Electrosensitivity - Can Earth-Sheltered and/or Earthen-Walled Structures Help Us?

Pearl Sutton wrote:... If the foil is reaching a ground, it might be helping. Concrete floor might be enough ground for thin foil.
Check your phone in there!

The phone bars are sooo... inconsistent around here, it's difficult to tell, however, it seems I get more bars in the basement than in the office by the WiFi - so does WiFi decrease your cell phone bars?

Alex Ronan wrote:Anyone try making curtains or wall/floor coverings out of faraday cloth? https://amzn.to/3CnJruk

That's more expensive than I can afford. I drool at it sometimes
I've heard it works well

Jay Angler wrote:

Pearl Sutton wrote:... If the foil is reaching a ground, it might be helping. Concrete floor might be enough ground for thin foil.
Check your phone in there!

The phone bars are sooo... inconsistent around here, it's difficult to tell, however, it seems I get more bars in the basement than in the office by the WiFi - so does WiFi decrease your cell phone bars?

Not usually ,no.
Other factors going on, no guess what....
If there's good bars in the basement, the foil bubble wrap stuff isn't working.  

Pearl Sutton wrote:I'm still trashed from the CME and some other factors, not thinking easily today. But thinking about what Kate said about clay paint makes me wonder why sheetrock doesn't block much EMF, a small amount, but not much. Wondering about cement board. Thinking how I can test it. I'm going to the city tomorrow, I'll take my RF meter to a lumberyard, see if I can test it somehow.

A lot of us are dealing with building codes, can't get away with a lot of earth sheltering. That's why I keep looking at stuff codes won't argue with.

The rooms in my house that have cement sheeting walls don't get phone reception, so there might be something to it. Our phone signal is not great, and the strongest signal is on the eastern side of the house, the cement wall rooms are on the west, so it could just be because of that.

Hello again, Pearl.

You said:

"I'm still trashed from the CME and some other factors, not thinking easily today."

The solar dimension to this is re-shaping my thinking somewhat...

SO.  Right out of the stalls, let's steal the doubters' thunder. The analytical 'me' sees a possibly-useful distinction between sensitivity to solar flares and CMEs.

If you are feeling solar flares shortly after they occur, this suggests to me that you may be sensitive to solar RF which has passed through the 'radio window'. Radio, below about 9MHz would mostly be reflected back into space. Above 100GHz, radio waves are absorbed by atmospheric gases like water vapor and CO₂. That leaves the 9MHz to 100GHz range - the band of frequencies which can pass the Earth's atmosphere and reach the surface in appreciable quantities.

CMEs (which travel at sub-light velocities) arrive at Earth after solar outbursts (typically - so they sayyy - in 1-3 days). If your symptoms correlate with the arrival of CMEs, it seems more likely that they are being triggered by the interaction of solar plasma with the Earth's magnetosphere. That humans might have vestigial magnetoreception - which in your case has become consciously accessible - isn't as daffy as it may seem -- though the experience probably shouldn't be painful! (The other possibility that comes to mind is that you may be sensitive to GICs - or their effects on our electrical systems.)

There's a lot to think about here...

Thanks again for your input.

None of this sounds fun, btw!! =[~

Just out of curiosity, Pearl - have you ever worn a piece of genuine shungite against your skin?

Donner: I feel the flares. I feel the CMEs. I feel the cell towers. I feel the 5 g. ALL of the above.

I don't have shungite, I have a different type of blocker I wear. It DOES help, but not enough. When i got it the noise went down from so loud I couldn't pick it apart to quieter enough that I could start to understand what was doing what parts. Example: hospitals used to just scream horribly, now I can say there are 5 of 6 flavors of energy coming off each one, that's why they hurt so much, they throw multiple layers. 5g screams, but only in one tone. Before I got this, I could only say "It screams" now I can differentiate it more. Like wearing foam earplugs in a noisy disco, it takes the noise down only a small amount, and you still have the flashing lights and people bumping into you.

