I mistakenly published my last post while still editing and finishing it. I’ll just continue and finish that post here rather than rewrite the whole thing, so go back and pick up your read from the second to last paragraph where I was inserting a new sentence that began, “In Chattanooga…..”

In Chattanooga, their ultrafast hi-speed fiber optic Internet has helped that city establish itself over the last ten years as a center for innovation and drawn hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. An article published by CNN Business recounts how Chattanooga’s network was first set up, how much faster it was (speeds of 1,000 megabits per second versus the U.S. average of 9.3 megabits per second back in 2014), and how its creation led to substantial new business investment.

And this article which was published just a few months ago, (and comes seven years after that CNN report was made), shows that investment in Chattanooga since the creation of their fiber optic network, has now been in the BILLIONS OF DOLLARS and accounts for over 40% of all new jobs created there over the past decade.

Moreover, during the COVID pandemic, Chattanooga used its smart city fiber optic network to give students free Internet access. As this article points out, Chattanooga had plenty of bandwidth during COVID for online learning and used its city-wide network to bridge the digital divide in education by providing free internet services to economically disadvantaged students. Chattanooga’s internet service is at least four times faster than typical educational access offerings from other providers and the only one that delivers symmetrical speeds for uploads and downloads. And may I again add, does so without the EMFs created by our wireless technologies.

Without going into detail, Longmont, Colorado created a similar network in their city. Called ‘NextLight”, their fiber-fast, gigabit network provides its residents similar benefits.

The point here is that as our country considers its Infrastructure needs, we have options —smarter, faster, much more secure options—than wireless and 5G. And going back to Timothy Schoechle’s Reinventing Wires report that I referenced and linked to at the end of my last post before accidentally publishing it, Mr. Schoechle provides a roadmap forward with wired fiber optic technologies that we all can follow. As he points out:

The Internet has become one of the defining technologies of the modern world. Why has America, the Internet’s creator, become one of its most impoverished users among all the developed nations in terms of the proportion of its people with Internet access and the speed and quality of that access? Why has the Internet been growing in an inefficient, insufficient, and unsustainable direction? Is wireless access being oversold? Why are existing copper phone lines being abandoned when current protocols allow them to deliver data at gigabit speed? This report seeks to address these questions and propose answers and solutions. It explores the historical forces at play, the emerging technologies that will define the future of landlines and networks, and the public policy choices and opportunities that confront us today.

The Environmental Health Trust endorses a wired broadband future for America as well and in a letter sent to President Biden calls for such, as well as a moratorium on 5G deployment. The EHT’s letter plainly states that:

[America’s] infrastructure should be wired, not wireless. We urge that wherever possible the broadband system envisioned in the American Jobs Plan rely on safer, more secure and efficient, wired connections, especially for schools and other institutions where wired connections will save money and eliminate exposures to wireless radiation, found by the National Toxicology Program to cause clear evidence of cancer.

To borrow President Biden’s own words, we can not have “[an Infrastructure] plan that tinkers around the edges” when it comes to public and environmental health. I urge you to contact your elected officials and insist that they do not support the infrastructure bill in its present form or any bill that invests in wireless technologies or incremental investments in 5G. Instead ask them to back any proposal that thinks boldly on how a new coast to coast fiber-optic network could truly revolutionize our communications without the biological and ecological impacts of wireless and non-ionizing radiation.

In April, the Biden Administration released its plan for a massive (depending-on-how-you-count-it) $2.0 to $2.65 trillion capital expenditure on new infrastructure. Known as the American Jobs Plan, it is an ambitious program to update America’s interstate highways, ports, and public utilities—an investment that in my opinion is long overdue. Unfortunately this Plan also funds an even greater number of projects that have nothing to do with the traditional nuts-and-bolts physical infrastructure that over the past 150 years have led to massive leaps in American mobility and productivity.

Instead this plan earmarks money for creating new government agencies and programs, for picking winners and losers in our economy rather than letting a free market decide those choices, directly funds workforce development and training, and offers a variety of grants and low-interest loans to do what our nation’s financial institutions are already set-up to do. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, this legislation includes investments like offering rebates and incentives to purchase electric vehicles, provide funding for climate change research and development, protect against future pandemics through “medical countermeasures”, expand home- and community-based care services for the elderly, provide additional funding for domestic manufacturing, and numerous other “non-infrastructure projects” that crowd out investments in real infrastructure projects that truly make a difference.

