure dirty electricity in our environments and then there's plenty of steps that you can take to actually reduce this type of EMF pollution in your environment.
Dr. Ben: So, Kim I mean, I know that like 50 to 60 Hertz is like that S Sine wave you mentioned, are we talking about then the technologies that are basically manipulating this sine wave that exists sort of in our wiring? And then that's the dirty electricity or is there also a lot of dirty electricity already in our wiring in our systems? Even before we connect, you know, AC/DC or like a compact fluorescent light bulb to that electrical source. Does, does that make sense, my question?
Kim: No, I think I understand. So it's a good question. So if I take any, any building these days, if I take my home, for example, and if I were to take dirty electricity measurements, chances are, you know, the dirty electricity that I read on my wiring is, is coming both from things I have running inside my environment and we can get into sources.
I'll give you some examples of sources. So different kinds of equipment and appliances and devices, you know that I have running inside are gonna generate dirty electricity that that's riding my wiring. But you know, if I were to get rid of all of those things, let's pretend I could for a minute, which I probably couldn't, it's too hard these days.
We're also getting dirty electricity that comes in off of the grid. So dirty electricity that's generated in other, you know, buildings or by in, you know, electronic or even like for example, cellphone towers, you know that cell phones deal with a whole different type and, and towers deal with a whole different type of EMF pollution called RF radiation.
But the towers themselves run on electricity and have switch mode power supplies. And so they're also generating dirty electricity which can then get on to the power grid and be one of the sources, you know, of dirty electricity that's traveling into our homes, you know, from the power grid. So we have kind of an external source which is what's coming in the power grid kind of enters our homes and our branch circuits, you know, in our electrical systems via the power lines and then
We're also generating, you know, our own dirty electricity inside our own homes based on the things that we were using. And so some examples, the most, you know, some kind of, of the biggest offenders these days are things like your energy efficient lighting. So compact fluorescent light bulbs, your low, any low voltage like halogen bulbs, a lot of led bulbs, led bulbs are a little bit of a mix.
There's some that seem to run at 100 and 20 volts and don't produce dirty electricity or have some built in filtration. And there's some led bulbs that are still worse than compact fluorescence. It's kind of a mix. light dimmer switches, you know, that we use to create great mood lighting and whatnot. They generate a lot of dirty electricity. Any equipment that's got electric motors. So things like refrigerators, you know, HVAC equipment, blenders, mixers, juicers, you know, air filter systems, all kinds of things, you know, anything you can think that's got electronic motor, or electric motor, power tools. There's lots of examples and then things that include a transformer or a switch mode power supply, those are the components and a lot of electronics that have to change the alternating current to direct current or tamping down the voltages. And so anything that, you know, includes, especially, you know, a, a you know, switch mode power supply.
So computers, printers, gaming systems, you know, you name it and that would also include like a solar panel inverter, right?
Because it's converting that AC to DC, like I've got one in, OK, I've got one in my house and I'm so grateful that it's, I mean, it's, it's still pretty close to my bedroom but it's maybe 50 ft, I'd say, which is probably still too close. But 50 ft as the, as the crow flies, is a lot better than 20 ft, right?
I mean, when you're talking about an inverter and yeah, and the inverters and there's, and there's, you know, inverters, there's can be differences in terms of some inverters can create a lot, a lot of dirty electricity. some are a little bit better, you know, in terms of don't crete quite as much or have some kind of filtration. So it's sort of mixed, but usually you're gonna get a lot of, you know, dirty electricity related to a solar power installation.
I was gonna get to those. So your solar power installations, wind turbines, you know, and the inverters that they use your car charging stations, smart meter, all of these kind of devices or equipment generate a lot of dirty electricity. And like I said, that's when a lot of that gets conducted back onto power lines or under the wiring in our house where it likes to travel on hot wires and distribute itself widely as it's traveling.
It's emitting these high frequency or higher frequency electric and magnetic fields that are sort of chaotic fields in nature. They're not, you know, they're not a nice smooth sine wave field and even those can be, you know, detrimental, but it's that agitating kind of like chaotic wave form that seems to make dirty electricity a little bothersome to people's systems.
