Eliza's List

David Blake
2 days ago
14 min read

Updated: 8 hours ago

The back story and an EMF guru's guide created for his daughter — now available to you.

Eliza packing the MITO METER 2.0 [EURO] before heading overseas

Dear Eliza,

There’s a reason I created this list, it goes back to when you were only five years old.

At that age, you started experiencing something that I couldn't explain. You would have heart palpitations every day after school when you sat down in front of the TV in front of the Wi-Fi, and on warmer days, you would sometimes become so unwell while we went on bike rides past cell towers that you nearly collapsed.

On two occasions, I actually had to carry you past a cell tower.

Your brother and I were fine, so at the time I had no idea what was causing it. I certainly wasn't thinking about microwave radiation or EMF exposure. I had no understanding of any of this.

Your mother wanted to take you to a cardiologist. I remember saying, "Wait. Let's try moving the Wi-Fi first. "So we moved it. And from that day, the problem stopped.

It never happened again — until Wi-Fi was subsequently introduced into Australian schools.

That was when things became much more complicated.

Wi-Fi in Schools

You weren't the only child who was struggling.

I started looking closely at the environment and discovered that there were a couple of things going on at the same time. The classrooms had unusual low-hanging fluorescent lighting and very high levels of what is commonly referred to as Dirty Electricity (DE) — high-frequency electrical noise riding on the normal 50 Hz electrical supply. It is common knowledge in EMF circles that banks of fluorescent lights cause extremely high levels of DE.

Note there was also a 50-inch plasma television in our home living room, directly in front of where you normally sat, which also had high levels of DE that reached the couch where you sat.

At school, the combination of the electrical environment and wireless equipment (Commercial grade MIMO WAP's) appeared to be making things considerably worse. The children were constantly asking for water and to go to the toilet. Their drink bottles needed to be refilled over and over again. Eventually, teachers became frustrated with the constant requests, and children were stopped from getting additional water or going to the toilet. During Queensland’s warmer months, the combination of elevated heat exposure, significant fluid loss and exposure to extreme levels of DE and pulsed microwave radiation became a particular concern. Headaches also became a noticeable issue. Throughout the summer months, many of the children were experiencing headaches after school, and parents—including myself—began discussing the issue among themselves.

$70,000 Wi-Fi Network Install

Interestingly, the electrical noise in the classrooms was so high that it even interfered with the school’s Wi-Fi access points. The access points were mounted at exactly the same level as the banks of fluorescent lights, and the electrical noise generated by the lighting was interfering with the Wi-Fi signal, effectively cancelling it out at the desks below. The class could not use the Wi-Fi, despite the school having just spent around $70,000 installing a commercial-grade MIMO wireless system. (...thank you, Julia Gillard — X-non-elected Australian Prime Minister.)

The Wi-Fi would only work reliably when you stood directly underneath the access point — which, ironically, was exactly where your desk was.

I remember how frustrating this was for me at the time. I was installing these types of commercial mesh wireless systems myself in high-end smart homes, albeit to Building Biology standards, so I knew immediately what was happening and why the children were struggling to get a reliable Wi-Fi connection. But I didn’t say a thing. Back then, there was little to no understanding of the subject, and raising concerns about the wireless environment around children simply wasn’t something your teachers could digest.

At that point, I decided that simply complaining about the problem wasn’t enough. I needed to do something. I did, however, give your teacher a book by Donna Fisher on Dirty Electricity, which helped inform what happened next.

Wi-Fi Free Classes

So I organised Wi-Fi-free classes, after getting support from some parents and teachers. Importantly, though, we didn’t force that choice on everyone. We gave parents the option of having their children in either Wi-Fi or non-Wi-Fi classes, and roughly half chose the Wi-Fi-free option for their children.

They were only five and six years old, so I was very concerned about their exposure to this type and level of radiation in the classroom.

The non-Wi-Fi classrooms weren’t technology-free. The children still had access to computers; the grounded Apple computers were simply hardwired to the network rather than connected via Wi-Fi.

I’ve never been opposed to the technology itself. In my view, almost any technology can be deployed responsibly if you establish the right parameters and rules from the outset. Once those parameters are set, everyone else simply works within them. That was essentially all I was trying to do.

