TRANSCRIPTION
The following is a transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be slightly incomplete or contain minor inaccuracies due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Bill Oelrich: Welcome, everyone. You’re listening to Structure Talk, a Structure Tech presentation. My name is Bill Oelrich, alongside Tessa Murry and Reuben Saltzman, as always your three-legged stool coming to you from the Northland, talking all things houses, home inspections, and anything else that’s rattling around in our brain. On today’s episode, we are doing a little different format, Tessa and Reuben, two legs of the stool are not with us today. So I’m a single-legged stool, and we’re going to be having a conversation with Nate Johnson. Nate is the owner of a company here in Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota called New Light EMF, and Nate is a electromagnetic frequency evaluator tester, and Nate, I’ll let you explain everything you do in just one second, but I’m really excited to be having this conversation because EMFs are something that is a thing.
BO: And Nate, he was very gracious to give us some time on a podcast that unfortunately had some technical issues. So we’re back for our second conversation, but Nate has been in this business since about the start of the pandemic, and he’s got a very compelling story about why he got into this business and what he does on a daily basis. So without further ado, Nate, welcome to the podcast, we’re very thankful for you to give us his time, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell everybody about you and particulars of how they might contact you after this recording.
Nate Johnson: Yeah, Bill, thank you so much for having me and thank you for that great introduction. Yeah, so as he said, I am Nate Johnson, I started a company called New Light EMF. So I am doing… My official title is an electromagnetic radiation specialist, and a shorter title would be an EMF consultant. So I am doing EMF assessments in people’s homes and businesses and trying to help them, give them plans and help them with remediation of reducing their man-made EMF exposures. Normally, there’s a whole host of benefits that comes with that, that a lot of people don’t realize.
BO: What exactly is EMF pollution or… What are we talking about when we’re talking about EMFs?
NJ: Yeah, so EMFs, I refer to two different terms, EMFs normally stand for electromagnetic fields, some people say electromagnetic frequencies or electromagnetic radiation, those are all correct ways to refer to this in some way, shape or form. This is broken up by basically frequencies on a different spectrum, so we have all kinds of different frequencies around us, it’s something to think about, we’ve never had these energies, most of these energies around us except basically in the last 120 years, and then we’ve seen an exponential increase in these energies in the last 20 years with all this wireless technology, especially being proliferated around us.
BO: Okay, okay, so it’s been around for 120 years. When did we begin measuring it, and then we’ll get to your story, but I just wanna give some context of what it is that we’re dealing with.
NJ: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s an invisible, can’t taste it, you can’t smell it. It’s waves of energy produced by various sources, so there’s energy coming from our power lines, coming from our wires in our building, coming from our cords that split into different categories of energy too, electric fields, magnetic fields, these things are related to each other, they work together, they have different effects on us, on the body, and then all these different wireless energies, that is… It’s an electric field and a magnetic field. They’re technically coupled together and then it’s flying through the air, those are higher frequencies energies, so things like the first wireless energy was a basic radio tower.
NJ: And we had those for many years, those were analog signals, and now we have all these digital pulse signals, and oftentimes those can be very high frequencies, very high energy, so there’s more oscillation in the wave is the technical term, it’s how much the wave goes up and down, positive to negative charge, and the higher the frequency, the higher the energy. So I’m talking about non-ionizing radiation and everybody… There’s really no controversy in ionizing radiation, that’s things like x-rays, gamma rays from nuclear power, things like that, and we’re all very careful and conscious of that, but a little more controversy exists with the non-ionizing radiation, but I believe they have at least enough for a biological concern and a biological effect, I know they have on me personally, and a lot of people I’ve met and clients I’ve met.
BO: And that brings us to the story of how you got into this business. So can you go ahead and sort of recap maybe the last 3 to 5 years and how you got to the Chair of New Light EMF.
NJ: Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, so I’ve been trying to take care of myself, been into health, natural health for a while, my wife and I ate mostly organic diet, I was working out at the time, I don’t get enough exercise as I should now, but I still do try to get some exercise at least every day.
BO: Entrepreneurship can do that. [laughter]
NJ: Yeah, well, a whole lot of things, but my point is, I’ve gone to great lengths to try to take care of myself and to live a healthy lifestyle. Well, I was working at a refrigerated cold storage and trucking company, and I got a different position. I was basically an inventory manager there, I moved to a different desk and I started feeling just really crummy at this new desk, I never felt great in the building before, and there was spots on the ceiling tiles too, so I think there were some mould issues too, but when I moved in a different desk, I started getting some very strange symptoms, I got burning in my shins, it felt like somebody was doing these little kicks on my shins, is a very weird sensation, obviously not comfortable or…
NJ: And then I had this pressure in my head like I’ve never felt either before, it felt like my eyeballs were being pushed out of their sockets, like this intense pressure in my head, I was getting just normal headaches too, I had brain fog, hard to focus, concentrate. I had extreme fatigue too, no matter how I slept, I would be tired at 9:00, 10:00 AM the next day, so I’m just like, “You know, this isn’t good,” and I was getting regular chiropractic adjustments, like I said, eating organic, working out, and just like I said, trying to take care of myself, so I’m like, “Why is all this stuff happening to me?” And I’m 35 too, so I’m not that old, so I felt like I was falling apart basically, but to say all that.
NJ: I believe in God, I believe it was divine guidance, he kind of set up my situation to where it was something I was supposed to do and look into. I did this weird internet search, I was searching online natural health blogs and stuff, reading about EMFs, I found some different blogs talking about those, and all I knew to that point was, well, cellphones could probably harm us, and I didn’t carry my cell phone in my pocket, that was really the only lifestyle change I knew, that was really the only… Like I said, only thing I knew about EMF to that point. Well, I heard this term ‘dirty electricity’ and, on one of these blogs and I’m like, “What the heck is this? That sounds kind of funny.” So I did a search on that and I ended up on Amazon and I found this book on Kindle for like $1.60.
NJ: And I’m like, “What do I have to lose? It’s almost free. He’s almost giving it away.” It was written by a medical doctor, Dr. Samuel Milham, God bless him, he totally woke me up and his book changed my life. And his book is called Dirty Electricity, he popularized the term that’s a type of electricity that’s higher frequency on our power lines, on our Power Systems, it’s kind of everywhere nowadays too, so many things create it, that’s a whole another topic in and of itself, but I was actually reacting to the electricity around me at my desk. I was experiencing basically symptoms of what you call the electrical hypersensitivity. I had bought these filters that I plugged in around my desk, and thank God there was no wiring issues, it ended up… There was a lot of dos and don’ts with these filters, so pros and cons too, but it ended up working out very favorably for me, at my desk, I would say like 95% reduction in symptoms, the burning in my shins completely went away, the pressure in my head completely went away. I had more energy, I had more focus. It was like night and day, and all of those things went away within about an hour of plugging them in, so it was like…
BO: You’re kidding. One hour.
NJ: Yeah. It was very dramatic. Exactly. So I kept them plugged in for a while. Obviously, I’m feeling better, I wanna feel better. I had a power strip like right against my feet too and just the common sense, I just moved that back to the wall, like as far as I could while still having all my office stuff that I needed plugged into, so just distancing myself from a source, and those filters really reduce these harmful electric fields that were radiating into my body, and I was reacting to. I thought maybe it’s a placebo effect or whatever, so I pulled the filters out after a few days and sure enough, the symptoms came back within about an hour or two, my shin started hurting, my head started hurting. I’m like, “Okay, there’s really something to this.” And that was the kind of the beginning of my path that I wanted to learn as much as I could about this invisible energy around us and got laid off, which was a blessing in disguise, ’cause it set me on this path to seek the professional training and start the company.
BO: A lot of what you described early on, it was like this was all happening at the beginning of the pandemic, and we can be clear you didn’t have COVID because some of these symptoms you’re talking about, do sound very much like the virus, but how long into this new job did you start connecting the dots just from a timeframe perspective?
NJ: It took me a while. I was at that desk for probably several months. Almost a year, I would say. Oh, it was probably over a year actually, slightly over a year at that desk, ’cause I didn’t have all those symptoms, I did feel kind of tired at my other desk, but it was a bigger desk, I didn’t have a power strip as close to me, the electronics weren’t quite as… The cords weren’t as close to me at that other desk too, so I worked in a different position for that before I took that inventory position, and I wasn’t experiencing… Like I said, I just get tired and occasional headache, but it wasn’t as dramatic as when I moved to that other desk where that power strip was like right against my, basically my feet, and I thought, “Well, it’s a power strip, it doesn’t matter. It’s just electricity.” That was the life-changing moment. So yeah, it did take some time to put this all together for sure, but like I said, once I knew, I knew.
BO: Yeah, well, I guess where I wanna go with this conversation is, EMFs are real. This conversation is a real scientific conversation, I’ve mentioned EMFs to people before, and I’ve seen the reaction where it’s like, “Oh, this is just weird science, and you’re looking for a problem to a solution that you have.” I think we’re beyond that at this point, this dirty electricity is real, there’s ways to measure it. You personally know the effects of it on your body, which maybe we should get into some of the effects of it, I mean, besides you felt this pressure, this pain, but what’s the mechanism that’s causing that?
NJ: Yeah, absolutely. So there are several mechanisms, one is all different man-made EMFs have this underlying same similarity that they disrupt what’s called a voltage-gated calcium channel. Well, that’s a big fancy name, think about calcium in our body. It’s one of the most abundant minerals. So many processes in our body depend on calcium and of course, minerals are interrelated, we can go into a whole another side conversation, I’m not a doctor either of medical professionals, but I read a lot…
BO: We only play one on the internet.
NJ: Exactly. [chuckle] I’ve read a lot the research and I’ve listened to a lot of doctors and very smart PhD scientists explain it, but going back to these voltage-gated calcium channels, so our cells have these, hence the name, little gates on them that are controlled by electrical charges voltage and these charges, what you think about, “Okay, we’ve been around for… ” Whether you believe, however, we started in existence, but we’ve been around for a long time, humans have been walking the earth, and like I said, we haven’t had these energies hit our body until really modern times. And so all this foreign energy is going into our body and disrupting this little gate on our cells and it lets in too much calcium, it also messes up our sodium, so it kinda goes haywire up and down and it will either let in too much or not enough, it also disrupts nerve function, you think about our nervous system. Everybody knows that operates by electrical charges, nerves can fire at as little as 15 mV, that’s a little tiny charge, so they think, “Well, this is non-ionizing, it’s not extremely powerful energy,” well, no, we don’t need extremely powerful energy to disrupt a lot of biological functions, I guess is my point.
NJ: So it can create low-level inflammation kind of system-wide, there’s a genetic component to this too, that some people can repair this easier than others, also just the general stressors and toxin load on our body where we expose to heavy metals, to pesticides, to moulds, all these different things that add to our toxin load, and if we have a higher toxin load to start with, I don’t know the exact reason I reacted to those things, but I’m assuming a little combination of a lot of those things I just mentioned, it can be co-contributing factors to be having reactions to EMFs, but whether you can feel them or not, it’s still, I believe is a biological stressor on our bodies creating that low-level inflammation, I just talked about calcium, it also messes up how a lot of other minerals are handled in our body.
BO: Yeah, I’m not a scientist. I’ve only worked in the medical industry for a while, but I do have a belief that the human body only has a finite amount of resources to fight off various ailments, and if low-level inflammation doesn’t need to be there. Well, if your body doesn’t have to work on correcting that, it has more resources to work on fighting off the common cold or maybe rebuilding tissue in my joints so my knees don’t hurt, or any of the… Whatever, wherever you wanna go with it, it’s just… It’s one more stick on the wood pile that’s putting weight on the overall body that needs to be tended to.
NJ: Exactly, you hit the nail on the head, Bill, that’s my philosophy too.
BO: Okay, so what does the… We know they’re out there. All these waves are floating around anywhere from electrical waves, which are, from my understanding, a much longer frequency, you can explain it technically, to the cell 5G waves that are just screaming up and down, slamming from top to bottom thousands of times per second, or however it’s measured. The people creating these waves, do they have any sense of responsibility to educate the public that there could be some downside to the use of this?
NJ: Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s a controversial subject. Number one, you do an internet search, and I will answer your question here but just going into it, like you do an internet search and you ask Google, are EMFs harmful for you? You’re gonna find thousands of articles that say they’re not harmful for you, so, well, Nate are you a liar? No, I’m not a liar, but there’s several factors in this, a lot of… We should turn to science and we can ask the question, what is science too? So a lot of science unfortunately has vested interest, there’s big money, there’s industry involved, there’s also… With this specific subject, EMFs, it’s very hard to get a pure control group too, ’cause we’re so bathed in all this energy all the time too, so we would have to lock people up and do really inhumane things or go kidnap tribes people in the jungles of Papua New Guinea where they’ve never seen electricity. [chuckle] So it’s like, We can’t… There’s no pure control group in this, but there’s been a lot of independent science that is not funded by industry, and there’s a particular fact that I read one time that supposedly 70% of the studies that were funded by industry showed basically no harm, and then you can flip that number around 70% of the independent studies showed that there was biological harm from this, so like I said, it’s hard to get a really pure study, but there’s literally tens of thousands of studies out there.
NJ: Many thousands of peer-reviewed studies that show that there’s biological concern for this, some of the mechanisms I just mentioned, and also in combination of that, they’re oftentimes looking at one of these energies, so they’re studying, well, magnetic fields give you leukemia, that’s a very well-studied thing, it’s been studied for decades, actually, definitely contributes to childhood leukemia, I would say that’s a solid, really scientific fact, but with that said, when we look at different exposures in combination with each other, well, what if you’re in high electric fields too. Well, all of the sudden, your risk factor leukemia increases by over 1100% according to one study, and then that’s not even taking into account cell phones, Bluetooth, earpods, kids are falling asleep on their iPads. [chuckle]
NJ: So a lot of different fields, and that study is not studying all those together, and then in combination with what I said too. Did they have mould exposure, are they dealing with limes disease, it could be a million different cold factors contributing to these things, but I believe there’s overwhelming evidence that we should put the breaks on and industry should… There’s a lot of liability at stake too, so like I said, money, we should put the breaks on a lot of this stuff and let’s try to prove this stuff as safe instead of going the other way around where it comes out and then, “Well, we don’t have to prove it’s safe, you have to prove it’s harmful, and so I say, prevention is better than a cure. And one of my philosophies I try to instill in my customers, any risk reduction is worth aiming at too.
BO: Yeah, and I don’t wanna throw industry under the bus completely. The humans’ need for convenience sometimes is an incredibly powerful draw to the… The moth to the flame. We can talk about 5G and the frequency that’s coming in and how that frequency is developed a little bit, but once that cow leaves the barn, getting that thing back inside is going to be nearly impossible because of the level of convenience that’s going to be associated with that frequency. So, let’s touch on 5G, ’cause that’s kind of the right end of the spectrum if electricity is the left end in terms of frequency. Is that correct?
NJ: Yeah, the electricity is gonna be very low frequency, very long wavelengths. Electricity and our power frequency in North America is 60 Hz, so that oscillates 60 times or 60 cycles a second, positive to negative, it’s a very, very long wavelength, I can’t remember off the top of my head, but it’s many, many, many miles. And you think about 60 times a second, that’s still pretty fast. Try to make a noise 60 times a second. But a lot of processes in our body happen at lower frequency too. A lot of processes in our body also happen at higher frequency too. So, there’s a whole concept of resonance which can, as part of I believe the biological mechanism where these man-made frequencies can disrupt a lot of biological processes too. But going back to the other end of the spectrum, like you said, 5G cellphone frequencies, those are very concentrated waves.
NJ: So just looking at the electromagnetic spectrum, if you have a 600 MHz frequency, that would be considered very low frequency as far as cell communication goes, but that frequency is… It’s very penetrating, it goes through buildings very easily, it goes through us easily, 600 million times a second. So that’s really, really quick and very concentrated energy. Well, you take a true 5G tower, now 5G is a whole another subject in itself, we can definitely get into that, but it could be a very long conversation too… What I consider a true 5G tower is like a millimeter wave, that’s what is going to give you the extreme bandwidth, that’s what’s gonna allow you to download the Netflix whole season series in seven seconds, whole another conversation if that’s needed or not.
BO: That’s the convenience factor I was referring to.
[laughter]
NJ: Exactly, that’s the convenience factor. And I totally agree with you that the cat’s out of the bag. There’s some people in our industry that are like, “We need to get rid of cell phones.” I’m sorry, we need to think about using them smarter and redesigning them. I do not think they’re going away for better or for worse, just ’cause like you said, they’re so convenient and we’re so… There is an addiction factor to them too, and that’s another subject too, but going back to the frequencies, yeah, so a true 5G tower in North America, they’re operating at 28.35 GHz, to the best of my knowledge, right now. There are different frequencies in development too, there are some 34 or 37 GHz, I believe, and then there’s even some higher frequencies than that too, but it’s gonna be the 28 GHz primarily in use now for the millimeter waves.
NJ: So, those waves are so short, that’s going back and forth oscillating 28 billion times a second. So that’s very, very concentrated energy, it’s very high frequency. Thing with that though is, on the Verizon website, it used to say, “We only guarantee this service outside.” The wavelengths are so short and so concentrated, they need to put towers in so many locations. And they only guarantee the service outside because that frequency, that high energy does not go through almost all common building materials very well, even dry wall, windows don’t allow this very high frequency to pass in much concentration, and hence why they used to say they only guarantee it outside. Now they kind of changed their marketing a little bit, but it’s another subject too.