Dr. Ben: So I brought my like my Trifield EMF meter here which I know you guys use as well. If I'm plugging this into my mains, am I then measuring the dirty electricity or am I also measuring EMFs and all the other stuff.
Kim: Yeah. So the Trifield is, I mean, typically a handheld meter and so it's measuring your, it's measuring ac electric fields, ac magnetic fields and radio frequency radiation. It's not a great tool for measuring dirty electricity for a couple of reasons. It's got, doesn't necessarily cover the whole frequency range of dirty electricity frequencies.
It's not sensitive enough on the low end, meaning it's not able to pick up like readings that would be considered of concern in relation to, you know, dirty electricity. It just doesn't have the capacity to pick up readings at that low level. And the other big issue is that it doesn't, it's not able to separate and read separately like dirty electricity fields, ac magnetic and electric fields from the 50 or 60 Hertz fields of regular electricity.
And what's interesting is in, in, in any environment, those 50 60 Hertz Hertz field in terms of their amplitude or strength are gonna be the predominant field, you know, present, you know, in a room. However, you know, they are, you know, if you have a sine wave, it's compared to the kind of more chaotic nature of dirty electricity. And so if you just, it's, you can't measure dirty electricity very well with a meter like that most handheld meters.
And that's one of the difficulties with, you know, we're kind of branching into measurement there are the two primary ways or kind of main ways of measuring dirty electricity are to kind of measure what's actually traveling along the wiring because that's gonna be a good indication of what's gonna radiate them off of the wiring. So you can measure what's on the wiring and then you can measure kind of, you know, ambient fields in the air.
And so when you're measuring, trying to measure ambient dirty electricity fields in the air, it's tricky. You can do it. I mean, in a sense, you can do it with an AM radio like a portable AM battery operate rated radio if you set it like kind of on a off station. So kind of to static, usually at the higher end, you know, of your dial, but not on a radio station, you're reading static and you don't get an actual dirty electricity level reading in terms of how much dirty electricity, but you can use it to kind of help you identify sources. So if I'm walking around with an AM radio and I get near something that's producing a lot of dirty electricity, there's gonna be a very noticeable difference in the static that you're hearing on the radio. Usually you're gonna hear a louder buzz. Sometimes you can hear a little clicking mixed in there.
And so you can, it's, it can be really helpful for identifying sources, but it's not gonna give you an actual reading. And the problem with a lot of the handheld meters like a tri field or even some really great meters like I love the Geertz solution N fa 1000 for. And that's what a lot of a instrument that a lot of professional EMF professionals use to take electric and magnetic field measurements in homes.
It's a fantastic meter. It, it's able to measure, you know, dirty electricity, frequent frequencies separately from your 60 Hertz frequencies. So you have the ability to do that. It is, it covers a pretty good, you know, range of dirty electricity frequencies. But it even that great tool which costs, you know, close to $2000 is not necessarily sensitive enough at the low end to pick up, you know, problematic dirt, electricity readings.
And so that's why, you know, for most professionals will focus on reading what's on the wiring, measuring what's on the wiring. The very best way to do that is with an Ayo Cope. And in the SISCOPE, because you can get the most detailed information in terms of not just the amplitude of the fields but the particular frequencies they're riding the wiring, which helps you figure out what some of the sources might be.
You can get a lot of very specific information and you can with special antennas use in a SISCOPE to read kind of that ambient, the ambient fields. Once they've radiated off the wiring, the difficulty with the telescopes is that they're not necessarily easy to use. They take a fair amount of training and experience to use appropriately and effectively and to interpret results.
And so for most consumers, the best way to measure dirty electricity, you know, on the wiring is to use what we call a plug in em I meter. Sometimes it'll be called the micro surge meter, dirty electricity meter. But basically it's a meter that plugs in, you know, two electrical outlets and what it's doing is kind of reading the dirty electricity.