Donna Fisher, Arrest Threats & Channel 9 News

It took months of work to make all of this happen. I had to take considerable time away from my business, and at one point I pulled you and your brother out of school for around four months in protest while I worked through everything. Donna Fisher even helped organise a Channel 9 news crew to come and investigate what was happening. They were on standby with their helicopter, ready to come in.

It was an enormous amount of work, and it cost me a considerable amount of money to get hold of the professional EMF test equipment I needed. But eventually, everything came together.

By that point, I had a very simple plan. Either Channel 9 was going to turn up at the school and be presented with the smoking gun live on television — demonstrated on the best German spectrum-analysis equipment available at the time along with a concealed heart monitor system on my daughter — or half your class was going to end up with hardwired computers. [ ...the things a dad will do for his daughter. ]

The government simply couldn't afford to have that story aired nationally while it was in the process of rolling Wi-Fi out across schools. And in the end, we got our Wi-Fi-free classes.

But that whole experience changed the direction of my life.

From that point on, I was no longer just a dad complaining about something I believed was wrong. I had gone down the rabbit hole, learned how to properly investigate these environments, invested heavily in the equipment to prove what I was finding, and discovered just how difficult it could be to challenge a system that had already decided what the answer was going to be.

Ironically, after everything that transpired, I was legally threatened with arrest if I entered the school property with my equipment or even communicated a single word to any staff members.

Looking back, that experience was probably the beginning of everything that came afterwards.

Why Eliza’s List exists

Years later, you’re a grown woman. You’re fit and healthy, you don’t have heart problems and you use wireless technology like everyone else — well, almost everyone else — just a little more wisely.

The difference is that you understand your EMF footprint and how to manage it. So this list is really a reminder, along with the support database I built around it and continue to update.

I don’t want another parent to have to go through what we went through.

And I don’t want young people looking for a home to discover these things the hard way — after they’ve signed a lease or bought a property.

That’s one of the main reasons I created the Mito Meter 2.0. At the time, I couldn’t find a reasonably priced, genuinely sensitive 3-in-1 meter that could properly screen environments. So I built what I needed with the help of the highly talented team at EnviroSens, an Israeli company specialising in EMF detection technology.

I also wanted you to have something you could carry with you — something you could rely on when travelling overseas, staying in hotels, visiting other people’s homes, or simply checking your own environment.

200m Tall 1 of 3 AM radio antennas outside of Brisbane

Eliza’s Property Hunting & Home Screening List

If you're looking for a property, don't just look at the house, look at what's around that area, or even postcode in some instances, as some cities can have massive AM radio broadcasting sites on its outskirts.

The best approach is to screen a property in stages, starting before you even visit it.

1: Start with Google Earth

Before driving out to inspect a property, look at the surrounding area using Google Earth. First, look at the electrical infrastructure. Avoid properties that are close to high-voltage transmission towers. As a general rule, I would look for at least 2 km of separation, unless a hill or other terrain significantly blocks the infrastructure.

Even then, I wouldn't automatically assume you're in the clear, as high-voltage infrastructure can still affect the surrounding environment and ionise the air. Especially if you were to live down wind of the lines.

Low-voltage distribution power lines are generally preferable to high-voltage lines (Thats above 415 V Australia 50Hz ), and underground power is better again.

Better still, there is no power grid at all if you're going off-grid.

Also look at what's happening further down the street. Short, quiet streets with relatively few houses generally have a different electrical load profile from streets containing large apartment complexes, commercial buildings, industry or other major electricity users.

Remember the basic principle: electrical current produces magnetic fields.

So when property hunting, don’t just look at the house — look at the electrical infrastructure serving the area. Quieter, dead-end streets on the outskirts of a suburb can be worth investigating.

High-rise apartments on the upper floors have magnetic field levels as low as those found in the country, plus because they are mostly concrete, electric fields are very low. Mind you, apartment living usually requires a little RF shielding to reduce RF levels from neighbouring apartments phones and other wireless devices.

