It’s a Dirty Subject but Somebody Has to Cover It

If you read my earlier article on electricity you might recall that it isn’t as harmless as it seems. Electricity powers nearly everything that we do, quietly running through the walls of our homes and offices, yet we rarely notice it.  We don’t think much about it, except when the lights go out during an electrical storm or when nothing happens when we flip a switch—and in those moments, the sudden absence of electricity can throw our lives into chaos. 

But electricity comes with a price.  The electric fields that emanate from the wiring in our walls do impact our bodies—especially when the electricity is contaminated with noise, known as “dirty electricity”. 

Dirty electricity is the term used to describe electrical noise that contaminates standard wiring in homes, schools, and workplaces. Instead of delivering a steady 120 volts, the wiring also carries spikes and surges at higher frequencies, often in the kilohertz (kHz) to megahertz (MHz) range. As Dr. Samuel Milham explains, “Dirty electricity is a term coined by the electrical utilities to describe electrical pollution contaminating the 60 and 50 Hz electricity on the grid.” (more here and here).

What causes dirty electricity?

Almost everything we plug into a wall outlet causes dirty electricity. The hum of a refrigerator, the flicker of a dimmer switch, the spin of a motor, the constant buzz of computers and appliances — they all receive power from the grid, and they all throw noise back onto the wires. One of the worst offenders are solar panels and invertors—we will address these in this article.

Instead of a smooth, steady 60 Hz wave, your home wiring becomes cluttered with spikes, surges, and high-frequency “static.” The truth is unavoidable: if your home is connected to the grid, it has dirty electricity.  Think of dirty electricity like music on an old AM radio (remember those?): the 60 Hz sine wave is the steady “drumbeat,” of the song, but there is static in the background that makes the music hard to hear. That “static” can be compared to “dirty electricity”.

What does it look like?

Below is a picture of the dirty electricity that was found in a classroom at a high school in Minnesota in 2003. The blue line represents the 60 Hz heartbeat from the grid. The red line is the dirty electricity—jagged, sharp and noisy.

The high level of dirty electricity in this classroom was unusual. An electronics technician, David Stetzer, uncovered it while investigating why so many teachers and staff were falling ill at the school. What he found was far from ordinary: an electrical environment saturated with noise. 

Is it dangerous?  How does it reach us? 

For eons, human beings lived outdoors in nature, immersed in the native electromagnetic fields of the earth, the ionosphere, and the life-giving sun. This natural electricity is in the form of direct current (DC). But in just the past century, we’ve surrounded ourselves with alternating current (AC) carried through wires—something our bodies were never designed to adapt to. 

But electricity doesn’t just stay in the wires. The environment itself — the very room you sit in — radiates fields that interact with your body. Invisible currents pass through you whether you feel them or not. Both low and high frequencies are present, and your body becomes part of the circuit.

If this sounds weird to you, an article by Magda Havas and David Stetzer states  “… high frequency micro surges (dirty electricity), generated by, among other things, electronic devices, travel along the electrical distribution grid (wires inside buildings and between buildings) and along the ground. Conducting objects, including living organisms, in contact with the ground become part of the circuit.”

Researchers have even figured out how these low levels of electricity move through humans. According to Stetzer “various models have been designed to predict the flow of electricity through living organisms” (ref).  Researchers like Reilly (1992) have modeled this effect and found something striking: at lower frequencies, about 75% of the energy (from nearby power sources) is absorbed inside the body. At higher frequencies, it’s 100%. In other words, when dirty electricity fills a space, your body isn’t just exposed to it — it’s taking a hit from the inside out.

Why it matters. What are the health impacts?

When your body absorbs this energy, it doesn’t just disappear harmlessly. It interacts with your cells, your nervous system, and even your hormones. Researchers have linked exposure to dirty electricity with headaches, fatigue, poor sleep, difficulty concentrating, and even more serious conditions over time.

Science is still developing this, but one thing is clear: the human body is an electrical system. Our hearts beat with electrical pulses, our brains fire with electrical signals, and our cells communicate with tiny currents. When the environment floods us with chaotic, man-made “electrical noise,” it’s no surprise that the body struggles to stay in tune.

In the school where high levels of dirty electricity were measured—the Minnesota high school mentioned earlier—teachers began reporting unusual rates of illness. A teacher who previously occupied the classroom in the high school died of a brain tumor. Another teacher in the adjoining room died of leukemia.  Yes, people do die of cancer, and there is no way to prove that the room environment caused the illness but… when you begin to see unusual clusters of illness, you must ask the question: what is different about this place?

