#88 Don't Paint Your Bedroom With Shielding Paint, Until You've Considered the Consequences

Can improper EMF shielding paint application lead to more harm than good? Join me, Keith Cutter, on this eye-opening episode of the EMF Remedy Podcast as we tackle the often misunderstood world of EMF shielding. With over 39 years of personal and professional experience, I’ll guide you through the critical differences between partial and full shielding, and why careful planning and expert consultation are essential. Learn how shielding paint can block RF radiation effectively but also how it can inadvertently create hotspots if not applied correctly. We’ll explore the common pitfalls and long-term ramifications of improper EMF shielding that could cost you time, money, and peace of mind.

On the flip side, discover the flexibility of adjustable RF shielding solutions and why they might be the better option for your home. From RF shielding fabrics to decorative drapes and bed canopies, I’ll share practical examples that offer both protection and adaptability. Continuous testing and professional advice are key to navigating new RF sources and ensuring your shielding remains effective. Tune in to understand why alterable shielding solutions could be a superior long-term strategy compared to permanent options. We wrap up this episode by reinforcing the mission of the EMF Remedy Podcast: to be your trusted resource for creating a healthier EMF environment in your home.

Here's a paper on this topic.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

please don't paint the walls of your bedroom black with shielding paint until or unless you really understand all the ramifications, and don't let fly-by-night EMF consultants do that either without fully considering what the long-term ramifications are. You can wreck the EMF performance of your home permanently or create a fabulously expensive problem that you might not be able to address, problem that you might not be able to address. Be careful before using permanent shielding solutions like shielding paint. Coming up. Hi, this is Keith Cutter with EMF Remedycom, host of the EMF Remedy podcast the most comprehensive and practical EMF education available anywhere. Drawing from my 39 years of personal experience surviving electromagnetic poisoning and my ongoing work as an independent EMF consultant, I offer pre-sale real estate assessment, post-sale home assessment and remediation, new home design and one-on-one coaching via email, phone or Zoom. Whether you're looking to take a precautionary approach to EMF exposure, urgently need to reduce your exposure levels or just need a little help getting started, I can help. Get in touch with me through the contact form on the emfremedycom website. Let's get started.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Today we're going to talk about a critically important topic and I continue to see people making the same mistake over and over again, a mistake that can be really, really costly to try to undo and can have long-term ramifications that people might not be aware of. So we're talking about don't paint your bedroom with shielding paint until you've carefully considered the ramifications. Creating a sleep sanctuary free from external RF or radio frequency radiation sources is a goal many people strive for, such as applying shielding paint can lead to potential devastating unforeseen complications and long-term consequences. Improper planning and implementation can create a situation that is impossible to fix due to prohibitive costs or technical challenges. This discussion is talking about the importance of careful planning and expert consultation before using shielding paint or any other form of unalterable shielding in your home. This is not a how-to guide, because each situation is unique and it should involve expert help. Shielding paint, make no mistake, is a beautiful product, but only when it's applied after careful consideration. So we're going to focus solely on the implications of RF shielding, although, of course, the shielding paint can be used for electric fields as well, and we're not going to address the electric field considerations today. So that requires a different but equally important attention.

Speaker 1: 4:54

The RF radiation that powers all wireless technologies, including so-called smartphones, wi-fi and Bluetooth devices, baby monitors, portable phones and more, travels right through common building materials. So imagine in front of you there's a floor plan of a house, okay, and I'm going to talk about right and left and up and down. Okay, I guess I could talk about north, south, east and west. But anyway, imagine yourself looking at the floor plan of your house and you have a single RF radiation source emanating from the right-hand side of the house. It's going to blow right through the common building materials in your home, right through virtually undiminished and it's going to radiate everything in its path.

Speaker 1: 6:07

Once one realizes RF radiation has never been shown to be without harm, a natural response is to create well, sorry, a natural response is to cease the use of all wireless tech within the home and then prevent the RF radiation from outside the home from entering, from outside the home from entering. Shielding is most desirable and arguably less expensive in the context of a new home construction but can sometimes be accomplished with an existing home. I'll just mention parenthetically in all of my experience, you can't get half the shielding experience in an existing home by retrofitting it that you could get from a new home in planning ahead.

