Effects of Electromagnetic Fields on Human Health

Peter Sullivan, who has a master’s degree in computer science with an emphasis on human-computer interaction, is the founder of Clear Light Ventures, an organization dedicated to raising awareness about the health effects of electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure.

Before founding Clear Light Ventures in 2007, he worked for several different Silicon Valley companies, including Netflix, where he worked his way up from a troubleshooter in customer support to a principal software designer at Netflix.

“My passion in the mid-’90s … was personal technology … I had all the gadgets,” Sullivan says. “I even had some of the wearable tech in the mid-’90s … I was writing papers about this at Stanford. I was getting exposure to these things way earlier than most people.

Also … when I was working at Interwoven, I was next to a military base … the Onizuka Air Force Station. Turns out there was a space radar under this blue cube. I was getting really hammered by the space radar … I was doing everything right health-wise. I was eating well. I was exercising. Yet my health just kept declining.

I kept having issues with fatigue, etc. I would say the exposure that people are getting now, I was getting probably about 10 years ago. It took me a long time to figure it out … We’re all making this mistake and making assumptions …

I said, ‘I need to really be objective. I don’t want to be that person who doesn’t look at their own stuff.’ I started including EMF in the environmental factors and the health factors that I was looking at … I did it because I started feeling things. My brain was telling me, ‘This is all great stuff. It’s really fun,’ and my body was saying, ‘Oh my God. I don’t like that’ …

I was getting a little bit of tinnitus or microwave hearing … If you’re in this camp where your flickering light is annoying you or noise is starting to [become] an issue, you don’t like fan noise and these sorts of things … you’re probably getting into this realm, especially if you’re having sleep disruption.”

Searching for the Root of His Problems

In 2009, he got really diligent about assessing all of his exposures, including exposures to toxins, light, noise, air quality and so on. In the end, he discovered that electrical exposure, by far, was the biggest factor. He also discovered that the biggest loads on his immune system were in his mouth. He had mercury fillings, a root canal and cavitations.

As these dental issues were addressed, his EMF sensitivity improved. “I don’t feel pain [in response to EMF exposure] anymore,” he says, but he can still sense that a high EMF environment is not ideal. At his worst, between 2009 and 2013, he’d feel the effects simply driving by a cellphone tower. “I’d feel it in my head,” he says.

Additional help arrived in the form of building biologist Alex Stadtner, who founded Healthy Building Science Inc. Sullivan started working with him in 2009, learning about magnetic fields, electric fields and wireless radiation. Another instrumental teacher was Dr. Sam Milham, who wrote the book “Dirty Electricity.”

“I started measuring things. That was, really, I think, the key tipping point for me — how to manage dirty electricity that was affecting me at night,” Sullivan says. “[Milham] is fantastic. He’s done some great work. I funded a study that he was working on in schools, which is interesting. He wanted to measure neurotransmitters in children …

He measured a baseline of the kids in school, and then he measured it [after retrofitting the classroom] with a Stetzer meter and Stetzer filters … He noticed that the neurotransmitters changed dramatically. The ones that changed the most were dopamine and phenethylamine (PEA). PEA is related to self-control.

If you’re a teacher, you kind of want your kids to have a little bit of self-control. I think even a lot of adults are losing self-control right now, and I think dirty electricity is a very key factor.”

Four Primary Types of EMFs

There are four primary types of EMF exposures:

1. AC electric fields at 60 Hz (the “E” component of EMF) from house wiring and corded appliances (especially ungrounded ones; cords that have only two prongs rather than three)
2. AC magnetic fields at 60 Hz (the “M” component of EMF) from power lines, wiring errors on house wiring, current on grounding paths, and from motors and transformers (“point sources”)
3. Radio frequencies (RF) from cellphones, smart meters, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in just about everything these days
4. “Dirty electricity” from transient voltage spikes from 2 to 100 KHz

While you can measure all of these, there’s no one single meter that can provide you information about all of these EMFs. For a comprehensive assessment of your exposure, you will need more than one meter.

To understand each of these a bit better, you can think of a magnetic field as field lines generated by an electromagnet. These fields go right through your body. An electric field can be thought of as invisible lighting, as electrons are trying to ground.