That was exactly the question Dr Samual Milham (epidemiologist and physician) asked when he was tasked to investigate why the teaching staff at another school—La Quinta Middle school in California—were being diagnosed with cancer at a far higher rate than expected. In 2005, concerns at La Quinta had reached a tipping point, and the teachers were not afraid to speak up and demand answers.

Investigators first looked for obvious cancer culprits: contaminated water, pesticide exposure, or other known cancer risks. When those turned up nothing, Milham turned his attention to the school’s electrical environment. What he found was startling. Some classrooms registered dirty electricity levels so high that the readings were literally off the scale of the Graham/Stetzer meter he used. In fact, the outlets weren’t just filled with electrical noise, they were overloaded to the point of posing a fire hazard.

But the hazard went beyond overloaded circuits. Milham was able to take his measurements and match them against the school’s cancer cases, classroom by classroom. As both a physician and an epidemiologist, he saw a clear and troubling pattern: the more time a teacher spent in a high dirty electricity classroom, the greater their risk of developing cancer (ref).

And what about the children? Teachers, of course, were at risk the most —they spent decades in the same rooms, year after year. But the students were not immune either. Numerous students were diagnosed with cancer as they reached their 20’s a few years later. According to Milham’s chilling conclusion: “It was obvious that three years at the school was enough time and exposure to cause cancer in teachers and children.” (ref)

The Health Impacts. How Does the Body React?

Researchers have shown that the body often responds to EMF exposure as if it were under stress, activating the immune system in ways similar to fighting off an infection (ref, ref, ref). Over time, this constant activation can lead to immune fatigue, leaving the body more vulnerable to chronic illness.

Dr Joseph Mercola writes: “Researchers agree that nearly all people exposed to EMFs are in fact biologically affected by them. However, only one-third develop symptoms. The difference between these individuals and the two-thirds that do not develop symptoms is that asymptomatic individuals still have the capacity to repair the cellular damage that is being incurred. That doesn’t mean [they will] remain asymptomatic forever, though. Once the accumulated damage reaches a certain level, symptoms will begin to develop. Common warning signs and symptoms include ringing in the ears, dizziness, heart palpitations, headaches, insomnia, foggy thinking and chronic fatigue”. (ref)

As a follow-up, the La Quinta Middle School made an effort to shield one room from high magnetic fields, but this was only a partial fix. The issues became too politically charged and lawyers started to step in to protect the school’s liability. 

After the La Quinta Middle School investigation, Dr. Milham continued to receive calls from teachers, office workers, and employees in factories who suspected that their environment was making them sick. Much of his career was spent attempting to measure and document the problem. In 2010, he put his years of research, case studies, and warnings into a book: Dirty Electricity: Electrification and the Diseases of Civilization. And he wrote another research article on the “diseases of civilization”. For the first time, the public could see what he had been seeing—and it was not a comforting picture.

How to Mitigate?

The good news is that the threat from dirty electricity can be measured and managed. With simple meters, anyone can detect “dirty electricity” levels in their home or workplace. If the levels are too high, plug-in filters are available to help bring those levels down, reducing the burden on the body.

There are two meters that can be purchased to help you test your own house. One is the Stetzer meter available here. The other is the Greenwave meter available here. They are approximately $150 each. I have used both. They are both good. You simply plug them into an outlet in a room, and it will tell you the level of dirty electricity in that area.

If you find high readings you can purchase special filters that simply plug into wall outlets to reduce the noise. However, if you have a large house, it may take up to a dozen or more filters to have an impact.

Solar Panels are Special

If you have solar panels on your home, they can be a significant source of dirty electricity. That’s because the panels use inverters to convert DC power into alternating current, and in the process, they generate a lot of electrical “noise.” My house has solar panels. Testing revealed very high levels of dirty electricity throughout the entire house. Some rooms measured as high as 1500-1900 mV—nearly 40 times the recommended safe limit of 50 mV.

To address this, we installed a whole-house filter from Shielded Healing. It made a noticeable difference, though we still needed smaller filters in most rooms to bring readings into the safe range. Our electrician, who installed the large filter, was amazed at how much it reduced the noise.

To Wrap Up

Our experience at my house mirrors other real-world examples. That problematic Minnesota high school classroom was mitigated by a Graham/Stetzer filter, and the dirty electricity was significantly lowered.  Compare the before and after graphs below. The red line shows reduced noise in the second picture.

To Summarize

Dirty electricity—hidden electrical “noise” from wiring, appliances, and even solar panels—may be silently draining your health. Researchers have linked it to fatigue, poor sleep, and even cancer clusters in schools. The good news? You can measure it, filter it, and take back control of your environment.

Always talk to your health professional before starting anything new.  This information is not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any condition and is intended only for entertainment. I welcome your comments.