Today’s conversation with Bill Oelrich and Nate Johnson, consultant for electromagnetic frequency issues is part two of the EMF assessment process.
Nate discusses the four categories and exposure concerns that Newlight EMF looks at in the assessment. He talks about electric fields, magnetic fields, radio frequency, and the sub-categories of energy. He also shares that the assessment may take 4 to 8 hours. Then, Nate talks about the assessment process where he encourages homeowners to join during the assessment.
Bill asks about Nate’s electrical training, reverse polarity, gaming computers, wireless technology, and bedroom service panels. Nate discusses how they construct their reports. He mentions that they provide a written and audio summary of the evaluation. He also shares the feedback from clients who slept better after following his recommendations.
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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. And 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, anything else that’s rattling around in our brain. On today’s episode, we are continuing our conversation with Nate Johnson, the owner of New Light EMF, and Nate is a consultant who worked with home owners and businesses to help them solve some of the electromagnetic frequency issues they might have in their residences or in their organizations, and we went through in our first conversation, lots of details and lots of technical conversations, but I wanted to have Nate back just to talk a little bit about process, like when a home owner or a business wants you to evaluate for EMFs, what does that look like? And again, Nate thank you for your time, I really appreciate you giving us all the time that you have.
Nate Johnson: You’re welcome. Well, thank you for having me too and helping me just sow the seeds of awareness on this topic, ’cause that’s…
BO: Well it’s what we do, we’re kind of in the education business, just accidentally, home inspectors, and I’m more in the broadcasting business now, but… Thanks, I appreciate it.
NJ: Yeah, absolutely. So I’m just gonna do a little shameless self-promoting plug real quick, if you visit my website, newlightemf.com, it tells you a little bit about my process. Website is fairly basic, but I did work hard to make sure I give a very good description of my services on there. So on the services page, it talks about what’s involved in an EMF assessment, I’m looking at electric fields, magnetic fields, radio frequency, energy. That’s a big category of energy, you can categorize it in a few different things, but I like the radio frequency term because it categorizes the whole range of wireless frequencies that we’re looking at nowadays, and so radio frequency, you think wireless energy and that slang name I refer to in the first podcast, which is called dirty electricity, that is not a technical name, the more technical name would be electromagnetic interference or high frequency transients, you can have high frequency voltage transients and current transients on our building electrical systems and our cords and our devices themselves can be radiating that stuff, so that’s the four categories that I look at on an EMF assessment and… Do you want me to go into that a little bit more?
BO: Well, I’m imagine you roll in, I don’t know, based on this EMF conversation maybe, what kind of vehicle do you drive or… Are you thinking gas motors are better? That’s a side conversation, but anyway, I imagine you roll up and you open up a vehicle that has some really sophisticated testing equipment, and you’re gonna get out there and you’re gonna start measuring what’s in an environment is that accurate?
NJ: Yeah, absolutely. So I was joking with my wife the other day that, hopefully my business blows up enough where I can buy a company vehicle for myself, and so I don’t have to continually load and unload my little Ford car that I have… That I packed to the brim. Bringing to an assessment, but yeah, I have… People are like, “Wow, you got a lot of bags.” But yeah, I bring in all my bags and meters and just ’cause number one, I wanna be prepared for… I’ve invested a lot of time and money in this equipment and training how to use it, so I wanna be prepared to measure all the different energies that I may encounter. I don’t use every piece of equipment on every assessment, but it’s kinda like coming prepared and every assessment is so different, that’s one of my favorite things that I love about this job is that every home is so different, yeah, there’s a lot of common problems, but they’re gonna be presented in a different way, and you need equipment of all the sorts shapes and sizes and expense to measure this stuff.
BO: We talk a lot at Structure Tech about our reports and how we communicate with clients, there’s the three legs of our communications stool, which is tell them what you found, tell them why it’s a problem, and tell them what to do, give them some guidance. Does your report read similarly and do you deliver a written report to everybody on each assessment?