I have some theories why I'm so hypersensitive, but nothing I have energy to attempt to explain, has to do with my entire (complex and strange) medical history.

Mostly I think it's a normal sense, that it's not so much I am aware of it, as that most people are not. Lack of that awareness might be worse, in the long run, than being blasted by it. The fact that there is enough EMF pullution to blast this loud, and there are good reasons to believe it causes body damage in people whether they are aware of it or not, not knowing when you are being affected might be worse than knowing. Carbon monoxide kills because it's invisible and odor free. If you don't KNOW you are being poisoned, that keeps you from doing anything to mitigate it.

And to tie all this back to the initial question that started this thread, before I derailed it, I definitely think earth sheltered homes  would be best.
The logistics of that in many ways are problematic, but it WOULD be best.

I'm trying to hack through logistics to figure out what the best I can realistically do is.

The promised data!
I DID end up at Home Depot!!   (was 50/50 whether Home Depot or Lowes was the one I was closest to) Past 5:00 PM so it was pretty well deserted in the building supplies area, no one even noticed I was wandering the aisles and messing with things.

Methodology: 1/4 inch thick board was slid diagonally off the stack about so about 18 inches were overhanging. I took a reading on the meter straight up toward the florescent lights were, then moved the meter still pointing up under the overhang and read it again. The meter was fluctuating on all readings, I notated average low and high numbers on the RF tab of my meter.

I did both Durock and HardieBacker Board the same way.

Durock:  First reading:  28-62      Second reading (under it): 12-32
HardieBacker Board: First reading 15-40   Second reading (under it):  4-10

So both did block a noticeable amount, HardieBacker board (which is heavier and smoother than Durock but not labeled) is smoother and would be a good close to finished surface, whereas Durock is a heavily textured board to adhere tile to well, it would require a surface finish if it was to be visible and it mattered. I have worked with Durock before, it's fairly well behaved except for the weight. Uncertain about HardieBacker board.

At Home Depot the 3x5 x .25 inch boards of each are priced at
Durock:   $11.56
HardieBacker: $12.85

Things for me to think about.....

Well done, Pearl! This could be why cell reception is so miserable inside my house...cement weatherboard cladding (and it's almost certainly Hardieboard, since that is the dominant brand here and quite possibly the only game in town thirty years ago).

Alex Ronan wrote:Anyone try making curtains or wall/floor coverings out of faraday cloth? https://amzn.to/3CnJruk

The EMF sensitive person that I know says that faraday fabric only blocks EMFs when it is completely sealed, so he wouldn’t think this would work well for curtains, as the EMFs would sneak in through the gaps. He’s also bought a couple of different batches of faraday fabric from Amazon and found that the quality varies - the first batch worked fine as sealed bags, but the second lot was useless. Ready-made faraday bags seem to vary in quality too, one of his bags blocks things well, but other ones aren’t as good.

From a construction point of view, durock gets scored and snapped just like drywall, but you used a special carbide knife. You can use a regular utility knife, but the blade only lasts a cut or two. Hardie can be cut with a circular saw, they make special blades ($50ish) but last much longer and cut much cleaner than a regular carbide blade. WEAR A DUST MASK.

I used 1/2 Inch Hardie as a direct replacement for drywall behind my wood stove in my old house.  Taped and mudded it to the drywall outside the “clearance to combustible” area. It took an extra coat of paint to get the texture to match but otherwise finished the same as drywall.

https://icbe-emf.org/activities/electrohypersensitivity/ yes, indeed there is a huge problem. I'm one of the people that is severely affected it creates a neurological condition for me epilepsy form as as long as a number of other problems it's very real and the situation is far greater than anyone would like to know because it affects everyone just some more than others, but we are the canaries in the coal mine. It would be a good idea if people started listening to what we're having to say and what our experiences are.
From my I call it superpowers have just found a hidden transmitter inside a lithium battery that the company denies has any knowledge. The purpose of this transmitter one of the obvious purposes at least is to remotely deactivate and drain our batteries rendering them useless. I've written an article if you would like to read somewhere in energy.

Donner MacRae wrote:This thread is one I've wanted to post for some time.

Maybe it goes without saying that until they have a family member or close friend who is electrosensitive (or discover that they themselves are electrosensitive), many people will not take this subject seriously.

All right. 👍

This thread is for those who are already seeking a solution.


Part 1: Peer-Reviewed Evidence Of Adverse Bio-Effects

https://bioinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/BioInitiativeReport-RF-Color-Charts.pdf

Natural shield in with soil or rock seems to be the way forward I'm also extremely electrosensitive my symptoms are among others neurological disruption, autonomic dysfunction epilepsy. im so disabled after 20 odd years I still haven't found somewhere healthy to live I kind of need some help to get myself in a good situation.

The trouble is with shield in method it's very expensive. One of the problems is you block yourself from the Schumann residence which we need to interact with. not interacting with a human residence creates ill health so reasonable soil, earth absorption is the way to go low frequencies such as the Schumann residence do penetrate quite deeply as opposed to the higher frequencies.

I also considered in my mind which is all I can do right now is creating a three meter straw bale fortification around a caravan a house or whatever. create a  semi snail shell type configuration where an outer wall overlaps in a spiral formation so one can enter physically however frequencies come from a distance apart from above interact with the absorption of the carbon and straw bales.
maybe 3 m tall by 2 to 3 m thick.
what happens on decomposition I don't know, how long does it take to decompose? I wondered about insulating the the bales from moisture through some kind of membrane but at the same time it needs to have connection to the ground for Earth in the frequencies. Maybe spray in the outside with lime till you have a coating of lime. Maybe even having some kind of roof to your fortifications. all is majorly labour intensive and would cost quite a lot of money but still wouldn't cost as much money as artificial shield and that's about 30k to 50k for a house and doesn't seem to work people still get sick. I guess a cave would be ideal. I would like a cave if anyone has any ideas..

Pearl Sutton wrote:I am very electrosensitive.

From all the things I have read and learned and felt with it, yes, earth sheltering helps. Anne suggested going into a cave, I deliberately did so on a high solar activity day, and the difference in the cave was amazing, I went from high head noise and pain to zero as soon as I was underground. Coming back up assured me it wasn't a fluke as the noise and pain hit me like a wall when I came out.

My suggestion is to try different levels of dirt overhead and figure out exactly how much you need to feel your best. I have seen some people call a house "Earth sheltered" when it has 6 inches of soil on the roof. Is that enough for you? It may or may not be enough to mitigate YOUR personal issues with it. I know a cave is enough for me, but that was at least 20 feet of rock overhead, I'm not going to be able to find that easily. I'm still trying to figure out how much actually is enough for me.

I would say a rough estimate for most people would be "Do you have cell service in this structure?" If so, you probably need more shielding.

Jay linked the book The Invisible Rainbow above, I highly recommend reading it IF what you need to know is "What is going on with so many people getting sick from this?" But if you are at the stage of "I KNOW I react, and how it affects me and I'm trying to mitigate it" that book will not be any help.

A thought on Faraday cages, mentioned above: A Faraday cage is a tight enough metal mesh on all 6 sides to keep electrical noise out. Solid metal does that also. BUT the human body (and all animal bodies) get VERY sick when not in contact with the energy of the earth. My personal solution is to use metal, earth or other shielding on the top 5 sides, and make SURE the earth energy is not impeded though the bottom and any other areas I can let it in.

So putting all of this into my answer to the question "Can Earth-Sheltered and/or Earthen-Walled Structures Help Us? " I vote yes, as if it's thick enough it blocks a lot of the extraneous energy that hurts us, while facilitating the connection to the earth's energy flow.