Speaker 1: 6:56

So I want to talk about the difference between partial shielding and full shielding and full shielding. One of the most critical considerations when using shielding paint is understanding the difference between partial and full shielding. By the way, I've mentioned shielding paint several times. If you guys aren't already familiar with that, it's black paint. It's black paint. It's filled with graphite, which is both conductive and it not only reflects radiofrequency radiation but it absorbs more than some other types of shielding. So when I talk about shielding paint, it's this goopy black stuff. You paint on the wall and then you paint whatever color over that you like the wall and then you paint whatever color over that you like. So the bedroom will appear normal and nobody will be the wiser that there is shielding paint underneath. All right, so we're talking about partial versus full shielding. So full shielding aims to form a continuous shield around the entire perimeter of the home which, while not always feasible on a retrofit, is generally the best option for avoiding the inadvertent creation of RF hotspots within the home. Partial shielding can create areas with intensified RF exposure by reflecting RF radiation off shielded surfaces and concentrating it in unshielded areas. The choice between partial and full shielding must be carefully modeled to avoid exacerbating the problem, with consideration given to potential new RF sources from different angles. In the future, it is essential to involve the professional in this discussion, informing them about potential. Well, you need to know as a client that there are potential trade-offs and potential need to understand the implication of the various different options. I see this mistake being made by homeowners and other professionals alike, by the way. So the pitfalls of shielding paint used by novices. In my experience as an independent EMF consultant, I have seen where the use of shielding paint by inexperienced individuals has led to permanent alterations in the home's electromagnetic environment, concentrating RF radiation in other high-use areas such as a nursery or a child's bedroom or a living room, such as a nursery or a child's bedroom or a living room. These changes might require tens of thousands of dollars to rectify and, if let in place, can create an increasingly unnatural environment in the rest of the house outside of the sleep sanctuary.

Speaker 1: 10:15

So what I'm saying is people will sometimes get the idea that you know the outside world is horrible. I'm going to shield my bedroom. Could be a great plan, could be not very wise, depending on how you implement it. Be not very wise depending on how you implement it. Because if you paint all the walls of your bedroom with shielding paint and the radiation is coming from outside the house when it strikes the walls of your bedroom, of course it's not going to go into the bedroom, which is what you want. But a portion of that want, but a portion of that radiation, a considerable portion of that radiation, will bounce back in the direction that the RF radiation came from. You hear what I'm saying? So if the RF radiation is coming from right to left and it travels through the living room and then strikes the outer wall of your bedroom that you're trying to protect, guess what? It's going to go right back through the living room that it just came from. So you're not going to get quite a double dose, but nearly so. You're not going to get quite a double dose, but nearly so. You will have protected your bedroom in this example at the expense of a now permanent increase in the radiation exposure in the living room.

Speaker 1: 11:50

One important observation about the situation I just mentioned is that you can only detect an increase in RF radiation intensity in the living room then by taking careful readings with an appropriate meter and we've talked about what an appropriate meter is before and then immediately after applying the shielding paint and then comparing the two. Beyond that point, you will no longer be able to determine how much the partial shielding contributes to increased RF intensity throughout the rest of the house, since you will never again never again be able to compare readings in the living room with and without the partial shielding in place. This is important if we assume increased RF sources surrounding the house over time. So what I'm talking about is what happens if you know, in my example there was a single source of RF radiation, which is not true of almost anybody anymore, but it used to, maybe not too long ago, maybe be one source from a cell phone a long ways away, in this example, traveling from the right to the left. But what happens if it's coming from the top, from the bottom and from the left in the future? What will that do to places outside the one room that you're trying to shield?

Speaker 1: 13:30

Once applied, shielding paint cannot be painted over to remove its reflective properties. Sometimes people will think all they need to do is paint over it, but it's going to be shielding paint, no matter how many different colors you put on top of it. Do you understand the only way to eliminate these properties is by are you ready for this? Removing the interior finishes. Interior finishes what is that? Like the drywall Right, taking all the drywall off the walls, or tongue and groove or whatever plaster that you've got going in your home. You got to remove what's covering the walls and, believe me, that is an invasive, messy, disruptive and expensive process. If you have painted the ceiling of the room and you need to undo that, you're going to have to take the wall covering off the ceiling. And if there's insulation above there, boy, that's going to be a memorable project for you. I'll just put it that way.

Speaker 1: 14:43

So suppose the substantial funds required for such an extensive removal or remodel are unavailable. In that case, you may have to live in an RF compromised environment of your own creation for as long as you and the future owners of the home after you reside in the home. Can you imagine that you get it? You know, sort of on a whim, I'm going to get a couple of gallons of the shielding paint. I slop it all over my bedroom walls. I get in. I'm happy because I have lower radiofrequency radiation in my bedroom, but you've just increased it for your baby or your children, or in your office or living room or another important area of the home forever as long as that house stands Okay. So I think you're getting the picture now.