NJ: Yeah, so I have a few different options. I have two options for assessments, I have a quick assessment, which is a minimum of two hours, and I do charge extra for the report on that option, but I also have a full assessment, which I charge by the hour, but generally a full assessment will take anywhere between… They’re usually between five and six hours, but they can go between four and eight hours too, so it’s a pretty…
BO: Oh my goodness.
NJ: Yeah, it’s a pretty broad range and it’s a pretty intensive process too… If you really wanna look at all the EMF factors, if you wanna look at every single EMF factor in a home, it’s gonna take you two or three days, but most people don’t need to start at that point.
BO: Start looking for some low hanging fruit, right?
NJ: Exactly. I love your guys’s philosophy too, so that’s what I do is I go in and I say, we have these different categories, these are extreme exposure concerns, so we wanna get you out of the extreme exposure category for sure. And those are gonna be my highest priorities to get you out of those things, cleaning up your electrical system, so important. I don’t advocate… A lot of people, I think can be scared that, “Well, I gotta give up everything.” Well, no, you might have to give up some things. I’m really gonna encourage you to give up those Bluetooth headphones, that you’re talking about, but there’s an alternative. And we do have to make some lifestyle changes, I’m encouraging people to do those. Oftentimes, those are free or at a very low cost and other repairs, recommendations can get more expensive, wiring errors can get expensive to fix, ’cause you never know how involved it’s gonna be until the electrician gets there, and I recommend…
NJ: I work with a few electricians that I know, so they are familiar with my work and friendly towards it, some are a little hostile towards it, but once I start speaking their language, usually they come around a little bit too, so…
BO: Can I ask just an odd ball electric question?
NJ: Yeah. Absolutely.
BO: Reverse polarity. Does that throw off any unusual frequency, is there any dirty energy coming from…
NJ: Not that I can think of. It could be… I would be more concerned about, well, what’s not reverse priority? I’m not saying it’s not an issue, but I can’t think of any… From an EMF concern, my biggest concerns are wiring code violations, which are not there because they’re an EMF concerns, they’re there ’cause they are a fire and a shock hazard, especially shock hazard people on working on the wires, but that’s why you have different forks in the road, different connections that aren’t supposed to be made neutral to neutral connections from different branch circuits or neutral to ground connections beyond the first means of disconnect are both wearing code violations as good home inspectors probably know too, but those are hard to identify, and oftentimes, we can identify higher fields which these things cause so that’s a key symptom of those things on my initial assessment, then I oftentimes a recommendation is like, “We gotta dig into this more because you have a symptom of a wiring violation.” So that’s where we dig into what kind it is further.
BO: Nate Did you have any electrical training prior to this, because learning electricity is no joke.
NJ: Yeah, yeah.
BO: And we’ve interviewed Douglas Hansen on this podcast. He’s the author of Electrical Inspection for Existing Dwellings. That book is gold, it absolutely talks about every potential issue you’re gonna find from the first house wired in 1896 or whenever it was, right up until today, but electricity is a complicated issue, and so I’d just be curious, did you have any background in electricity? ‘Cause you’re very articulate in the electrical world.
NJ: Well, thank you, I appreciate that. And no, technically not, just amateur, not professional training, so I am amateur computer geek, I’ve been building computers since I was in about sixth or seventh grade, and so I know a bit…
BO: Are you a gamer.
NJ: Yep, I do play games in my free time sometimes.
BO: So let’s just talk about gaming very quickly, my son has built a lot of gaming computers and he’s very, very proud of the speed and the power that he’s put into these boxes and…
NJ: I can send you a picture Bill to show him of my computer, he’ll like it.
BO: I forget his quote in high school, when he was a senior, but he sees all things can be solved with speed and power, is there a lot of… Are kids exposing themselves to a lot of EMF, or can you get the machine far enough away from you and use a corded headset and not be concerned about a lot of exposure.