BO: And I imagine people who have those, that true device and want that speed will probably use devices inside to get it through the walls, maybe amplify it. I don’t know, I’m not… Technically I’m a very, very… My bandwidth is very narrow.
[laughter]
NJ: Well, yeah, so there’s a lot of concern about 5G. I like what this engineer I follow, he says 5G is only 5% of the problem. So, I like that saying and we should look at all these fields as a whole. One thing I really am concerned about 5G is in large events, think about US Bank Stadium or any other big stadium, they are putting the towers inside the stadiums now so people can get a true 5G signal. And then you think about this energy is beam formed, so that means… It’s a technical term, basically, that you think about the term beam, it’s a beam of energy, it’s much narrower than a traditional cell phone band and it’s much more concentrated too. Well, what if you’re sitting next to 100 people with 5G phones trying to re-stream the replay that just happened from a different angle or whatever, that’s gonna be a really massive EMF exposure where you’re not typically gonna see something like that in your house with the 5G signals. But if you go to a concert or a sporting events and the towers are inside the stadium, which they’re doing in a lot of places, I know the Los Angeles Convention Center, and some of my colleagues have taken pictures of the 5G towers up inside the convention center. So, it’s just a matter of time before they’re putting them there, of course, if it’s not stopped, but it doesn’t seem like momentum is going to put the breaks on it any time soon, it seems like.
BO: Okay, so that’s the extreme. Where do most Americans live? They’ve got routers in their house, they’ve got electricity in their house, they’re using cell phones in their house, and I’m guessing that your business largely centers around residential existence. Is that fair to say?
NJ: Exactly, yep. I wanna break into more businesses, hopefully they’ll have me, but almost 99% of my work is residential assessments, absolutely. So, I wanna… My passion is to help people live healthier in their homes. And you mentioned some sources there, thank you, Bill, as Wi-Fi routers, they’re using their cell phones, they have their smart TV. We have all this electricity around us, you think about our building wires, we’re almost in a cage of wires, if you think about it, so there’s outlets all over the place. And they’re running above us, below us, behind us, and those are carrying these dirty frequencies too, so to say, to use the slang term, high frequencies, and all these things are biologically active. So, I’m a big proponent of reducing… At the very least, I always try to encourage people to reduce their exposures in their sleeping area, so that’s the most important time to reduce our exposures, bodies or cells don’t need to be hit by this energy, and it helps us go into a deeper sleep when we clean up our sleeping areas.
BO: Can we explore the term biologically active. What are you talking about when you say that?
NJ: Yeah, so I kind of alluded to it earlier a little bit with some of the processes of our body. I’d have to look at a chart, I don’t have it in front of me, but there’s different frequencies that wavelengths, literally, that different organs, different processes in our body happen at. So when a frequency that’s similar to that or is not similar to it, I guess both can have an effect to some degree. There can be a resonance, when there’s a similar frequency, that’s basically… I don’t know if amplification is the best word, but it’s an increase in that frequency that’s already there by foreign energy that’s coming in, and there’s more energy than there’s supposed to be in that process. So, that’s disruptive.
BO: I see.
NJ: And then there’s this foreign energy that’s coming in and, like I said, disrupting how our minerals are transported primarily and different ions. I’ll say, all life forms are electromagnetic, I’ll just word it like that. So many processes in our body depend on… Even chemical processes depend on electrical charges. So, it’s kind of like, how doesn’t this… Even this energy is less concentrated than ionizing energy, it’s common sense to me to think that how it doesn’t affect us.
BO: So maybe analogy is the garden hose analogy, where your body runs optimally on a three-quarter-inch hose that’s full of water, and then all of a sudden you get the firehose being blasted at your body and it gets disrupted, it has to work harder differently, it has to mitigate, whatever, however you want to describe it. The biologic activity gets disrupted from the normal and therein lies the problem.
NJ: Exactly.
BO: Okay, so you concentrate on the places we spend the most time, and especially the recovery places, which is your sleep zone. So, what recommendations do you have for the sleeping areas in terms of mitigating the energy that’s hitting you while you’re asleep?
NJ: Yeah, well, I’m not gonna give away all my secrets for free, Bill.
