The Hidden Health Hazards Lurking In Your Home

Take the 5-minute Zapped inventory to identify and rectify electropollution.

Note: This is the second in a series of excerpts from my latest book, Zapped: Why Your Cell Phone Shouldn’t Be Your Alarm Clock and 1,268 Ways to Outsmart the Hazards of Electronic Pollution.

You may be surprised—even shocked—to discover that on a daily basis you are exposed to some form of electromagnetic radiation that may be compromising your health. Up until now, you probably have not been aware of this hidden form of pollution and how zapped you are in your home, at work, and even where you play.

And, if you work in certain occupations, live or play within a certain proximity of broadcast towers, cell towers, or electrical power lines or transformers, or have specific lifestyle habits, your zapped load may be seriously higher than the norm, which might just explain a whole variety of seemingly unrelated or unresolved symptoms you haven’t been able to figure out.

I’d like to help you take a realistic inventory of your daily exposure to electropollution so you can start to identify and focus on the changes and choices you need to make to enhance your well-being. My goal is help you gain insight into the potential health challenges associated with your individual exposure, which in turn will help you decide what positive lifestyle changes you want to make—and to what degree—for you, your family, your associates, and the planet in general.

Let’s do a little experiment…

Let’s take a trip back in time, and then do some fast-forwarding—to give you some idea of the way our technology has grown over the past fifty years and why we’re so overexposed to EMFs. If you’re forty or older, close your eyes and think back to your childhood home. If you’re under forty, think back to your grandparents’ house when you were a kid.

Now take yourself on a mental tour of the house. As you walk from room to room, take a quick visual inventory in your mind of how many electric and electronic appliances and gadgets you see.

If your family was typical, here’s what you’ll likely come up with:

Master bedroom: A clock-radio or alarm clock, unless it’s a windup clock
Secondary bedrooms (x2): A clock-radio or alarm clock, unless it’s a windup clock
Bathrooms: No appliances, or maybe an electric razor
Living room: A TV, a stereo (maybe), phone
Kitchen: Stove, refrigerator, dishwasher (maybe), blender, can opener, electric knife, toaster, phone

And if you were to take a similar tour of your own home today, you might find something like this…

Master Bedroom: TV, cable box, DVD player (and all of their remotes), cell phone, cell phone charger, iPad, iPad charger, iPod docking station, remote control for iPod docking station, Bluetooth headset, Bluetooth headset charger, laptop computer, digital camera, digital picture frame, air purifier, alarm clock, cordless phone, PDAs
Secondary Bedrooms (x3): TV, cable box, DVD player (and remotes), cell phone, cell phone charger, iPod, iPod charger, iPod docking station, remote control for iPod docking station, Bluetooth headset, Bluetooth headset charger, computer, wireless mouse, wireless keyboard, printer, digital camera, digital picture frame, air purifier, alarm clock, cordless phone
Bathrooms: rechargeable electric toothbrush, rechargeable electric razor, curling iron, flat iron, hair dryer, digital scale/body fat monitor
Living Room: Home theater system (including monster-size flat-panel TV, DVR, cable box, DVD player, surround-sound speaker system), xBox or gaming system, iPod docking station, remote controls for all devices, computer, monitor, wireless mouse, wireless keyboard, printer, digital camera, digital picture frame, air purifier, digital thermostat, cordless phone, wireless router, wireless security system
Kitchen: Stove, refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, blender, toaster oven, food processor, TV, cable box, iPod docking station, remote controls, laptop computer, iPad, digital picture frame, air purifier, wall-mounted security system panel, coffeemaker or espresso machine (or both), water filtration system, electronic cat feeder, electronic cat-box cleaner, electronic dog-door/dog-collar system, cordless phone, rechargeable flashlight, rechargeable mini-vac

So what’s really going on here?

We’re getting zapped.

If you pay close attention to your activities for just one typical day, you’ll quickly realize that a new form of invisible pollution is all around you and, as you’ll learn, within you, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Granted, you probably don’t have all those electronic gizmos in your house, and not all of these modern-day wonders are emitting dangerous radiation. Plus, let’s face it, how much time do you spend sitting in front of your electric coffeemaker anyway?

How long you’re exposed often means more to your health than the actual strength of the electrical, magnetic, or RF field, something that will become very important when you go on an EMF clean-up crusade of every room of your house. But I used this long list to give you some idea of how much life has changed in the digital age—and how many more electromagnetic fields we’re exposed to than our grandparents were.

Think about what you did today…

Perhaps you woke to the smell of coffee brewed exactly the way you like it by your electric coffeemaker, which you set on a timer the night before. Maybe you went downstairs, flicked on the fluorescent lights in the kitchen, pulled a frozen breakfast out of the refrigerator, popped it into the microwave, and sipped your first cup of coffee while you waited for it to heat. If you couldn’t wait until you got to the office, you pulled your smartphone out and checked your e-mail and social media accounts before checking traffic and weather reports.

And after all of this, you took a hot shower and were thrilled that the new water heater let you take a long, luxurious one. You might have taken an electric train or subway to work. If you drove, you probably paid no attention to the power lines strung on the ubiquitous wooden poles that are as much a part of the landscape as trees, or the huge transmission poles lumbering across the countryside like sci-fi giants. If you happened to glance over at the car or passenger next to you, you likely saw someone else, like you, on a cell phone, starting the business day before it officially opens. At work, you might walk through an automatic door, take an elevator to your office, flick on the overhead lights, and log-in to your computer.

Then, at the end of the day, you reverse it all. Maybe you stop at the supermarket on your way home and buy a few things for dinner, which the checker whisks through a price scanner and tosses in a bag for you. If you’re cooking from scratch, you preheat your electric oven, defrost the chicken in the microwave, and put it in to bake. You’ll mash the potatoes you boiled on the range with your electric mixer and open the canned green beans with an electric can opener.

Maybe you’ll sit in a comfortable automated massage chair before you finish up a report on your laptop computer tonight, or huddle with your eight-year-old while he does his homework and then challenges you to an online game of Scrabble. You might watch a little satellite TV before climbing into bed, where you root around for the remote that controls the firmness or angle of your mattress. Everything you did, from making coffee to taking a shower to taking the train to buying groceries to going to bed, exposed you in some small or large way to electromagnetic fields, which are invisible force fields that surround all electrical devices.

Zap-Proofing Your Home

If you are feeling overwhelmed, you’re definitely not alone, most of us have never questioned the health implications of all our modern-day technology and conveniences. We just take it all for granted. We buy what industry advertises, what others have, or what sounds hot, not realizing that some of these products may be zapping us of our vitality.

Getting un-Zapped doesn’t have to be a major undertaking. Implementing these simple solutions is a great way to start: