There are many different sources of RF pollution, inside your home, in your office, outside and even in your pocket! All of these add up, interfere with each other and produce various undesirable side-effects that you may have underestimated so far…

AI generated. Effects include but not limited to: bad sleep, poor battery life and slow download speeds...

See also: What is RF Pollution?

1. Poor Internet Speeds

If you have many WiFi/Bluetooth sources in the same area (think your home + your neighbors on all sides) and they all emit at max power, it’s going to be the same situation as in crowded bar: everyone shouts but no one really hears whom he wants to listen too. If everybody was speaking quieter, everybody would communicate better.

It’s the exact same thing with WiFi and Bluetooth. Running them on max power is counterproductive!

Sadly enough, by default, all WiFi devices are set to emit at the maximum legally allowed volume, all the time. It’s like entering into a restaurant and starting to yell at the waiter at the maximum legally allowed volume in public places! :(

Let me know in the comments if you’d like more info on how to minimize WiFi networks interfering with each other and leading to poor internet speeds.

2. Reduced Battery Life

Think about this: All the power that gets emitted “into the air” MUST come from somewhere! Nothing gets lost, nothing gets created.

And for mobile devices, all that emitted power comes straight from the battery!

The more powerful the emissions are (i-e: the louder your devices talk), the more electricity they use and the shorter their battery life will be.

Principle: The emitting antennas turn electricity into radio wave energy. Also: most antennas emit into all directions at once (and they don’t even know where the receiving antenna is supposed to be located).

3. Health Impacts

Think about this again: All the radio power that is “in the air” MUST go somewhere! Again, nothing gets lost, nothing gets created.

  • Some of the emitted power gets radiated out into space but most of it gets radiated in the direction of earthly objects and beings.
  • A tiny fraction of the emitted power hits it’s intended destination: the receiving antenna.
    Principle: The receiving antenna absorbs radio wave energy and turns it back into electricity, and hopefully an unaltered electrical signal that carries useful information.
  • But the vast majority of the emitted radio waves miss their target antenna and hit other objects or beings in the environment. Depending on the material, some will turn the radio wave energy into heat, some will turn it into electricity.

**The human body presumably can do both when it receives RF radio waves:

  • heat up (which is measured with S.A.R.) and…
  • also act as an antenna with small amounts of electricity being “injected” into your cells, nerves, etc…

Research on RF exposure suggests several areas of concern:

  • The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies RF electromagnetic fields as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2B)1
  • A large-scale study by the National Toxicology Program found evidence linking high RF exposure to heart tumors in male rats2
  • Research published in Environmental Research shows associations between RF exposure and:
    • Oxydative stress3
    • Changes in sleep patterns4
    • Cognitive effects

Read: How To Reduce Your RF Exposure.

4. Environmental Impact

You know how you feel warm and fuzzy about turning off the lights and not having a “stand by” LED that glows all night on your TV ? It doesn’t matter if you do it for the impact on the environment or for the impact on your electricity bill…

Well, your WiFi box is on 24/7 and actually uses more electricity than a lamp that you’d leave on all night. And that’s just for the WiFi emissions, not for the whole internet router function! ATTENTION though, before turning OFF, read: How To Reduce Your RF Exposure.

Besides power consumption, studies have documented RF impacts on wildlife:

  • Bird navigation: Studies show RF interference with magnetoreception in migratory birds (Engels et al., Nature, 2014)5
  • Insect populations: Research indicates RF radiation affects insect behavior and survival rates (Thielens et al., Scientific Reports, 2020)6
  • Plant growth: Studies demonstrate RF radiation can influence plant growth and development (Halgamuge et al., Environmental Research, 2017)7

5. Other interference

  • IEEE studies show RF interference with medical devices
  • FCC documentation on RF interference with consumer electronics
  • Aviation safety reports on RF interference with navigation systems

Note: Contrary to the human body, animals and plants, newer electronic devices are built with better shielding against RF radiation, so there are less and less issues with interference. This allows us to go bananas with emissions (everyone doing WiFi in a closed Faraday cage like a plane) without electronic issues. And we forget that the humans in the Faraday cage are not designed to receive those amounts of RF energy…

  1. IARC. (2011). “IARC classifies radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans.” https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/pr208_E.pdf ↩︎

  2. NTP. (2018). “Cell Phone Radio Frequency Radiation Studies.” https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/topics/cellphones/ ↩︎

  3. Yakymenko et al. (2016). “Oxidative mechanisms of biological activity of low-intensity radiofrequency radiation.” Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26151230/ ↩︎

  4. Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks. (2015). “Opinion on Potential Health Effects of Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26179386/ ↩︎

  5. Engels et al. (2014). “Anthropogenic electromagnetic noise disrupts magnetic compass orientation in a migratory bird.” Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13290 ↩︎

  6. Thielens et al. (2020). “Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Field Exposure of Western Honey Bees.” Scientific Reports. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56948-0 ↩︎

  7. Halgamuge et al. (2017). “Plant Response to Weak Electromagnetic Fields.” Environmental Research. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308390362_Review_Weak_radiofrequency_radiation_exposure_from_mobile_phone_radiation_on_plants ↩︎