I'm now thinking straw bale houses with cob plaster might shield EMF out?

An answer might be foil backed bubble wrap?

It is cheap, easy to get and insulates well. I have been using it on my floors. I live on a piered foundation and the floors get cold. While it has a low R-rating I found that is a VERY bad way to determine heat loss. This stuff reflects 95% of the heat back into the room, only has a thickness of 5/16 and is cheap to buy. A 4 feet by 100 foot roll is only $79. I think it even has a fire rating of an hour since it is double-foiled backed.

With it you could literally build a faraday cage out of every room of your house inexpensively. I am not sure how effective it would be, but it seems to me if seal well with reflective tape on the seams, it would do fairly well.

I do not know enough about electrical sensitivity. I wondered though as I worked in a powerhouse where we literally rearrange electrons 24/7/365 at high voltages and amps, using many transformers to go from 125 DV volts to 34,500 volts. I never noticed more migraines or anything, but never felt comfortable in the powerhouse, even in the operating room. But that also could be from noise.

I do know this; cell phone towers are so bad, and especially 5G that cell tower climbers have to carry rad detectors on them. Their harnesses include pockets just for their rad detectors and its part of tower climbing safety protocal to always wear one. Increasingly, they do night climbs now because they have to shut down the towers otherwise the EMF would fry the climbers changing the lightbulbs.

I don't know if this will be helpful but just by way of encouragement, I have definitely had this EMF sensitivity. It took me a while to figure out what it was.

I would tell my husband that my head would "buzz" uncomfortably whenever we walked past power boxes or under big power lines and I felt like I was getting shocked whenever I touched our computer monitor and keyboard and could tell by the uncomfortable shocky feeling in my fingers whether the tablet was on or off (we did an experiment with my eyes closed to test it and I could tell every time whether it was on or off). But I finally realised that grounding was what helped one day at my sewing machine.

I was sewing mesh bags to cover the fruiting branches of our fig tree trying to save them from the birds and flying foxes (it works against birds, bats just suck through the bags!) and my bare foot that was pressing the pedal was getting a burning buzzing feeling. However, each time I finished a bag I would take it outside, still barefooted, to put it on the fruit tree and as soon as I stepped on the earth the feeling would start to diminish. If I just walked around the house for the same amount of time it wouldn't change much.

So I started to make sure that in all seasons I have some direct contact with the earth each day, the longer the better, and I no longer have the same heightened sensitivity. I have made many gradual diet and lifestyle changes since so there may be other factors but simply walking barefoot has helped heaps.

Also, I started doing my weekly long runs (about 15k) barefoot the last few years on a grass cross-country course and even though I do my other runs in grounding sandals (Earth Runners), after these actual barefoot runs are definitely when I feel the best and most "grounded"(...and yes, a good long run has a relaxing effect either way but I feel differently after doing it on a path versus barefoot on grass).

I do turn off powerpoints when I can, keep my phone on airplane mode mostly, try to use speakerphone and a stand for calls, use ethernet cables mostly and we built a Faraday cage for our government-imposed smart meter.

All to say, there is hope for improvement!

Disclaimer: This is NOT directed to anyone in particular. It is just a frustrating case-study for me in trying to figure this all out...

But I have been studying up on this more and more and found a founder of this was a lot like me, an electrician who realized everything was earth-grounded in the world more and more except for humans who were being grounded less and less so. From that I thought, “I need to learn more about this”.

But now I have more questions than answers.

In figuring out the last time I was truly barefoot on bare earth prior to a month ago, was in 2017 on the Appalachian trail and had to cross a stream when it was October so I waded barefoot across it before I put what would have been wet socks and hiking boots back on. But I hike 4-7 miles every day so I thought I could incorporate grounding into my daily routine. It is cold, with ice and snow on the ground here still, but in the right places I will have lunch and be barefoot for a while. What I noticed is, that after I do, my knee joints which regularly hurt (I need knee replacement surgery) no longer hurts. I feel the strain, but no real pain.