One of those difference-making investments from a healthy home point-of-view, would be the creation of a new nationwide network of sustainable wired—NOT WIRELESS—broadband infrastructure. That investment would center around the build-out of a nation-wide network of fiberoptic cables which would be orders of magnitude faster than 5G while being much more secure without the associated electromagnetic fields that come with 5G transmission.

We have precedence for such a project—Longmont, CO and especially Chattanooga, TN offer the best examples of local municipalities that decided to install fiberoptic in their city and reaped tremendous benefits. In Chattanooga,

As Timothy Schoechle points out in his recent research treatise published by The National Institute for Science, Law & Public Policy:

“The Internet has become one of the defining technologies
of our society. It is our central medium for commerce and communication—but more importantly—for our public discourse, engagement, and democratic governance. However,
it has been hijacked by the commercial motivations that have come to re-define and constrain the availability, quality, content, and media of high-speed access in the United States.”

No I am not kidding.  I actually think there are a few parallels between shopping for a sunscreen and shopping for a conventional home in 2021.   Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy, but stick with me here while I explain…

Sure there are a gazillion differences.  Sure one costs about ten bucks while the other costs at least $100K (and obviously much more depending on where you live).  Sure one you lather all over your body and quickly dispose of while the other you live in for (in some cases) many years and typically invest a lot of your hard-earned money, blood, sweat, and tears, if not emotions and memories, to make that house a home.  And sure the process for buying each is completely and utterly different.

And yet, what struck me as I began to consider the content for this post was how similar I believe many people feel and how they react as they approach the purchase of each of these two items.  

Similarity #1:  We Buy Both (at least in part) For Health and Well-Being

No doubt people buy sunscreen to live happier, healthier lives; to help protect their body from skin cancer and what is now almost universally accepted to be the damaging rays of the sun; and let’s face it at the end of the day, many buy to simply   look and feel better about themselves.  The sun as we have talked about in previous posts is a natural source of EMFs that in lower doses can be healthful and beneficial.

In a similar way, some buy a home to gain their own happiness and peace of mind derived from simply having a permanent protected shelter over their heads, or from the pride of owning your own property, or from the freedom that goes with the chance to express your personality or pursue your interests or avocation or simply to gain a measure of privacy one could not get in a rental space.   

Both purchases are driven, again at least in part, by the desire to be or stay healthy.  

Similarity #2:  Despite Similarity #1, we are Generally Clueless About What’s Inside

Well, not completely clueless, but I’ve seen that Sunscreen Stare in my store many a time; that MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) Look when reading a sunscreen label; that helpless confused “How do I Know if this is a Good or Safe Sunscreen?” Look.  Hey I get it, reading the ingredient list for most of today’s sunscreens is night and day from the ingredient list of say a Kind Bar or a box of Annie’s vegan Mac and Cheez.  It’s seems next to impossible to know what is really inside a bottle of sunscreen—filled with so many mutli-syllable chemical sounding ingredients—unless you have done some research and are fairly knowledgeable.  

But the same can be said when shopping for most conventional homes–especially if they are new or pre-construction—which don’t even come with an “ingredient list” one can read.  Who knows what chemicals are inside, behind the walls, under the floors?   We walk into a pretty showroom, handed a slick marketing brochure, shown virtual floor plans, offered samples of the final finishes, maybe even tour a model home, and yet are we ever completely sure of what we are buying until built?  

Some homes are given a score for energy efficiency (called a HERS rating), but no comparable score for health exists.  Some homes’ air quality is scored according to EPA’s Indoor airPLUS certification standards, but the program is relatively new and only voluntary.  And we know that though a few products have been banned from home construction—lead and asbestos comes to mind—there are literally thousands that have never been evaluated for prolonged human exposure safety.

By comparison, within the past year, the European Commission has published preliminary opinions on the safety of three organic UV filters called oxybenzone, homosalate, and octocrylene..  It found that the levels of two of them were not safe in the amounts at which they are currently used, and proposed a concentration limit of 2.2 percent for oxybenzone and 1.4 percent for homosalate. 

Similariy #3:  Both come with a Score that is Supposed to Be an Automatic Indicator of What You are Getting for your Money.

