How much radiation are your electronic devices exposing you to, and which device is the most dangerous? What can you do to protect yourself (and your kids) and still use each one? I bought a top RF meter to test the radiation coming from my MacBook Pro laptop, iPad, iPhone 7, and router. Let’s just say the results were off-the-charts scary, but fortunately there are options to keep these devices safely in your lives (and some devices are far safer than others).

Let’s start with how much radiation is too much. My RF meter measures in mW/m2, and gets dangerous (and turns yellow) at 0.5 mW/m2 (brain function disturbed). Above that level, the radiation begins to causes fatigue, insomnia, memory impairment, impaired reaction time, impaired reproduction, altered DNA, leukemia, bladder cancer, impaired cardiac function… (worried yet?). Although low radiation long-term is not yet studied in depth, as far as short term radiation goes, you want all RF levels to ideally be below 0.5 mW/m2.  This chart (including meter color indicators) gives you more details as to what’s happening below, at, and above 0.5 mW/m2:

As you can see, the U.S. does not provide protections such as reasonable limits, or keeping cell towers away from schools (like in France), and at least 500 meters (New Zealand) or 300 meters (France) away from houses. This is because the U.S. measures only in terms of heat production, not wave effects. In the U.S., your town can allow a 5G cell tower to go up right in front of your house, which plenty of towns and cities do. The 1996 Telecom bill made it the law that people could not challenge the expansion of cell towers based on health effects (read about it here); this has not changed on iota even though the World Health Organization finally admitted to cellular’s carcinogenic effects. (I’ll leave the alarming rollout of 5G towers for another post).

Now, let’s talk devices.

WORST DEVICE: Your iPhone (keep that thing away from your head, and away from your kids–holy moly!).

I spent days testing my iPhone’s radiation, and found it to be consistently way too high. During a phone call, it averaged 30 mW/m2, and went as high as 115 mW/m2!

During an Internet search or YouTube video, it averaged around 12 mW/m2, and while sitting idle it still hovered around 7 mW/m2.

I purchased a lead lap pad, and with the pad in front of it, the reading dropped to between 0.05 mW/m2 and 0.5 mW/m2 (much better!).

Still, with these readings, you should keep your phone away from you at night, and if you need to keep it in your pocket, try a rad blocker pocket card or a pocket sticker. I don’t let my kids touch my smart phone anymore, and have wrestled it out of their hands a number of times already!

What about headphones? Any headphones will help enormously while using your iPhone, because they allow you to keep your phone away from your body (and away from your head!). If your iPhone headphones are the old kind (analog), you can replace them with this radiation free set (the apple adapter to turn the old analog earbuds into the new lightning cable earbuds will not work on these headphones, FYI). If you have lightning cable earbuds, you can attach a ferrite bead to them to reduce the small amount of radiation that is still sent directly into your ear (and there’s a more expansive list of products at this store, which incidentally has very informed customer service people to answer all your EMF questions).

Bluetooth in your car? I stopped using it. My RF meter registered Bluetooth radiation as higher than either cellular or WiFi. Radiation cannot go through metal, so it bounces around your car until it hits a window and goes out. This means that you’re getting a double dose of it, or more, and so are the other people in your car (for example your kids). I switched to speaker, and found it to be, you know, fine.

SECOND WORST: your router.  Keep that thing at least 15 meters away from people at night, and preferably during the day as well (and turn it off at night if no one needs it). From a few inches away, my RF meter registered an average of 2.0-4.0 mW/m2 (jumping up to around  7.0mW/m2 a few times each minute). All new routers are 5G (yikes!), and since at 2.4 GHz your body’s water molecules turn, the new 5.0 GHz is, well, bad. Netgear still makes routers that allow you to turn off the 5.0 GHz using Netgear Genie (its app), but you still need a router guard. I bought and tested this router guard, and it worked extremely well (please ignore the bad reviews, it works amazingly well, down to an average of 0.2-0.6 mW/m2 when nearly up against it), but check the size because some routers are larger than this guard, and so won’t fit inside of it.

THIRD WORST: your laptop. This device should not be called a “lap” top, but rather a never-in-your-lap computer. My RF meter did go red a few times, but most of the time it stayed at around 0.7 mW/m2, flickering now and then to 2.0 mW/m2, and once it jumped to 12.0 mW/m2. I don’t recommend putting this device on your lap anymore without a lead pad, and try to keep your body far away from it while using it. The farther away the better–distance is your friend when it comes to radiation.

FOURTH WORST (i.e. safest of the four): your iPad. My readings for the iPad, even during a YouTube video, averaged only 0.2 mW/m2, although it did jump up now and then. Although this is FAR less than an iPhone, your child should still never have it against his or her body (and certainly not his or her lap, where it would be irradiating his or her reproductive organs). If you want to make sure your child is safe even if he or she insists on putting it in his or her lap, get this lead lap pad.

In my mania to protect my kids, I now have a wealth of information on smart meters, 5G towers, 4G cell towers, electro-magnetic (EM) radiation, and more, but will tackle those in subsequent posts. If you have a smart meter on your house (dang it!), you shouldn’t wait–take protective action here.