That's riding the wiring, you know, in that area of a circuit. So it can give you, it's a pretty good proxy and it focuses on the electric field component of dirty electricity, but can give you a pretty good idea of, you know, how much dirty electricity is riding your wiring near that outlet. And so typically we like green wave makes a meter like that, you know, and you, we recommend to folks just, you know, you plug it into different outlets throughout your house.
You kind of take some notes, you know, on what are, what are my levels, you know, how does it vary by room? Is it hot really high in this room or really high in this area? And that taking those kinds of readings is a good baseline for, you know, what you might start in terms of your mitigation efforts.
Dr. Ben: Got you. Wow. So it's a little bit overwhelming. I mean, it's like, how does one really start here? Because, like, I mean, it's like dirty electricity is all around and just the regular consumer probably would have a hard time really knowing exactly how much, I mean, they also just want to jump to preventing or limiting their exposure. Right, because it's, it's all around us.
Kim: Well, you know, I'm a real advocate. I think that in terms of, in my mind, the best kind of mitigation protocol, in terms of if you're really focused on reducing dirty electricity, you know, the best first step is to really understand the nature of the dirty electricity in your particular our environment, which means taking measurements and identifying sources.
And that's, that's where a meter like a plug-in meter, you know, or in a silo for people who are experienced. But a plug-in meter is a much more simple way for the average person, you know, who doesn't want to learn how to use a cell to take, to take readings. And what's really helpful is you can use the the meter, not just to get initial readings, there's a lot that you can do with a plug-in meter.
So you can there's a way that you can kind of get a sense of. Ok. Well, how much dirty electricity does it seem it's coming in to my electrical system from the outside. So how much is entering from the power grid, you know, versus what I'm generating inside? So your meter can help you figure that out. Obviously you can use it around the house to take baseline readings to get a sense of ok, if my readings are super high or they're, you know, they seem, you know, sort of midterm, but I notice that they're really high in certain rooms. And so that can be really helpful information as you begin to identify sources. And that's another thing you can do with a meter. It's you can use a meter to help you identify sources of dirty electricity in your own environment. So there's a process you could go through if there's certain rooms are really high, you know, you can play with, you know, using your meter in that room and turning things on and off, you know, and seeing what happens to the readings to try and identify. Ok, what you know, if I if my readings are really high in that particular room, you know, what might the sources be? And so the meter is not only helpful in taking just, you know, readings, but in helping you identify, you know, outside sources, you know, internal sources and having all of that information can be super informative to then how you tackle the task of reducing your dirty electricity in your environment and thereby your exposures to the electric and magnetic fields associated with it.
Dr. Ben: So could I actually just get a plug-in meter then from like GreenWave that could cover all of this or would I have to do an actual like comprehensive meter plus plug in?
Kim: Yeah. So for dirty electricity, yes, a plug-in meter for a lot of consumers is the way that they tend to go because a lot of your handheld meters, like I said, are not gonna be effective tools, you know, to try and read ambient readings in the air. You're gonna be able to do a lot more with a plug-in meter or in a silo scope. But that's like I said, it requires more training and expertise and time to learn how to use.
So a plug-in meter for folks who are, you know, really serious about understanding the dirty electricity in their environment and then having a tool that can really help guide their reduction efforts. Because like I said, I mean, I always think beginning your reduction efforts with measurements, taking steps then to reduce dirty electricity and then confirming the effectiveness of those strategies by taking more measurements and comparing before and after results is how you best you know, know that you're doing the job that you want to in terms of actually reducing the dirty electricity in your environment.
Dr. Ben: And what are those green wave plugins run the meter?
Yeah, so the our EMF meter runs $135. And I know a lot of people that are just starting out sometimes will get a meter like the Trifield or there's other kind of what I call combination meters that are able to read more than one type of em I pollution. But with something like the Triefield or, you know, the co you know, cornet combo meter, you're able to read, you know, and then a plug-in em I meter, then you're able actually to measure all four different types of EMF pollution in your environment. So with the plug-in meter, you got dirty electricity kind of handled at least at the basic level and with something with one of the combination meters, then you can measure your radio frequency fields from wireless radiation and then your 50 or 60 Hertz depending where you are in the world, electric and magnetic fields associated with regular electricity.