In the Sunscreen industry, the SPF or Sun Protection Factor is there so consumers can at a glance more easily compare efficacy of different sunscreen brands—the bigger the number, the more minutes one can stay in the sun protected .  But in my last post I mentioned that SPFs can also lure consumers into a false sense of safety that realistically keeps consumers longer in the sun than would have otherwise occurred.  

Moreover, the EWG reports that SPF scores are subjective based on human observations and testing methods.  One Proctor & Gamble study in particular highlights the potential for variability in SPF.  When P & G tested a competitor’s SPF 100 product at five different labs, the results varied from SPF 37 to SPF 75.  A 1.7% difference in light transmission yielded an SPF measurement of 37 instead of 100.

In the Homebuilding industry, HERS (Home Energy Rating System) is voluntarily used to score homes from 0 to 150.  A score of 100 means that the home being rated is average in energy efficiency, compared to other newly built homes.  A score of 0 means it is a Net Zero Energy home that uses no net energy.  And a score of 150 means the home being scored is 50% less efficient than a standard new home.

Hey, numbers in both cases are helpful but neither tells the whole story and in fact, really only tell a small part of the story.  In both cases, more information is required and needs to be conveyed with greater precision for consumers to make better informed choices.

I’ll leave you with this one nutrition tip direct from my dermatologist that I often pass along to my natural food customers.  She says that Niamidicide taken in 500 mg doses twice a day can prevent skin cancers when obviously other common sense precautions are taken.  It is part of my personal summer regiment of vitamins.

The Four Types of “Bad” EMFs

Back on May 20 I ended a post entitled “Man-made Electromagnetic Fields” with a promise that I would write a follow-up post on the 4 types of man-made electromagnetic fields (EMFs) most frequently associated with detrimental health effects in humans.  Here is that post.

There are 4 types of EMFs most associated with detrimental health effects.  They can all be measured by a Building Biologist using special meters, who will also use the Building Biology Evaluation Guidelines For Sleeping Areas for each to tell you if their measurements are not anomalous, slightly anomalous, severely anomalous, or extremely anomalous.   

These Guidelines are based on the experience and knowledge of the building biology community and focus on what is typically achievable rather than what is most optimal.  Moreover, the Guidelines are written for sleeping areas because that is the time of day the body regenerates, repairs and detoxifies, and is the most crucial time to reduce EMF exposures.

According to the Guidelines, fields found with ‘No Anomaly’ provide the highest degree of precaution and reflect either an unexposed natural condition or the common and nearly inevitable background levels of our modern living environment. 

Fields found with a ‘Slight Anomaly’ suggest that remediation should be carried out whenever possible as a precaution, especially with regards to those who are extra sensitive or already ill.

Fields found with a ‘Severe Anomaly’ are not acceptable to Building Biologists and call for remediation action.  Scientific studies and numerous case studies indicate biological effects and health problems within this reference range.

And finally, any field measured as an ‘Extreme Anomaly’ calls for immediate and rigorous action to reduce exposure.  Within this category, field measurements are so severe that international guidelines and recommendations for public and occupational exposures may be reached or even exceeded.

So with that said, the first type of EMF consistently found to cause biological effects in humans is Electric Fields (EFs).   Common sources of EFs are household wiring, power strips, ungrounded electronics, chargers or transformers, and lamps & lighting.  All of the AC electric wires in the walls of our homes are consistently emitting electric fields that expose occupants to electric fields proportional to the line voltage of the electric wire.  

In Chicago we are lucky—for fire safety, code specifies that all electric wiring must be in metal conduit, shielding occupants from these fields.   But it’s easy to forget that almost all extension cords or appliance cords are unshielded and therefore a source of EFs regardless of whether the switch, or light, or appliance at the end of the cord is turned on or off.  Sorry, the cords to those table lamps on each side of your bed are constantly emitting EMFs up to six to eight feet away unless they are wired with a shielded cord.  Morale of the story: one way to live a healthier life is to keep all wires away from your bed or have them shielded.

The second kind of EMF to be concerned about is Magnetic Fields (MFs).  Common sources of MFs around the home are High Voltage Power Lines, your Circuit Breaker Panel, Faulty Home Wiring, Transformers or Chargers for Cell Phones/ Laptops/ Home Electronics, and point sources like electric motors used to run your AC or Furnace or Electric Meters.    