[laughter]
NJ: But… No, I was just kidding, but no, I can definitely, I am happy to give some tips here, and I’ll just say we have to assess the area too. So, it’s very, very rare I’d find an area that can’t have any improvements, so in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had a bedroom that doesn’t need any improvement whatsoever. So, now some are way more extreme than others, so that’s where measuring is the first step. Assessing the place. I have meters and we can’t see this energy, like I said. Can we feel it? That’s a controversial question. I know I can, I know thousands of others I’ve heard stories from can too, but we have to be scientific about this too. So it’s not like, we can’t just go around, “Well, I feel bad in here.” Well, yeah, you don’t wanna feel bad, but let’s figure out why and let’s quantify it. So, my training, I was trained by electrical engineers at the Building Biology Institute.
NJ: It’s very physics-based, it’s very science-based, and my meters are professional calibrated instruments. So I can detect all these different energies, like I said, it’s definitely starting in your bedroom and sleeping areas and trying to clean those up. So we gotta prioritize the things. I see very high electric fields in most people’s bedrooms, they got cords and clocks and cell phone chargers very common, right next on their night stand when it’s plugged in right behind their head, and that’s emitting a really strong electric field all night long. And think about how close that is, the chord, to your brain. So, beyond that I identify circuits that affect your bedroom, can be magnetic field point sources, or I’ve discovered wiring errors, wiring issues where that wire runs right below somebody’s bed and it’s creating an extremely toxic sleeping environment…
BO: Let’s talk about wiring just quickly, because most wiring is modern at this point, there’s some old houses out there that… I think, generally, people have this nostalgia for old houses, they think old is built better, but that’s not always the case, especially in your world, right? When we talk about knob-and-tube wiring, is there a concern from the EMF perspective about knob-and-tube wearing?
NJ: Yes, yeah, great question. So, absolutely, knob-and-tube is the, hands-down, the most toxic type of building wiring out there, and it’s extremely expensive, so don’t get me wrong, but I would highly suggest…
BO: To replace it or to upgrade is what you…
NJ: Yeah, yep. To get rid of it. Sorry, thank you. Getting ahead of myself there, but yeah, if you wanna have a healthy home, you gotta rip that stuff out for real or completely turn it off, which is not very practicable.
BO: But what’s the mechanism behind knob-and-tube that creates this higher than normal EMF load?
NJ: Yeah, so magnetic fields are caused by current flow. And you look at 90-plus percent of homes, maybe it’s even more than that, 95%, I don’t know, but vast majority of residential homes basically built after the ’70s are wired with what’s called Romex wiring, you know the plastic…
BO: Modern wearing.
NJ: Exactly, modern wiring. The plastic jacketed wiring, there’s conductors in a jacket of plastic, obviously, they have the insulator around them. But those wires, you think about them, they’re very close together. So, you have the hot conductor, the neutral, basically that return to the power panel. And then a ground wire, and those are all within a millimeter or two of each other basically. Well, with knob-and-tube, that’s not… So, number one, it’s not grounded, so it doesn’t have a ground wire, and number two that generally it’s several inches or even over a foot or two away from each other in some circumstances. So, these magnetic fields go in concentric circles around the conductors and in a properly wired circuit, let’s say you have a normal Romex circuit, it’s powering a light bulb, and the fields expand and contract and they’re rotating in a certain manner. Well, the field on the hot conductor rotates in one way and the field on the neutral conductor rotates the opposite way.
NJ: Well, in a Romex wire that… Those are so close together, they basically cancel each other out. So that field falls off in six inches from the wire. So, if you put the meter right up to the light switch or electrical socket, yeah, you’ll get a little field, but it’s gonna drop off extremely quickly even within a foot, in a properly wired circuit. Well, that’s not so in knob-and-tube wiring, those fields don’t cancel each other out because the separation of conductors. And then you’re gonna see overall very high electric fields too, because there’s no ground wire. The ground wire does not drain off anywhere near all the electric fields, but it does drain off some of it. Electric fields are attracted to our bodies.
NJ: They’re looking for a path, the lower potential, which is also the earth, so if you have a ground wire next to the other two conductors, well, next to the hot conductor, primarily, that’s where you’re getting the electric field from, it’s gonna drain off some of that electric field to some degree. Romex wiring, I’m throwing out all these terms here, but Romex wiring is going to have high electric fields too, but knob-and-tube’s gonna be even more extreme, so it’s got really bad electric fields and magnetic fields is the takeaway. And those are basically constant when the power is on, and you’re using anything. The electric field’s constant all the time, and the magnetic field would be constantly high if there’s current being drawn in the circuits, so if the light’s on, if whatever. You’re using power on that circuit, like we do.
BO: Speaking of electricity, we didn’t touch on the main suppliers of electricity. I mean, you drive through the city and there’s overhead power lines everywhere, and then there’s like super overhead, I don’t even know how you explain them, but they’re the big, the big people out there bringing all this energy, and sometimes they go right through a neighborhood. What does that look like in terms of concern for you?