But how can that be?

I am an electrician so I know despite what we are told, electricity does not flow like water in pipes, it conducts, and conducts in swirls and eddies as the wire gives the conductivity a path. So knowing humans are conductors and positively charged with ions, don’t we ground ourselves in the course of our day in ways we might miss?

As an electrician every time I put in an outlet and wire up the ground part of it, I am connected to ground. Or touch a steel electrical box. But that is work, what about now that I am retired, I just live my life day to day? I mean I have an old cast iron tub with metal plumbing… surely that is grounded so when I take a shower every day I am grounding myself? But what about as I hike and I grasp trees on my way by? Or kneel to scramble up rocks? Electrons move very slowly within a conductor, but the conductivity of electrons is very fast outside of it, so wouldn’t my accumulated ions be dissipated to ground instantly with each touch to ground? So any touch, not just by bare feet to ground, would do so, right?

I am not trying to be difficult on this. I am very open-minded and know how my joints feel after being barefoot in nature, there is NO QUESTION, I feel better. And I can see people having heart attacks because of built up ions, and certainly know in working in powerhouses making megawatts of electricity how I feel in stations where electromagnetic frequency is insanely high. Certain areas of the powerplant just make me feel frazzled from the EMF I am producing through stirred electrons and ultra-high amperage and voltages.

But I have so many questions.

How much time in grounding is needed?
How many milliamps and millivolts does our bodies store up before its hazardous?
Are we really being grounded in day to day life and do not realize it?
Are we especially well conductors through bare feet instead of hands and other points of contact?
Why extra time to ground? The ground wire we are required by the NEC code to connect to earth is designed to never be used it its entire life, and if it is used in an emergency, it is instant and of short duration.

Again, I am just trying to understand the how human grounding in our lives works. It is just this strange knowledge of electricity that makes me both a critic of it, and yet a proponent both. I just struggle to really understand human grounding for health. I mean in my own life it seems like it works, but why?

Steve Zoma wrote:
As an electrician every time I put in an outlet and wire up the ground part of it, I am connected to ground. Or touch a steel electrical box. But that is work, what about now that I am retired, I just live my life day to day? I mean I have an old cast iron tub with metal plumbing… surely that is grounded so when I take a shower every day I am grounding myself? But what about as I hike and I grasp trees on my way by? Or kneel to scramble up rocks? Electrons move very slowly within a conductor, but the conductivity of electrons is very fast outside of it, so wouldn’t my accumulated ions be dissipated to ground instantly with each touch to ground? So any touch, not just by bare feet to ground, would do so, right?

I am not trying to be difficult on this. I am very open-minded and know how my joints feel after being barefoot in nature, there is NO QUESTION, I feel better. And I can see people having heart attacks because of built up ions, and certainly know in working in powerhouses making megawatts of electricity how I feel in stations where electromagnetic frequency is insanely high. Certain areas of the powerplant just make me feel frazzled from the EMF I am producing through stirred electrons and ultra-high amperage and voltages.

But I have so many questions.

How much time in grounding is needed?
How many milliamps and millivolts does our bodies store up before its hazardous?
Are we really being grounded in day to day life and do not realize it?
Are we especially well conductors through bare feet instead of hands and other points of contact?
Why extra time to ground? The ground wire we are required by the NEC code to connect to earth is designed to never be used it its entire life, and if it is used in an emergency, it is instant and of short duration.

The problem here is the word "grounded."  You are using it as a technical term (GROUNDED.) The people who popularized the concept simply used that term as it's familiar to people.

You are not "GROUNDING" when you ground yourself. Going a hair metaphysical here, what you are doing is connecting the energy field of your body to the energy field of the earth. Any bare skin contact does equally well, quite a few natural fabrics allow that contact through too. What does NOT let it through is things like soles of shoes and unnatural fabrics, a lot of building construction materials etc. People didn't have to ground themselves when they lived without all those factors, with them, it helps to periodically remove obstructions to allow that connection. The easiest thing to convince someone to do as far as this goes, is to take off their shoes outside and stand on the ground (on the surface of the earth, not on a parking lot or standing on a balcony.)