Back in high school and college Physics classes, I learned that every AC electric current produces by definition alternating magnetic fields.  These fields emanate perpendicular to current flow and drop off quickly with distance, though still potentially harmful to health if within 6-8 feet.  Magnetic fields permeate most materials unhindered—including the human body—which is why they are difficult to contain and why they are implicated in numerous human biological effects ranging from hormonal imbalances to various cancers.  Only special metal alloys that are very magnetically conductive will shield. 

The third type of EMF linked to adverse health effects is Radio Frequency Fields (RF).  Examples of RF Radiation around the home are Cordless Phones, Baby Monitors, Smart Meters, Mobile Phones (3G/4G/5G), Microwave Oven, Bluetooth Devices, and WiFi.  It is this category of EMFs that has exploded in the past ten years and has been linked to adverse health effects in hundreds, if not thousands of research studies.

One final EMF to be concerned about—and I think the most underappreciated and pernicious—is something colloquially called ‘Dirty Electricity’ (DE).  Common household sources of DE are CFL and LED light bulbs, Inverters for Solar Panels, Variable Speed motors typically used to power HVAC equipment, any Smart appliance, Smart Meters, Gaming Devices, Dimmer Switches, and any battery-powered Direct Current device that has a switch mode power supply.

Dirty Electricity is important enough and complex enough to merit multiple posts so we won’t dwell on it here but will cover much more thoroughly soon.  The authority on this topic is Dr. Samuel Milham, whose book Dirty Electricity, Electrification and the Diseases of Civilization is fascinating, eye-opening, and a must-read.  Here is a link to a fairly recent interview of Dr. Milham by Dr. Joseph Mercola.

That’s right. Starting yesterday, Amazon began using Ring, Alexa and Echo products to take part of your bandwidth and make it available to your neighbors. And they started to do so without your consent and probably without your knowledge. This feature is called “Amazon Sidewalk”, and among other things, Amazon Sidewalk will:

Take a chunk of your bandwidth and give it to others.

Increase toxic electrosmog both indoors and outdoors.

Make our sidewalks more radio frequency polluted so for those already electrically sensitive, even a walk in their own neighborhoods could make them sick;

Increase harm to our pollinators and plants; and

Use your home’s energy to power others’ internet access.

With this new technology comes privacy concerns that could be particularly vexing. Consider the wealth of intimate details Amazon devices are [already] privy to. They see who knocks on our doors, and in some homes they peer into our living rooms. They hear the conversations we’re having with friends and family. They control locks and other security systems in our home.

Extending the reach of all this encrypted data to the sidewalk and living rooms of neighbors requires a level of confidence that’s not warranted for a technology that has never seen widespread testing. Last, let’s not forget who’s providing this new way for everyone to share and share alike. As independent privacy researcher Ashkan Soltani puts it: In addition to capturing everyone’s shopping habits (from amazon.com) and their internet activity (as AWS is one of the most dominant web hosting services)… now they are also effectively becoming a global ISP with a flick of a switch, all without even having to lay a single foot of fiber.

Turning Amazon Sidewalk OFF

Amazon’s decision to make Sidewalk an opt-out service rather than an opt-in one is also telling. The company knows the only chance of the service gaining critical mass is to turn it on by default, so that’s what it’s doing.  Luckily, there is an easy way to opt out, by following these instructions:

1.  Open the Alexa app

2.  Open “More” and select “Settings”

3.  Select “Account Settings”

4.  Select “Amazon Sidewalk” and

5.   Turn Amazon Sidewalk “Off”

Protect Your Health & Privacy, Save Energy

I believe this is a harbinger of things to come, with more and more Big Tech companies trying to secretly shove wireless apps down our throats while trying to impinge on our personal data and privacy.  And of course in so doing, ever increasing our exposure to wireless gadgets that add to the electronic smog within our homes creating a less healthy home.

In short, I urge you to consider turning off this feature today if you want to better protect your Health, better protect your Privacy, and save Energy.