NJ: Yeah. So great question. I mean, yeah, it’s kind of funny. I’m kind of a tech geek and I’m advocating living in with a lot of technology around me, but you can do it smarter too, so you’re always gonna have some exposure even when you put on a wired headset, you’re still having a small EMF exposure. We all choose how to live our lives and we choose different things of,” Hey, I’m taking this very, very small risk, if I’m doing this safer instead of what could possibly be a much more larger risk.” So as you noted, I have a wired headset on… Yup, use that. Everything’s hard-wired, so we don’t use any WiFi in our house, every connection is an ethernet connection, you shouldn’t any argument from the gamers because it’s the fastest connection you can get, it’s also the most secure connection you can get, just wanna tell a very quick side story that I read a story where somebody, smart home was broken into by a security flaw, the weak point was a smart light bulb, so the hackers got into their house through a light bulb, kid you not WiFi controlled light bulb, and they opened up front door and basically cleared out the house when they were gone, because the front door lock was of course a smart lock too.
NJ: So if you didn’t have any wireless technology in your house, you need to penetrate the network by a literal hard-wired connection, and so I always advocate to people, ethernet connections are the safest, the most secure and the fastest. So you shouldn’t get any flak from the gamers. Now, moms, dads, whoever, you gotta run a cord to the system, so you gotta get that up there somehow, but everything’s hard-wired, I have a wired keyboard, wired mouse… I have a gaming keyboard, and then I was scanning the frequencies on it, and I’m like, holy cow, there’s frequencies coming off the back lit LEDs on them, so I turned off the LEDs on my keyboard and there’s less frequencies coming out of it, so you can get pretty geeky with it, and of course, I’ve gotten to the end degree, I’ve custom shielded all the cords that can’t be… That don’t come as a shielded cord or all these different layers to it, most people don’t go to that degree, but of course, I’m doing this and I do but…
BO: You’re exactly the person who should be in somebody’s house looking for these kinds of conditions, ’cause you understand them. My son talks and it’s just all over my head most of the time, especially when he starts talking about speed and all that other stuff…
NJ: The gigahertz and megahertz and the…
BO: Yeah, I get confused very easily. Okay, I do wanna ask one question. We talked a little bit about electricity and it feels like it’s going to be ever-present, are you testing outlets in going in and looking for wiring issues when it comes to that, or are you just visually assessing the electrical system?
NJ: Yeah, a little of both. It’s very time-consuming to test every single outlet in somebody’s house. So there again, those hour quotes that I gave on my assessments, if you want me to look at every outlet on your house. It’s gonna take probably more than eight hours. But I can…
BO: When look at them or you just kind of taking the plane off to see, Okay, there’s the right wire is on the right and that type of thing.
NJ: No, I’m generally not doing that, and most of the time I’m using my meter as a guide, so when I’m looking for wiring errors, I’m scanning, first of all, you can look for your lighting circuits having wiring errors, so that’s what I’m primarily scanning on a general EMF assessment as sometimes I’ve had it where to test every outlet, it’s so time-consuming, ’cause you have to put a load on the outlet, so you’d have to go around with a hair dryer or something like that, that would be very pronounced and plug it in to every single outlet, there’s another way to test too, you can do a wiring error audits at your power panel, and that’s a very thorough comprehensive test, but I normally don’t do that on a first assessment unless specifically requested, but I’m gonna be testing all your lighting circuits, it’s pretty obvious when there is a wiring issue on them, and those are the most commonly messed up too. My meter guides me, and the fields are really extreme in an area, and then you turn off the light and then they drop, and it’s like, “Whoa, okay, this is the symptom.” Turn it back on, goes way up, and then they kind of market. And it’s like, “Yep. This needs further investigation.”
BO: Okay, Alright, second question about electricity, in a lot of condos we will find service panels in a bedroom, and I know bedrooms are a focus for you, is that a concern from an EMF perspective?
NJ: Yeah, it can be, for sure. So a power panel is always gonna be what’s called a point source that’s gonna be a point source of an EMF exposure. Our panel is wired the best it can be, I’ve checked it twice, I’ve had an electrician’s help, I’ve done some work myself, I am not advocating everybody do that, but I wanted to dive into it, and it’s my house too so, if I burn it down, it’s only my fault. So power panels can be wired in a certain way, and just the way they’re laid out oftentimes, again, talking about those separation of the conductors, so that’s what causes those big magnetic fields, if they’re wired in a way where there’s minimal separation of conductors, the field is gonna fall off quicker. Now, is it ever a good idea to have the power panel right behind your head no, so even if the panel is wired perfectly, that’s where all the electricity is flowing in and out and… Just don’t do that.
BO: Everybody’s heard me talk about my cabin on this podcast, but the only place we could put the service panel was in a bedroom, and it is… The head of a bed is underneath it, and so if we’re there for two nights a week, or two nights a week, two weeks a month, so four nights… I mean, am I putting anybody at risk?
NJ: Can you move the bed at all.
BO: Yeah, slightly. And it’s low, there’s probably four feet of separation between the panel and the bed but…
NJ: Well, yeah, even four feet helps a lot too. So if the panel’s wired in an optimal way, I’m not gonna say without measuring it, and I can tell you for sure, but distance is your friend, so if it’s a foot away, that’s a lot worse than four feet away, so if you can not rearrange…
BO: And it’s modern wiring too, so I’m hoping that there’s some protection in the modern-ness of it. Alright, well, that’s a different… That’s a different conversation. Maybe we have to have you up to the cabin and do an assessment.
NJ: Sure. Awesome sounds good.
BO: We’ll do some horse trading wildlife fishing for EMF assessing.
NJ: Awesome, sounds good.
BO: Alright, so you’re in the house thinking electricity, you’re looking electricity, do telephone wires, hard-wired phones have… Raise any red flag for you or… No.
NJ: No hard-wired phones… They’re actually being phased out, the FCC is mandating that we phase out plain old… They call it plain old telephone service, and that was… I forget the voltage forgive me my electrical engineer mentors, but I wanna say it’s 12 volts or something, it’s a very low voltage on wire, so that’s gonna be a very low concern, but I’ve actually bought a hard-wired phone last year, or now it’s a voice over IP phone, so it runs over ethernet, but it has a hard-wired connection, so I make all of my business calls on either my computer, which is hard-wired with Ethernet or a hard-wired phone that is also powered by ethernet. So yeah, I advocate people do that, and then if you talk on your cell phone a lot, another thing I advocate is a wired headset, just putting that phone three or four feet away from you is another thing I’ll tell people all day long, please use a wired headset, I want you to live a long, healthy life, and it doesn’t do any good slamming your phone, up to your ear, and it can be of many, many orders of magnitude, hundreds of orders of magnitude higher exposures just from that four feet of distance compared to right up to your brain as to setting your phone on a table with a wired headset four or five feet away from you, if the headset allows…
BO: In our world, we’re not supposed to find problems and then help people fix them, at least not for a period of time that the home inspection industry sees that as a conflict of interest, do you have any such restrictions from a professional standpoint, or can you go into a house and find these issues and then give very good guidance and then actually help people set up safer environments to be in?
NJ: Yeah, great question. The EMF industry is pretty unregulated, so that’s for both good and bad. Well, we won’t get into my political beliefs, but I don’t like a lot of regulation, I’ll say that, but with that said too anybody can go in and call themselves an EMF expert, so that’s the bad part of it. But I have had professional training. And I don’t have a university degree. There really is no such thing as I know. But going back to your question, I don’t believe there’s a conflict of interest, I try to be very upfront with my clients and say, “Here’s what you can expect, here is… If you do this action… ”
NJ: It’s impossible to give 100% accurate numbers, but I’m like, “Hey, in past actions, if you buy this product or do this remediation, you can expect a 90-plus percent reduction in your exposure.” So I also encourage clients to lay out a plan for remediation, some things I can do myself, I’m willing to do shielding paint if people want it, there’s… You don’t need a professional license to paint, you do need a professional license to work on electrical, so that’s where I get the electricians involved, but the electricians like to have me there too, because I’m more than willing to help them number one and number two, they don’t have the meters I have, so they’re like, “Is the fields better?” The guy asked me that I work with a lot. The awesome electrician. And I’m like, “Nope, they’re still there.” “Okay, well, let’s try this.” Then he tries that… “Are the fields better?” “Yes, they’re better.” “Okay, awesome, we got it that time.” Or whatever, so…
BO: Okay, okay. So I did not picture that as being part of the process where… Everybody knows Tessa talks about blower door testing on houses, and you can do these blower doors and if you find leaks, you can go actually try to fix them on the spot and be like, “Yeah, that leak’s gone.” You’re doing something similar, now they’re paying you for your time to get out there, but that’s part of… Is that quote on quote a remediation part of this process, or have you ever brought the electrician with you on the first assessment, knowing there’s issues and you’re just like, “Let’s get to the bottom of this today.”
NJ: No, not the electrician question. Like I said, it would be a very rare circumstance if that does happen, I had a great mentor, Damon Coin, his name is… And he moved away to Oklahoma, and I’ve worked with people that have worked with him and they’re like, “Hey, I got wiring issues.” So that might be a rare circumstance where I would bring the electrician in on the first try. But yeah, generally, we gotta assess the place first, and there’s so many layers, so many people are at different points to the… Some people know. They’re just like, “I know it’s a concern. Teach me everything about it, I know nothing.” And other people are like, “I’ve been reading about this for years, and I’ve been thinking about it for years, but I don’t have the meters, I don’t wanna learn how to use the meters, and don’t wanna invest in the meters, I just want the professional to come in and give me a professional assessment.” So on the first assessment, that’s kind of what I do, I try to lay out a game plan for them, and like I said, some of the remediation they can do themselves, I lay out a plan.
NJ: My reports are very detailed. I didn’t totally answer your question on the full assessment, I do include a written report and I spend a lot of time on those, so I’m trying to streamline that process ’cause I do spend so much time on them, but they’re very detailed, and I like to empower people from that report and generally from that process, what they can do themselves, hopefully they do do and then what they can’t do themselves and where they need the professionals, I basically encourage them to do the work or have me involved as much as you want me or need me to, and then I come in for a quick kinda after assessment, after remediation assessment, so to say, and I say, “Yep, everything’s working. And I love… ” That’s my favorite thing to do, the before and after. Everybody doesn’t listen to my advice, unfortunately, but the clients that do are my favorite, and then I can do the before and after and then show them the dramatic… I showed this one guy, his fields dropped by over eight times in a sleeping area by fixing a wiring issue, and it just made me so happy looking at that chart that he’s sleeping in eight times less fields fixing that wiring issue.
BO: Wow. That’s amazing. Okay, so I imagine you have a process, you get to the house and you’re like, First I’m gonna evaluate this, next I’m going to evaluate this, and you probably move… In our business, Reuben is set up the process where it’s top to bottom at the exterior, then we do the same thing at the interior. I’m using the royal we here, I don’t inspect. But that’s what they do. And the whole point is, because of the process, they’ve learned to identify the biggest problems through the process, so I’m sure you have a similar process to that, are you bringing all your meters into each room in the residence and having to download a bunch of data or is it just, if you see something then, okay, now I’m gonna take the next step and measure.
NJ: Yeah, I mean a little of both, and I always try to meet people where they’re at. I usually sit down with the clients first in my assessment and give them a little education to whether they know… They think they know a lot or not, or they do know a lot or not, whatever. Or they know nothing. And they just know that it’s a concern. So they hired me, we do a little educational section and kind of what I went over with you in the beginning of, “Here’s the four fields I’m looking at, here’s where they’re coming from, here’s sources of them, and here’s why they can be concerns.” I print out some of these period scientific studies and I say, “Here’s some of these exposure levels and let’s compare your levels at the end of the assessment to some of these scientific studies.” And then… Yeah, I have a process, I try to work with people. “I’ve assessed those four fields, but it’s not set in stone that we have to go in this order.” Or whatever, so I turn off power during part of the assessment too, so… I know that’s disruptive, so I work with people and they’re like, “Oh no, I’m working, I got this business meeting here.” Well, of course, we’re not gonna do that then, but… And I work around their schedules. I also send them a kind of a what to expect document on an EMF assessment when they do book an appointment with me to prepare them and just to prepare their household, their mind, their devices, everything to make it go as quick and efficiently as possible.
BO: Clients are home during this evaluation?
NJ: I definitely encourage them to be. They don’t have to be, but I encourage people to follow me around too. Most people don’t do that… “Oh, I’m working on my space.” But no, I love it when clients help and follow me around, it’s educational for them, it really helps to have a client’s help with one part of the assessment, I can do it by myself, but I’m just thinking of one assessment where it’s a very large house, I… Probably four or 5000 square feet, and I was there almost seven hours, but his wife came home from work to help me with the part that had needed the second person where it really speeds up the process, and then I did the rest of the assessment by myself, and then he came home from work and I gave him the details, but… That’s fine, that works, but it’s a lot more real. When you can see the meters, you can hear them…
NJ: Some of them have kind of a geiger counter effect, so it’s… It’s clicking louder as it’s going closer to the source, so it’s… People are like, “Woah, it’s really buzzing now. What’s going on there?” And I’m like, “Well, that could be an issue. But we’ll talk about it at the end.” You keep them on track, but it’s a lot of…
BO: Keep a steady mind, calm down, calm down, there’s no issues yet.
NJ: It’s a lot of fun, I encourage to take along with me, it’s very educational, and I’ll put them to work too, I have them record numbers on a clipboard sometimes to help them, save them time and money if they’re willing and also… Or I can do it all myself too.
BO: So does it start with a kind of dining room consultation where you’re sorting out or passing out this information, explaining the process, and then you get into the measurable and the data collection, and they’re helping you possibly or not, and then you wrap up, you’re out of there, you had back to your home office and you begin constructing the report.
NJ: Yep. Exactly, you kind of describe the process pretty well. So I’m collecting the data, I do sit down with them at the end, and that’s obviously a very important conversation and I give them… First of all, I’m giving them the information multiple ways, so whether you’re doing a short or a full home assessment. You’re gonna hear audio summary conversation where you can interrupt me, ask as many questions as you want, but I’m gonna give you, “Here’s what I found, here’s what I would prioritize.” And I normally record that conversation to and send them a recording of it and just ’cause it is like a fire hose of information, so I know everybody doesn’t listen to it, but some people have told me that’s helpful.
BO: What we’ve learned in the home inspection industry that oftentimes people pay for these reports and then they don’t even read them.
NJ: Yeah.
BO: Well go figure, right?
NJ: Yeah, I know that frustrates me, I’m like, “I spent five hours writing that report and you haven’t looked at it yet.” But they paid me for it. Yeah.
BO: It’s fascinating. Everybody learns differently. I learn through listening and watching much better than I learn through reading, and so I would be bored in the table conversation, two elbows on listening, like eye contact, the whole thing, the report would probably be more over my head ’cause it get into technical things and sometimes numbers bang around in my head, so anyway.
NJ: I try to make it as approachable as possible.
BO: It actually sounds like a fun experience to go from zero knowledge on any of this to literally, I don’t know, maybe 75% of the way to somewhat of an understanding and I imagine you help really change lives at a… Forget the pun. Like at a molecular level in real life.