This is where your confusion is coming from. Instead of thinking of it as electrical grounding, think about it as just contact between your body and the ground. And yes, it has lots of great benefits, when the way we live is not natural to the human body, we react badly. Being in contact with the ground without unnatural interference helps a LOT.  

:D

Pearl Sutton wrote:
The problem here is the word "grounded."  You are using it as a technical term (GROUNDED.) The people who popularized the concept simply used that term as it's familiar to people.

You are not "GROUNDING" when you ground yourself. Going a hair metaphysical here, what you are doing is connecting the energy field of your body to the energy field of the earth. Any bare skin contact does equally well, quite a few natural fabrics allow that contact through too. What does NOT let it through is things like soles of shoes and unnatural fabrics, a lot of building construction materials etc. People didn't have to ground themselves when they lived without all those factors, with them, it helps to periodically remove obstructions to allow that connection. The easiest thing to convince someone to do as far as this goes, is to take off their shoes outside and stand on the ground (on the surface of the earth, not on a parking lot or standing on a balcony.)

This is where your confusion is coming from. Instead of thinking of it as electrical grounding, think about it as just contact between your body and the ground. And yes, it has lots of great benefits, when the way we live is not natural to the human body, we react badly. Being in contact with the ground without unnatural interference helps a LOT.  

Maybe, but the videos I was reviewing were not merely using grounding as analogy but the physics of actual electricity within the body.

Like in one poignant moment of the video, a guy is standing there checking for true electrical continuity while he was barefoot on grass, and the other man was in shoes. The barefoot man had a path to ground, but the man with shoes did not.

And in another situation, it spoke of where some people had retained voltages in the body, some via millivolts and some as high as one or two volts. Again, not really surprising considering we are made up of 80% water and can have varying PH levels that could make us poor batteries, but batteries nonetheless. Or as it seems, more of a capacitor.

If the latter is the case, then wouldn't any voltage be discharged to ground immediately upon a touch of something grounded? But I digress.

In the video it was saying a leader in this area was a man named Clint who was an electrician who realized he was grounding everything, but human beings were being less grounded. So at least in what I was researching it seemed they were quantifying grounding with dissipating real electricity and why I had so many questions. But maybe that is where I went wrong. I was looking at grounding for answers when I really should be researching electricity in the human body?

Or maybe inventing something we all might need: flux capacitor shoes.

So I have been researching and it seems we are a battery and not a capcitor. In layman’s terms we use potassium and sodium to make electrical generation, about 100 watts worth with most going to power our brains and heart.

I found that interesting because I see a nutritionist and she gave me some surprising information about my diet. After reviewing it, she said, “I am surprised you do not get debilitating cramps. You have absolutely zero potassium in your diet”. That was when I said, “Oh, but I do”. I mean I used to get massive cramps every day about 4 PM in the afternoon.

After some discussion it seems potassium and sodium are some HUGE issues for me nutritionally. I just cannot seem to cram in enough potassium, and yet with sodium I am awash with it. This makes me wonder if my imbalance, which would greatly alter my electrical charge production has a lot to do with excessive millivolts/milliamps in my body. I would intuitively think that not enough potassium would give a human body low voltage, but that might not be the case. Maybe it being a need for almost perfect intakes of potassium and sodium to get the right voltage?

It just makes you wonder if not just grounding, but paying close attention to potassium and sodium intakes, making them ideal might negate the need for grounding?

Interestingly, she said I do not have an issue with sugar, in fact my sugar intact is half of what it should actually be. I thought that was strange, but admit I am not a snacker at all and honestly seldom go for surgery snacks. I don't think this plays into electrical generation, but it is interesting to not.