With all due apologies to the Environmental Health Trust (EHT), I am going to cut and paste the guts of an email I was tardy in opening and I just finished reading because it is time-sensitive and important, me thinks, for everyone to see. That email references EHT’s request to register and join them for a free showing of a movie entitled Overload: America’s Toxic Love Story. When you register, EHT will send you a streaming link on June 23 that you can use at your convenience any time between tomorrow and June 30, 2021 to watch this movie for free. You can register here

What exactly is “Overload”? Quoting from the EHT email I mention above:

Before starting a family, Soozie Eastman, daughter of an industrial chemical distributor, embarks on a journey to find out the levels of toxins in her body and discover if there is anything she or anyone else can do to change them. Soozie has just learned that hundreds of synthetic toxins are now found in every baby born in America and the government and chemical corporations are doing little to protect citizens and consumers.

With guidance from world-renowned physicians and environmental leaders, interviews with scientists and politicians, and stories of everyday Americans, Soozie uncovers how we got to be so overloaded with chemicals and explores whether there is anything we can do to take control of our exposure.

Just as she feared, extensive blood testing reveals alarming levels of chemicals such as organophosphates and PBDEs in her body, so she undertakes a rigorous detox regimen of dietary changes, exercise, and informed product choices designed to manage and minimize her toxic body burden. But can she hit the reset button or is it too late? Register to watch this film at your convenience between June 23-30, 2021, and be amazed by what you learn! Then join us on June 30, 2021, at 7:00 p.m. MT for a discussion with the film’s director Soozie Eastman

A repost of my last post which got screwed up some how….below is this post in its original form and words:

That’s right. Starting yesterday, Amazon began using Ring, Alexa and Echo products to take part of your bandwidth and make it available to your neighbors. And they started to do so without your consent and probably without your knowledge. This feature is called “Amazon Sidewalk”, and among other things, Amazon Sidewalk will:

• Take a chunk of your bandwidth and give it to others;
• Use your home’s energy to power other’s internet access;;
• Like almost anything wireless—and like what we have introduced in previous posts and will cover in much greater detail in future posts—will emit wireless radiation that can bring potential health risks to you, your loved ones, your pets and your neighbors;
• Increase the electromagnetic fields (EMFs)—or better said, increase ourelectromagnetic pollution or electromagnetic smog — both inside and even up to a half mile outside of your home; 
• For those who are already electrically-sensitive, force some of those people to become shut-ins with no safe public place to go–even a walk in their own neighborhood could make them sick; 
• Expose our children to even more EMFs as they walk down their own sidewalk or play outdoors; and
• Give off radio-frequency radiation which some believe harms our pollinators and plants.

Here’s a summary of what Amazon Sidewalk does and some of the potential complications beyond any health-related concerns many indeed have about this latest wireless technology. Privacy concerns could be particularly vexing.  Quoting from the article:

Consider the wealth of intimate details Amazon devices are [already] privy to. They see who knocks on our doors, and in some homes they peer into our living rooms. They hear the conversations we’re having with friends and family. They control locks and other security systems in our home.

Extending the reach of all this encrypted data to the sidewalk and living rooms of neighbors requires a level of confidence that’s not warranted for a technology that has never seen widespread testing.

Last, let’s not forget who’s providing this new way for everyone to share and share alike. As independent privacy researcher Ashkan Soltani puts it:  “In addition to capturing everyone’s shopping habits (from amazon.com) and their internet activity (as AWS is one of the most dominant web hosting services)… now they are also effectively becoming a global ISP with a flick of a switch, all without even having to lay a single foot of fiber.”

Turning Amazon Sidewalk OFF

Amazon’s decision to make Sidewalk an opt-out service rather than an opt-in one is also telling. The company knows the only chance of the service gaining critical mass is to turn it on by default, so that’s what it’s doing.  Luckily, there is an easy way to opt out, by following these instructions:

1.  Open the Alexa app

2.  Open “More” and select “Settings”

3.  Select “Account Settings”

4.  Select “Amazon Sidewalk” and

5.   Turn Amazon Sidewalk “Off”

Protect Your Health & Privacy, Save Energy

I believe this is a harbinger of things to come, with more and more Big Tech companies trying to secretly shove wireless apps down our throats while trying to impinge on our personal data and privacy.  And of course in so doing, ever increasing our exposure to wireless gadgets that add to the electronic smog within our homes creating a less healthy home.

In short, I urge you to consider turning off this feature today if you want to better protect your Health, better protect your Privacy, and save Energy.