Dr. Ben: Got it. So then I need, sounds like I need to get an EMF next, I don't have that yet. So, I mean, I know you guys have these amazing filters. I've got them all throughout my office and my home and they really help a lot but I know there's a lot more we can do. And obviously that's not even, that's just a starting point.
It's not really gonna, gonna reach a lot. Like if I've got, high voltage power lines right next to my house, that's not gonna do anything for that. So what else can we do? I guess. you know, in terms of what's the next step or?
Kim: Yeah, as far as dirty electricity goes. And, and in fact, in my opinion, it's with any type of EMF pollution, dirty electricity included, the very first place to start is to kind of understand the sources and, and do what you can to eliminate or reduce sources in your environment before you do anything else. Like I even tell people that before they just jump into filtering, you know, for dirty electricity, it's like looking at ok.
And, and when I, when I talk about eliminating or reducing sources that can be actually looking at, ok, I know these, I know this creates dirty electricity. Can I live without it? You know, and if I can live without it, then, you know, then get rid of it or you know, alternatively, you know, replacing, you know, dirty electricity with sources with alternatives that don't produce as much dirty electricity.
So for example, two good two examples of that would be if you have compact fluorescent light bulbs, you know, installed throughout your house, you know, I would recommend swapping those out with light bulbs that don't produce as much dirty electricity. So incandescent bulbs don't produce dirty electricity because they run on the same voltage as the electricity that's provided to us by the utility company which is 100 and 20 volts.
So any light bulb that runs on 100 and 20 volts really shouldn't produce dirty electricity. The problem with incandescent bulbs is that they don't save energy like compact fluorescent bulbs do at least. So the, the old, the real old tungsten style incandescent bulbs, you know, are the worst in terms of energy conservation, but they don't produce any dirty electricity.
There are what we call like a halogen incandescent bulb. It's kind of a general electric makes it some other companies make it, but they, and they do save about 28 to 30% electricity. But the good thing is they run online voltage so they're not gonna produce dirty electricity. So swapping out, you know, your compact fluorescence or your low voltage Hagen bulbs for incandescent bulbs, especially halogen, incandescent bulbs if you can.
You know, it's a good start. Also led bulbs, there are some led bulbs that don't produce dirty electricity. And I, I always test led bulbs because it can, it can really vary by brand and sometimes it can vary by model and, and over time. So I have like what my test is, I've got a power strip, just a regular power strip, not a search protective power strip.
And I have a, a cool little it's an adapter that basically has a two prong plug on the bottom and then an Edison style kind of light, you know, fixture on the top. And that's all it is. It's literally like two inches high. All it has is the plug in a place where I can screw in light bulbs. And so what I'll do is I plug in my power strip, I plug in my green wave meter, at the end of the power strip that's closest to the cord.
And then I plug in that little light bulb adapter daily. You know, at one of the, sockets on the power strip that's about far, you know, far away from the cord. And then I'll just turn, like with led bulbs, I'll just screw in a light bulb and I'll see what happens to my dirty electricity reading. If the reading goes way up when I plug in the light bulb and it turns on that.
I know that that bulb is creating a, a lot of dirty electricity. If I don't see any change, then I think, ok, that led bulb might be ok. And if you can find an led bulb that's not producing a lot of dirty electricity, then, you know, definitely go with that led bulb. You know, if the lighting quality is pretty good because then you won't, you know, you've got, you got the energy savings and you're not producing dirty electricity.
So there's little tests you can do like that. Another example of our placement is, you know, swapping out dimmer switches for just regular on off switches and there's ways to create different levels of lighting by having several lighting circuits, you know, and different wattage light bulbs and just, you know, like having some on some off and then, you know, we're all on, you know, you can create different levels of lighting without doing it via a dimmer switch.
