A couple posts ago I featured a video produced by the Environmental Health Trust that shows children playing with and interacting with “smart speakers” within their homes at distances way closer than recommended by manufacturer’s guidelines. Simple Question: When these videos were filmed, where were the adults in the room?

Okay, it’s partially a rhetorical question—we know they were there. You could hear parents in the background and they were probably behind the camera. Moreover, I gotta presume that all of the adults in these videos were simply not aware of the recommendations given by the manufacturers to keep their distance, otherwise they would have intervened in their children’s play.

So the bigger issue is: Whose going to be there now and in the future to protect our children? Whose looking out for their health and safety? Whose going to be the adult in the room and set boundaries kids can’t cross when it comes to using technology? Is it going to be their parents? Their teachers? The government?

The answer I think is ‘all of the above’. But frankly it BEGINS with you. That’s right YOU. Yes, I am pointing my finger at YOU, the reader of this blog. Especially parents with very young kids and those trying to conceive and thinking of having children. It is up to all of us to do our part to learn more about electromagnetic radiation, make an informed assessment of the health risks involved, and for those who believe there are indeed detrimental health consequences, gain a sense of urgency and act accordingly. This blog is being written, in part, to help give you the tools and ammunition and encouragement to do that.

Kids aren’t going to act alone. They simply don’t know the dangers and who can blame them. Except for a tiny sliver of the Electromagnetic Spectrum we all know as Visible Light (think ROY G BIV, the colors of the rainbow), all electromagnetic fields are invisible to the human eye. You can’t see them. You can’t hear them. You can’t smell them. You can’t taste them. So what kid would even think twice about cuddling up to a wireless smart speaker that’s pulsing out invisible emfs at a rate of up to 5.8 billion cycles per second? An adult who knows better HAS TO intervene and set ground rules for using any and all electronic/ wireless devices in the home.

To intervene like I mention above (and that may mean being a bit of a helicopter parent); to take the time and effort to get educated on this topic and frequently challenge conventional thinking; to bring this topic up with relatives, neighbors, friends and even teachers or who aren’t aware of the potential health implications; to start doing the things we need to do around our homes to genuinely create a safe place to live and work and raise a family; and to challenge our schools and municipal governments to connect our students and our citizens through faster and more secure methods (e.g., fiber optic cables) rather than wireless, will take persistence and COURAGE—the latter which I truly believe to be the least common of human traits. I do not underestimate the challenge that lies before every person who cares about creating a truly healthy home and who sees the mitigation/ reduction of emfs in their homes as a the central tenet toward achieving that goal.

(If only the human body would react to the invisible radio frequency devices that many of us willingly or unwillingly bath in all day–you know the fields produced by cell phones, wifi routers, bluetooth devices, “smart” utility meters, your baby monitor, your doorbell and all the “smart appliances” inside our “modern” homes–the same way it does when we get, say, too much sun or forget to put on that sunscreen before heading outdoors to garden all afternoon…..we’d get sunburned without ever going outside! Or we’d turn green or blue or purple or some other color when our body was being hit by excessive levels of EMFs so we would know immediately to get out of that environment and seek protection.)

Although our bodies don’t turn green or blue or purple when faced with excessive or very concentrated everyday electromagnetic fields, as it turns out there have been many reported cases of individuals breaking out into skin rashes or becoming sun-burned red when exposed to too many emfs, especially those with a condition known as EHS or Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity. See visual examples here and here.

We frequently have few telltale signs of any health problems when we are first exposed to what author Nicolas Pineault calls, “our stupid use of technology.” And even fewer of us are even aware of the potential health consequences of repetitive long term exposures to emfs which we now know are cumulative. All the more reason for anyone reading this blog to get up to speed on this topic post haste as we act to protect the most vulnerable among us—our elementary school aged kids and toddlers and infants and mothers-to-be—and to act with authority and conviction as we do so.