Speaker 1: 15:44

So let's talk about unalterable versus alterable. Well, now let's talk about a fully shielded home first. A fully shielded home first. Now you can solve this problem by shielding the entire perimeter of the home. Again, much better done as you're building the home and you probably then wouldn't use the shielding paint You're not going to get for technical reasons. You're not going to get, for technical reasons you're not going to get the same results after the home has been built. But you can do it. You can put it on the exterior walls of the home. You want to understand what's going to happen to the electric fields when that's done. But anyway, if you have the entire perimeter of the home shielded, you're not going to have the same problem that I was just talking about, because no radiation is going to be streaming through the home and bouncing off a shielded wall. All the radiation will be deflected away from the home. So fully shielding the home has a lot of merit over partial shielding. However, many houses cannot be fully shielded or can only be done so during the course of instruction Excuse me. Instruction, wow, construction, all right. So let's talk about alterable versus unalterable shielding. Another key consideration is the distinction between unalterable and alterable shielding. What I'm talking about is shielding that can be changed, or shielding that really can't be changed or added to. Unalterable shielding, such as shielding paint, offers a long-term solution but is irreversible once it's applied. As mentioned above, alterable shielding, on the other hand, allows for flexibility and adjustment. Homeowners can continuously test and modify their shielding solutions using materials like RF shielding fabric. For example, a client may shield a wall in a room with floor-to-ceiling RF shielding fabric installed as a decorative drape. In the future, it will be easy to open and close the drape. Taking readings in other parts of the house to ensure this. One element of the overall RF shielding strategy isn't inadvertently increasing RF radiation in essential areas of the home. So the virtue of alterable shielding not only provides a practical approach to modeling potential solutions before committing to unalterable measures, but it may also be the superior long-term solution. But it may also be the superior long-term solution. So what I'm saying is I mean I use these RF shielding panels and tack them up on the wall right in certain cases, taking readings before I do so and then after I do so, to make sure the effect is what I wanted it to be and I'm not concentrating inadvertently RF energy elsewhere. And then I need to take into account the feasibility of new sources of RF emerging and I always make sure that the client understands what long-term implications are. So yeah, like I say, a client can shield a wall in a room floor-to-ceiling RF shielding fabric installed as a decorative drape. In the future it'll be easy to open and close the drape. They could take readings in other parts of the house to ensure that that one element of the overall RF shielding strategy isn't inadvertently increasing RF radiation in essential areas of the home.

Speaker 1: 20:26

Imagine you put this countermeasure in place. 10 years goes by. There's three new cell phone towers in your local area. It's getting really hot in your living room, and by hot I mean radio frequency radiation exposure. If you had painted that wall, you would have no idea why or whether the shielding the partial shielding you implemented contributed to that. If you've done it with one of these drapes, you just open it up and you can measure before and after and you'll learn right away what's going on.

Speaker 1: 21:03

All right, so alterable shielding not only provides a practical approach to modeling potential solutions before committing to unalterable measures, but it may also be the superior long-term solution if someone is satisfied with the aesthetics and by the way you can get this in some, uh you know, gold, lame looking fabric or different sort of metallic looking things or sort of a gauzy look.

Speaker 1: 21:36

That's what we have on our home here for the curtains. It just looks like a cotton muslin. So if the person is satisfied with the aesthetics, the previous example of using floor-to-ceiling shielding fabric as a decorative drape I think I've said grape twice here might be the best long-term solution for the reasons that I've discussed Now. Additionally, a bed canopy, you know I mean why shield the bedroom? How much time do you really spend in the bedroom other than in the bed, right? So a bed canopy may be the superior way to go about it, because a bed canopy made of RF shielding offers the same qualities as alterable shielding. You can open the sides and, if you want to, you can take and you can pile up the material above the bed and it'll be suspended there to assess the effects of the bed canopy's shielding on other areas outside the home. You can even remove the bed canopy in minutes for a more careful assessment, all right, so I've alluded to this already but, future RF sources and partial shielding, one of the complications of

Speaker 1: 23:00

using partial shielding, as I've already alluded to, is a potential for future RF sources coming from different directions. As new technologies and infrastructures are introduced, the RF landscape may change, rendering your initial shielding efforts either less than effective or potentially counterproductive. As we mentioned, once unalterable shielding is in place, it becomes challenging to discern the origins of new RF issues and determine how much the partial shielding contributes to them. If we consider trends such as the Internet of Things and small cell deployment, that would indicate that there will likely be more RF sources from various directions, various points of the compass and with higher intensities. Gone are the days of a lone cell tower in the distance as the only significant RF radiation source affecting our homes homes All right.

Speaker 1: 24:12

So, in conclusion, before committing to using shielding paint or any other form of unalterable shielding in your bedroom or any part of your home, it's crucial to seek expert help. A trusted EMF consultant can guide you through the process, ensuring that you make informed decisions and avoid costly mistakes. Unfortunately, there are fly-by-night EMF consultants who may not fully consider the principles that we've outlined in this talk. So remember the goal is to create a safe and comfortable living environment, which requires careful consideration in planning, so I hope that this has been a help. I would appreciate prayers for our efforts at EMF Remedy that our activities might be a blessing to many. Keith Cutter emfremedycom.

Speaker 2: 25:25

See you next time. The EMF Remedy Podcast is a project of EMF Remedyedy LLC. We'd like to be your trusted guide for achieving a better EMF environment in your home. The contents on this podcast are provided for informational purposes only and are not intended to substitute for the advice provided by your doctor or other healthcare professional. It is not intended to be, nor does it constitute, healthcare or medical advice. Opinions of guests on this podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the EMF Remedy podcast.