So those are some examples of, you know, like how you can find replacements, you know, that don't produce as much dirty electricity or al alternatives. You know, other things you can do is like looking at limiting kind of your length of time that you're exposed to dirty electricity sources. Because these days, the honest truth, it's, it's, it would be very difficult to eliminate all sources of dirty electricity in your environment or replace them, you know, with alternatives because some things it's easy to do with and a lot it's not. So then being mindful of what are some of the other sources like your computers, your electronics, you know, your video gaming systems, things, your television, you know, things like that being mindful of the length of time you spend on them and if you're not actually using them. So for example, if you're not on your computer or you're not, you know, using, you know, a video game system.
So rather than just leaving it on and having it running, turn it off and unplug it, those kinds of things help because, you know, even if you're not using you know, your computer, if it's sitting there on, it's producing dirty electricity that's gonna be conducted on your wiring. And if that's traveling throughout your house, it's gonna be radiating out into your environment.
So even if you're sitting, you know, across the room, but your computer is right there, you may still be getting dirty electricity from your computer. So if you're not using things, you know, turn them off and unplug them when you're not using them, I always, you know, for folks who use laptops a lot, you know, using your laptop in battery, you know, on battery power whenever you can and grounding it, if you're using it with ac power or you have it plugged into, you know, if you're using the internet and have it plugged in a wired connection, you want to try and ground your computer a lot of laptops these days come with only a two prong plug. so if you can, there's different ways you can ground your computer. And there's a good article by building biologist Oram Miller called Safer use of computers on his website.
And his name is Oram Miller and that gives you lots of ideas for how to ground your computer because whenever a device is ground, it helps take some of at least the electric field component, including the dirty electricity parts and kind of, giving it a better place to go than just out in the air right at you. let's see, you know, creating, there's creating distance between yourself and known sources that you can't get rid of because like with any EMF field, these fields kind of the farther you are away from the source, you know, the lower your exposure is going to be. So if you have certain things that are still, you know, active, like an air filter, you know, don't have that sitting right next to the chair that you, you know, spend all your time in or right next to your bed, you know, create a fair amount of distance so that it can still do its job.
But you're not, you know, right next to it. There's certain things about fixing loose connections in electrical outlets, junction boxes, your breaker panel. I know an electrician, William Holland who does that and finds that that really helps, you know, reduce the amount of dirty electricity, you know, traveling on the wiring because another source of dirty electricity outside of, you know, all the equipment is any arcing or sparking that you get from loose connections.
Not only can those be potential fire hazards, but they actually also create dirty electricity because they create interruptions in the flow of current. So you get voltage transient and all kinds of things. So fixing up loose connections, dealing with any wiring errors, you know, or current that you have traveling along grounding paths in your home can also help you know, reduce your exposure to dirty electricity. Go ahead.
Dr. Ben: I recently got a shield for my laptop because I occasionally have it on my lap, like at home on the couch, will that reduce like dirty electricity at all? I mean, it's one of the, like, it's one of those body shield ones.
Kim: You know, that my electric field components for electric fields, you know, it probably will help with the electric field component. Not necessarily the magnetic field components for, depends on the shield. Magnetic fields are difficult to shield, they don't really shield them. You usually provide a and it usually requires special metal and expensive.
But oftentimes the shields are meant for the radio frequency radiation that can be coming off of the computer, but it can also help with the electric fields. I would I generally, you know, recommend to people if you can get away from using it like right on your lap, have a separation like a table or, you know, but having a shielding mat, I think definitely will help.