NJ: I love it, I love it. Yeah, well, I hope so. And that’s my goal is to help people, for sure. And I’ve heard people tell me, one client told me that she hasn’t dreamt in a long time, and after she started doing some of the remediation, I recommended she was having vivid dreams and sleeping better, having more energy. So some people report, this is kind of a subtle subjective thing, but a lot of people report more peace or just feeling more calm in their home, less anxiety too, so I noticed that personally, I’m very tuned in to what it feels like, of course, these fields and stuff, but in really high wireless environments, I feel more anxious, I feel less focused, so some of these are subtle things, but how valuable is feeling more calm and focused? If you sleep better, you’re gonna be more creative, you’re gonna be… The benefits are almost endless of sleeping better, so that’s my selling points, but it’s true, and it’s my own testimony too, is I lie if I sleep eight hours every night solid straight through, but I’m dealing with some gut issues too, so I know that has an effect but I can tell you, I get vastly better quality sleep, and I feel like I rest when I rest in my low EMF bedroom, and I can make that happen for you too. So…
BO: There’s… One third of your life should be spent sleeping, which is a pretty important I mean people talk about how important your mattress is. Well, I think the other domino in there is what environment are you spending your time in? And I think the other thing I’m hearing, and I just wanna clarify this, sometimes it is that you have to be there during the event where you’re trying to correct some of these issues to really dial them in, and I imagine everybody thinks, “Well, Nate just walks in and he’s gonna tell me, ‘Well, turn that router off or put it over here and redo that and add this and your life will be great.'” but it sounds way more intense and detailed, you just can’t paint this with a broad brush.
NJ: Yes, yes, absolutely. That’s so true. And that’s a line from one of my reports too, is that I say, “As you may notice from some of my suggestions, there is not a cookie-cutter solution to a lot of these things.” But I give multiple solutions and angles to things if there are… And all of my solutions are based in physics, based in science, they’re based in… Let’s try to measurably reduce our exposure, so kind of going back to that, is there any conflict of interest well you could say, “Well, I’m advocating this thing, but I’m gonna say that it’s gonna do this for you and I can prove it to you.” So that’s… Not that many industries can do that, that’s one of the really fun things too. You can go to the doctor and they’re like, “Oh, we’re gonna make you better.” “Well, I don’t feel any better.” So I can’t prove some of the subtle things I can’t… And that’s even part of my… I try to be upfront with people, I can’t guarantee you’ll feel better, or I’m not advocating I’m curing cancer, I don’t want the FDA after me. Nate Johnson EMF assessments are curing cancer. No, I’m not claiming that, but all my solutions are measurable, so that’s I guess what I’m advocating and…
BO: Well, that’s why I’ve so enjoyed our conversations is because you say from the very first time I spoke with you, this is a science driven thing, I’m working with I’m… There is no witchery, there’s no weirdness in this. This is science based, I can measure it, I can prove it, and I can improve things. And if we do that, chances are you’re going to see improvement. So that’s what I really like about what we’ve kind of struck up here in terms of a conversation and a relationship. I think that helps people understand what it would feel like to engage you and that’s really what I wanted to do here was help people understand what does an evaluation look like. And last question I really have is if you spend five hours in a house, are you going home and spending probably another five to create that report and is that… If you spend 10, would it take you 10 to create the report, is it like a 2X type of thing, or is each one so individual you can’t really pin that down?
NJ: Well, my very first report, the very first one I did to pass my certification took me 16 hours.
BO: Oh my goodness.
NJ: I’m like, “God never again, am I doing that.” My mentor teacher who passed me with flying colors said, “This is too detailed.” I’m like, “Well, I’m supposed to prove I know the knowledge to you.” It was kind of a weird situation. I’m doing the report on an actual stranger’s house and it was very detailed. But yeah, to go back to your question, I’m currently not charging really a lot extra for the report that’s included in a full assessment, and I’m trying to streamline that process as much as possible, but I have gotten a lot better. It doesn’t take me 16 hours now.
BO: Well you know now what you didn’t know before. Right, so that learning, there’s efficiencies that get opened. But… Okay, well, it’s a significant investment of time on your part to deliver all this information.
NJ: Yes.
BO: And I had an energy audit in my house, and the gentleman who came and did it, I thought was really thorough, he had all these gauges, he had all… He took a lot of measurable and it made me feel good, he’s taking measures, collecting data, and I feel the same way you’re doing the exact same thing. And then turning around and then kind of communicating back what that means, how you can address it and move forward and sort of lighten your EMF burden, so to speak.