NJ: Yeah, that’s a great question. There’s two terms for them, high voltage transmission lines are the big boys who you are referring to, and then distribution lines are normally the smaller ones going into our homes, like in our home, we have overhead power too, so that’s a residential distribution line coming into our house. The distribution lines normally not as big as concern, I’m not gonna make a blanket statement and say they’re never a concern ’cause they can be. And it depends on a lot of other factors too, which I can identify in an assessment. But I wanna say the high voltage transmission lines, those can be a big red flag for me, so there’s different loads on them at different times of the year. So, it’s… The magnetic fields coming from those are gonna depend on the current flow, just like any smaller wire, too, but again, their separation of conductors, the wires have to be a certain distance apart, and they do usually carry a significant amount of current, and so they’re gonna create a far-reaching magnetic field normally, and that is one of the only really, like, I call it un-fixable EMF problems because it’s so expensive to shield and it’s very imperfect, you’re not gonna get a 95% reduction even if you spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to shield it.
NJ: So, hopefully I’m not making too many realtors mad, but try to avoid those homes really close to the high voltage power lines, or hire me for a pre-assessment and then… Pre-purchase assessment, and then you will know for sure if the power lines are too close or if you have your own EMF meters too. You can figure out how to use them and what the levels are and what they mean. But we got a measure, and I can’t make a blanket statement of, “Well, a mile is too close or half a mile is too close,” generally, that is a good distance from a high voltage power line, but if it’s 500 ft or 1000 ft or 100 ft, it’s hard to say without measuring.
BO: I just wonder, sometimes people show up with very unusual health circumstances and there never seems to be an obvious reason why. And I just wonder out loud, I guess, obviously, [chuckle] if some of this convenience that we’ve installed, that is really to blame, but what I like so much about this conversation, Nate, is it is science-based. The work you’re doing is not just… You’re not just making this up, there’s measurable energy out there, and it’d probably be best to mitigate how much of that energy is penetrating your body to the degree possible, or for those who are more sensitive to it, it could be life-changing.
NJ: Yeah.
BO: I don’t know how else to say it, but it could be absolutely life-harming or at least getting out of it, like your situation at your job, when you left your job, you probably did yourself a favor by not having to run filters that are trying to knock down this electricity or these EMFs that are banging into your body on a daily basis.
NJ: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s a great subject, and yeah, it can be life-changing, of course, for people who are sensitive ’cause they stop getting those horrific symptoms when they remove themselves from the exposures and these are very sensitive people, you have to… I definitely would recommend… I don’t like to continually toot my own horn, but I definitely would recommend enlisting me or another EMF professional. To the not sensitive people who are just trying to optimize their health better, still nobody… I don’t wanna be a fear-monger, but nobody starts out like, “Oh, I’m gonna become electrically sensitive today.” So, it’s a whole combination of, like I said, those… You were making analogy earlier, the different stressors and toxins on our body, there’s a breaking point for some of us. So, sometimes it is a single event, people who’ve been electrocuted or had high intensity shocks are actually more likely to become electrically sensitive too.
NJ: So, that’s one factor, just one, I’m thinking off the top of my head, but all these different exposures are adding up, and I’ve talked to people before who are like, I didn’t… I almost didn’t believe it, I didn’t feel it for years and years and years, and all of a sudden my hand started burning and tingling when I was using my cell phone and I’m like, “Oh, maybe I should pay attention to this more,” it’s like… Yeah, yeah. So, it’s like I said, toot my own horn here, but it’s always a good time to reduce your exposures no matter where you’re at, if you’re like, “I’m super healthy and I am fit, I don’t need to.” But you’re reducing your stress or load on your body, even if you’re in that rare circumstance where a lot of people are dealing with at least something nowadays for a health challenge, and I’ll just say this that I wish a lot of doctors looked at our home environments. So I’m not a medical doctor, but I’m an EMF doctor, so to say for your house, so let me help you with that.
BO: Well, I’m watching you, we’re doing this obviously through a Zoom-style meeting, so I can see Nate. And it’s not lost on me that the headset that Nate’s wearing is connected with a cord, and we haven’t really talked about Bluetooth technology, but what you just said there, you see the super elite athlete every day out on the field, listening to music as they’re preparing for a big game or something like that. What is Bluetooth? Where does it fit into this conversation and how concerned are you with Bluetooth technology?