And that's another, that's another kind of option for dirty electricity is any time you can, you can shield like, you know, when people are building new homes or renovating their homes. Oftentimes, you know, from an EMF perspective, we would recommend shielded wiring installations because those will help not only prevent the dirty electricity fields from raiding off, radiating off of the wiring in your walls, but also just the 60 Hertz or 50 Hertz electric fields that radiate off the wiring all the time. When circuits are live, shielded wiring installations can help, you know, really prevent and greatly reduce the amount of electric fields you have coming off of wiring and, power cord. That's also possible to like rewire certain things like bedside lamps. you know, certain, you know, computer power cords, things like that with shielded cords and a shielded cord, any type of a shielded cord that's gonna help reduce the electric fields you have coming off of, and into your environment from that cord, whether they be, you know, the regular 50 or 60 Hertz fields or the higher frequency electric fields associated with dirty electricity. And then of course, there's filters, you know, there's dirty electricity is a little different, than some of the other types of EMF pollution and that there are, you know, it can be filtered and most of the filters kind of focus in on trying to remove the dirty electricity or reduce the dirty electricity that's riding your wiring. The idea being the less dirty electricity there is, you know, riding building wires, the less of it that's going to be radiating out into your environment as those higher frequency electric and magnetic fields.
Dr. Ben: Got you a couple quick questions. I mean, just kind of going back to something you had said, a few years back, I got a couple of those Molekule air filters and I thought they were really cool at the time but, you know, they're connected to the WiFi and, it's just like not a good idea to have an air filter going in my room all night. That's trying to find a WiFi signal. There's no way to turn the WiFi off to my knowledge. I tried. So that's one comment I want to make.
And then the second one is that my son who just turned two. We have an air filter going in his room. It's not connected to WiFi, but you know, it's going next to his bed or his crib. and maybe within about 2 ft of his crib. But it's like from talking to you, I probably need to move that air filter into the corner because it probably is emitting a certain amount of dirty electricity even though it doesn't have the lights on.
Kim: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's got most air filters run on a motor. So oftentimes you can get a high magnetic field, even a 60 Hertz magnetic field coming off, you know, of air filter like that. So with the Triefield meter that you have, you know, in its standard setting, it could, it's kind of an interesting experiment to just hold that, you know, put it in the standard magnetic field setting and you know, kind of stand, you know, hold it right next to the air filter, see what your megagauss reading is and then start to back away from, you know, that air filter and see like what happens to that reading because magnetic fields like anything, if it's a point source magnetic field like that, from a particular piece of equipment, the field will tend to drop off relatively quickly. It just, you know how quickly depends on the piece of equipment.
So, you know, like even a dirty electricity filter is gonna give off a little bit of a magnetic, like a localized magnetic field, what we call a point source magnetic field from a filter. Once you're about, you know, 3 to 6 inches or so from the filter, then you're back down to what would be considered ambient levels in your home. So which is usually it depends on the home, but usually, you know, 0.5 milli gas, you know, would be, you know, oftentimes some somewhere between there, somewhere between 0.2 and one is sometimes the ambient level these days in homes. So when you stand next to that, that air filter with your, with your magnetic field meter or your trifid set on the magnetic field setting, notice how high that the reading is right next to the air filter.
But notice as you move away and at what point to get down to around 0.5 milli gas and then that will give you a sense of how far you would want that air filter to be away from the crib. It would be much better for it to be as you know, as far from the crib as possible.
Dr. Ben: Well, thanks so much for that, Kim. I wanted to ask you one last question, which we don't have to get too far into it. But do you think that dirty electricity or to what degree do you think dirty electricity, you know, potentially impacts our genetic expression and, you know, is an epigenetic driver, you know, turning on and off our genes or driving gene transcription?
Kim: I know this because I, I don't think that like with your electricity, there's been any like specific specific studies on that. Now, what I do know about kind of electromagnetic fields in general is we know that they can cause effects in our bodies, you know, at the cellular level. And one, you know, of the known effects is, you know, damage to DNA.
So, you know, damage to DNA during replication process that if that damage doesn't get repaired, you know, by your body, our bodies have an ability as you know, to repair damage that happens to DNA during cell replication because it's, it's, you know, sort of normal for some damage to happen and our bodies are pretty good at being able to repair some of that.
But, but with all of the exposures and all of the extra things in our environment these days, what I think science is, is, you know, or scientists, researchers are finding is that sometimes there's, there's, there's so many points of damage, whether they be, you know, single or double strand breaks, that our bodies aren't always able to repair all that.