NJ: Yeah, my reports take me a few hours and some people I know read them, and I include an hour of support follow-up time on a full assessment too, so I don’t wanna leave people high and dry, that’s a remote follow-up support time. I’m not gonna come back to your site with all my meters for free, but you can’t avoid the subject of being somewhat technical, I try to be as approachable and explain things as best as possible, as best as I know how and was trained to. But yeah, you gotta be at least a little bit technical, and they’re like, “Okay Nate, walk me through this.” I’ve had clients and I’ll set up a Zoom call or a phone call or whatever. Or I do a lot of email support with people with quick questions about… It can be completely unrelated to your situation too, I have people… Clients ask me and they haven’t used their follow-up time and they just say, “What do you think about this product?” So I do some research for them and I’ll send them my professional opinion about the product that they’re researching and so…
BO: Awesome, well, why don’t we do this, why don’t we close the episode by you just telling everybody how they can get a hold of you, how to schedule an assessment, and again, I just wanna reiterate that I found Nate on the… It’s called the Building Biology Institute, buildingbiologyinstitute.org. And that’s how I happen to cross Nate. So if you’re outside of our area, which is Minneapolis, St. Paul Market, there was a long list of consultants that do the work that Nate does. But Nate, how does everybody get a hold of you and how can they schedule a consult?
NJ: Yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity to tell everybody about my services and just this whole awesome conversation we’ve had. Yeah, so my website is newlightemf.com, just spelled exactly as it is, like a new car, light bulb and EMF electromagnetic field. All one word. Newlightemf.com, that has my email address on there is nate@newlightemf.com. My phone number is 651-208-1650. And you can call all times when I’m on an assessment, I always have my phone on airplane mode. Interferes with measurements, and I don’t wanna be radiated while I’m doing the assessment too. So leave me a message if you get my voicemail, I do check those regularly and should return your call shortly, or a lot of people start the conversation by email too, just to kind of schedule a time that… Whatever works for having… I give a basically 20 to… I’ll cut you off at 30 minutes, but I like to say 20 to 30 minute of free consultation, if you call, let’s talk about your situation. And a lot of people utilize that and don’t hire me, so I don’t hold it against them, that’s my free consultation, but hopefully we can schedule something that… To look at your personal situation and help you reduce these fields in your home.
NJ: I just wanna mention two other resources, the Building Biology Institutes, that is a great… That’s where I was trained. There’s a whole list of professionals too, on there, I will travel too. I do charge a travel fee outside the Minneapolis metro area, but Wisconsin, Iowa, the Dakotas, I’m happy to travel if you wanna pay the travel fee and I can come to a more remote place to buildingbiologyinstitute.org, that’s where, like you said, you found me, they have a find a professional I’m listed on there under the electromagnetic radiation specialist, really good website too, so that’s the little plug I want to give to it, they have a section called three fact sheets, and they have a lot of information on air quality, EMF information, just stuff you can start doing now. Another really good introductory page, it’s more than just introductory though, but on the subject of EMF is ehtrust.org, that’s like Edward Henry trust dot org, that was founded by a PhD scientist, Devra Davis, and she has been researching EMFs for, I believe, decades now, but a very long time. And she has a ton of free information on her website too.
NJ: I print some of her little infographics on how to use cell phone smarter and hand that in my educational materials too and recommend everybody visit her website too, just ’cause it is such a great resource, and if you wanna dive deeper into the science, you’re like, “I can’t believe this.” That’s there too. So you can dive really deep on a medical level and then just really approachable on practical tips to sell a really great web page all around on the subject of EMFs.
BO: Well, thank you very much, Nate, I appreciate the fact that… I’ve said this probably so many times, people are like, “Enough, bill.” But this is a science conversation, there’s a plenty of information out there to back up what you’re talking about, and that’s just a good thing, so you’re educating one householder at a time, or one business owner at a time and lo and behold, we’ll get the word out that there could be some potential issues and they can be mitigated. So it’s not all bad. Understand what you have and move forward with a solution. So.
NJ: Absolutely.
BO: Thanks, Nate. Again, really appreciate your time. And thank you everybody for listening. 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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