NJ: Great question. I mean, I’m quite concerned just the widespread-ness of it, the affordability of it, I saw bluetooth headphones at the dollar store the other day, they weren’t a dollar, they were $5, but still it’s like, “Oh my goodness, you can… ” And there’s no warning label on them. I look at EMFs kind of like the tobacco of the digital age, there used to not be warning labels on cigarettes too. Pregnant mothers were encouraged to smoke too, so circling back…
BO: Dark ages of humanity.
[laughter]
NJ: Yeah, yeah, but it’s a really good analogy, in my opinion, that there’s so many of these independent studies screaming that, “Hey, there’s a concern here, but there’s no warning label on these things.” Prolonged use can cause blastoma, I always pronounce that wrong, but basically tumors in your brain, in your ear canal, those are exploding, unfortunately, and it used to be a very rare condition, and bluetooth operates, it is a lower intensity energy, but intensity is not the only thing that matters, there’s something called modulation too, that’s basically how the signal is communicated. So I kind of referred to it a little bit earlier that all the wireless signals in the old days were analog, those were not harmless either. The guy who invented the radio tower died after his eighth heart attack, so just to kind of reiterate those have a biological effect too.
NJ: Of course, he was right up to the radio towers and he probably was getting a much larger exposure than… He was building them, than most people, but I just say that to say that’s a true statement too, but these are digital signals, they’re very jagged, if you wanna use that term, so they’re very fast, the pulses are a millionth of a second. So, these little micro-pulses are communicating data, and it’s called Pulse Modulated Radiation, well, that radiation is more biologically active, like we were talking about earlier than the analog stuff, and you think about, a general advice I give to everybody, distances are our friend with EMF. So I distanced myself from that power strip at my old workplace, I know that helped, but where are we putting these bluetooth headsets? We’re putting them right next to… You can’t get any closer to your brain then your ear canal when you’re putting them in there. So, even though it’s maybe a lower power signal, and when I say lower power, it’s not that low power, I’m just comparing it to a 5G phone streaming a 4K video or something. But it’s right next to your brain, and that’s very concerning to me, and I strongly discourage use of those, of pretty much any sort of bluetooth, if you can live with it. But especially the ear buds that people are putting in there right next to their brain. [chuckle]
BO: That’s sad. They’re so convenient.
NJ: Yeah.
BO: I never move my arm and it goes flying out or something. I do love the convenience. And therein lies the problem. You can provide such a service to give people health-wise, back on track, if they’re feeling the pressure in their eyes or the pain in their shins, or all those symptoms that you were feeling, and yet you’ve got people like me, you’re like, “Dang, that’s easy.” So, I just wanna keep using them.” And I think…
NJ: Well, no judgement, Bill. Meet everybody where they’re at, so…
BO: Yeah, I know. I know, I know. We meet where we’re at. That’s right, that’s right. Well, I think, Nate, I wanna bring a close to this conversation for today. I love the fact that we were able to meet, and I knew right away that this is a good conversation to have ’cause I want people to have open and honest conversations about all things. And there’s a lot going on in our world that we don’t know about, and for anybody from the Minneapolis area or St. Paul area, there’s an old radio guy in town, his name is Joe Soucheray who had this radio show called Garage Logic. There was a point in his existence where he started talking about the Samer Theory, is what he called it, and he said, “People are slowly going crazy because of all of the waves that are flying around.”
BO: And I’m paraphrasing a lot here, but point is, I don’t even know that we know half of what we’re dealing with, or a quarter of what we’re dealing with, with all the technology that we’ve got. So I would like to bring this conversation to a close, ’cause we wanna have another conversation with Nate about process, like what does this look like, what do you do when you come in a home and try to evaluate and help people understand and maybe put somebody on a path to a less battered body, at least from EMFs. Thank you everyone. You’ve been listening to Structure Talk, a Structure Tech presentation. My name is Bill Oelrich, alongside Tessa Murry and Reuben Saltzman. Thanks for listening, we’ll catch you next time.
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BO: Hi everybody, Bill here again with Structure Talk. We really wanna thank you for listening to this podcast. It’s been a ton of fun for us to put this presentation together, and if you could, we would love it if you would go to any of the podcast platforms where you find Structure Talk and leave us a rating and subscribe to the show. You can also subscribe to our blog at structuretech.com, and of course, you can listen to the show on the internet at structuretalk.com. Thanks again for listening. We appreciate the support, and if you have any suggestions for show topics, please email them to podcast@structuretech.com. Thanks for listening.