So if, if damage goes unrepaired, they, then it can basically, you know, turn into a mutation that then, then can get, you know, passed on during future replication. And so the effects that, that has, you know, for potential problems down the road, you know, whether it be disease or other ill health states, you know, increases, you know, the more that we are exposed and the more DNA has been damaged and I know that kind of increased levels of micro nuclei, you know, have been associated with EMF exposures. And those are a huge indicator. One of the indicators for closely associated with cancer as, as are other types of DNA damage. So, you know, I know that EMF pollution, you know, it has been shown to you kind of have that impact or the potential for that impact. And so I think it's important that we kind of, you know, be careful about our exposures and it's not just dirty electricity, it's, you know, it's, there's three other types of EMF pollution and it's kind of being aware of what all of them are, what the different sources are. And just starting to take steps and I know that it can, when you start talking about mitigation, it can feel overwhelming, I think to people like, oh my gosh, it's like every everything. So you know, you just kind of, you start, you start where you can and you start adding steps as you can.
And lots of times we'll say to people start in your sleeping area, you know, if you can start in the area where you sleep, because so much important regenerative work happens in your body while you're sleeping. So if you could give yourself a pretty clean EMF environment, you know, from all the different types of EMF while you're sleeping, then you can start to like pick apart, you know, the rest of the day.
But, you know, there's, there's lots of stuff you can do and it's some, it varies depending on the type of EMF pollution that we're talking about. The mitigation strategies can vary. Some people will, you know, get the calls like, well, you know, I just five G just went into my neighborhood or, you know, my neighbor has a wifi router or, you know, it's, it's, are your filters gonna help with that?
And I have to say, well, our filters are, are specifically for dirty electricity, which is one type of EMF solution. And they're specifically targeting what's riding your wiring, you know, to kind of try and help clean that up so that not as much as radiating out if you're interested in reducing your exposures to cellphone radiation or wifi, you know, the, the RF radiation from wifi, there's a kind of different kinds of steps.
You have to take, you know, looking at using wired connections versus wireless, turning things off, you know, modems and things like that when you're not using them. So it is a big, you know, there's a lot to it. But I think if you start taking it a step at a time and start kind of in your sleeping area, that can be a great way to at least get the process started.
Dr. Ben: I've got a couple of patients who are airline pilots and it's really interesting to see the impact that the cosmic rays have on their health and in many cases, and I know there's a lot of research on this, but I've got I've got them on some pretty high dose levels of antioxidants and things like that. And it seems to really help you know, just ward off the oxidative stress and damage that can be, but I, I'd really love to know how much dirty electricity is there in a plane, you know, and the thing about pilots, it's interesting because there are different occupations where, you know, the research has shown that just more health effects with certain occupations because of the higher EMF exposures.
Kim: So I'm sure there is dirty electricity. There's also, as you say, the cosmic rays from space, there's also radar, you know, which is another type of the radio frequency, microwave kind of radiation. And so, you know, it's an occupation where there's a lot of exposures.
Dr. Ben: Right. That's very true. Well, Kim, I know we've gone a little over time here. It's been amazing talking with you as always. where can people, you know, find green wave?
Kim: Yeah. So greenwavefilters.com. you know, if you're interested in learning more about dirty electricity, got plenty of information about what it is, our filters. We also encourage people to call. I mean, we like we got our start kind of specializing in dirty electricity. But you know, we recognize that there are four different types of EMF pollution that people have questions about all of them.
And so we're in the process of branching out and trying to provide more information, more education about the different types, ideas about different strategies for reducing, not just dirty electricity but other types of DMF pollution. So we definitely encourage people, you know, come visit the site, give us a call. We're happy to answer questions.
Dr. Ben: Well, thanks so much for joining us today.
And that concludes today's episode of The Modern Vital Podcast. We would love to hear from you. We value your feedback. If you have any questions or concerns or suggestions, please reach out to me at ben@modernvital.com. And also please leave us a review. If you enjoyed this episode on Spotify or Apple, we look forward to having you join us next week for another exciting episode of The Modern Vital Podcast.