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If you’ve been online at all over the past year or so, you have almost certainly seen videos and advertisements where people claim that electromagnetic fields are all around us and that they are dangerous.

They are often selling products like grounding sheets or other options to help ‘ground’ your body so that the electromagnetic fields don’t cause any harm.

On the one hand, these videos are right. There are electromagnetic fields all around us. They are used in WiFi signals, cell phones, radios, TVs, and just about every other electronic device to one extent or another.

What they often don’t mention, however, is that electromagnetic fields have been around people for far longer than modern technology. In fact, the Earth itself generates a massively powerful electromagnetic field (generally called the Geomagnetic field).

Even the ocean or waves in a lake will cause a field like this, as will just about everything else in nature.

So, what exactly is an electromagnetic field?

To put it very simply, an electromagnetic field is formed because electricity and magnetism are two parts of the same system. National Geographic explains it like this:

“Every substance is made up of tiny units called atoms. Each atom has electrons, particles that carry electric charges. Spinning like tops, the electrons circle the nucleus, or core, of an atom. Their movement generates an electric current and causes each electron to act like a microscopic magnet.”

In most situations, the various spinning electrons balance each other out so that an item is not actually magnetic. For magnetic items, they are not in balance. Examples of this can be found throughout nature, and they have always been there.

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It should come as no surprise that as technology became more and more advanced, inventors used electromagnetics as part of the systems they were inventing. This is not entirely unlike the fact that humans have long used wood to build houses because wood is found all around us.

Inventors are simply using the ‘tools’ that existed in nature, but manipulating them to accomplish a goal like providing WiFi communications.

Of course, just because something occurs in nature does not mean that it cannot be harmful to humans. Also, just because there is a set amount of it found naturally does not mean that increasing exposure won’t make it dangerous.

Radiation from the sun is something most of us experience on a regular basis, and it is good and healthy. If you lay out in the sun all day, however, the sunburn will quickly teach you that it can be very dangerous.

The electromagnetic fields that are produced for WiFi and other technologies, however, are far weaker than what is found all around us and massively weaker than something like the geomagnetic field produced by the Earth.

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It is always a good thing to research the potential impacts of the tradition we experience from technology, but there is such a thing as being overly cautious.

As of today, it seems almost certain that exposure to manmade electromagnetic fields is not harmful, and the benefits we enjoy from these technologies far outweigh any potential side effects.

So, while grounding sheets and other gimmicks being advertised aren’t likely to cause any harm, they also won’t likely provide you with the massive benefits that the people selling them like to claim.

Yeah, I’m not giving up my WiFi.

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