Underground house or apartment service lines are preferable because, whichever side of the house the supply enters, the room directly below the entry point will have elevated electric fields. (Unless shielded) And if the roof or gutters are metal, the entire roof and guttering can become electrically charged, so to speak.

2: Check for Antennas

Next, look for mobile phone towers, telecommunications infrastructure and smart meters.

Antenna-location and coverage-mapping services are very useful for finding 4/5G telecommunication sites. Check out Maprad, for instance, or run a web search for “antenna site map” in your area.

If you're looking at a rural property, pay particular attention to major cell towers. Rural cell towers can cover much larger areas than urban sites — sometimes up to 40 km — so distance alone doesn't tell you what the RF exposure will be. A property 2 to 5 kilometres from a rural tower can still have significant RF exposure if it has a clear line of sight to the antenna. Conversely, a property relatively close to a tower may have surprisingly low readings if a hill, building or other obstruction blocks the direct path.

**Clear line of sight from tower to home. Around 5 µW/m² 10 years ago — now around 70 µW/m².**

Use Google Earth's ruler tool and draw a line between the tower and the property. It will give you the distance and elevation profile, allowing you to see whether a hill or other terrain is likely to block the direct path.

Generally speaking, when I'm screening properties, I work on a minimum distance of around 1–2 km from major towers in urban areas and around 5 km in rural areas before I'd even consider looking at the property. From there, I'd want to establish the tower's direction, the terrain profile and, ultimately, what the actual RF levels are at the property. 3: Fixed Wireless In countries like Australia, where fibre-optic infrastructure wasn't extended to many regional and rural areas, fixed wireless is used instead. From an EMF perspective, these areas can be far more challenging than areas served by fibre-optic infrastructure.

Fixed wireless networks use far more aggressive propagation methods, with signals transmitted between towers and roof-mounted antennas at individual properties.

This is one reason I would be extremely cautious about buying or renting property in a fixed-wireless service area. Even if the RF readings at a property appear ultra low — like one green light — you need to establish whether there is a clear line of sight to a fixed-wireless tower. On RF sound signature mode, all you hear is continuous noise in these locations, even if the tower is 5 km away in some cases.

Never assume distance alone tells you the RF level.

4: Watch for point-to-point links

When looking at an antenna map, like Maprad, you'll sometimes see two antennas with a line between them. These point directly at one another and are called point-to-point links.

You don't want the property sitting in the path of a link or directly behind one of these antenna beams. Even if you get no RF reading from the link with your meter, it's the longitudinal scalar wave component within these links—something that isn't measurable with today's technology—that can be highly biologically disruptive, it's not worth taking your chances.

5: Learn what the dots on the antenna map mean

An antenna map can initially look overwhelming because there can be dozens of dots.

Not every dot represents a cell tower or cell site installation, focus on the white dots.

Most are local UHF communications or other relatively low-power radio services.

Click on the individual sites and examine what is actually installed.

The number of frequency assignments and the frequencies being used give away the cell sites.

Cellular installations will generally include frequencies extending into the GHz ranges.

If you have 30 or more assignments in the results, you know it’s going to be a small cell or tower. If the results show 100 or more assignments, you know there is going to be a lot of radiation coming from that direction.

Don't simply look at the number of antennas, though.

The actual RF exposure at the property is what ultimately matters.

The map is a remote screening tool — not a substitute for physically screening the property.

6: Visit the property & measure power grid

Once you've completed the remote screening and the property still looks promising, go there and measure it. You don't necessarily need to start by measuring every room in the house.

Start with the property itself.

Check the background magnetic-field levels from the power grid.

I like to check the property around the middle of the day, when electricity demand can be relatively high. Take measurements at the front, middle and back of the property. With some properties, the magnetic-field levels fall off sharply; with others, they don't fall off much at all.

If the magnetic field is elevated—for example, above around 20 nT—I'd consider running a longer overnight recording using the Mito Meter's LFM-X mode.

A single measurement is only a snapshot.

A longer recording can tell you much more about the property's magnetic-field environment, including average and peak levels. Personally, I'd be looking for a property where I can find genuinely quiet areas — no lights on LFM Mode.

Life is too short not to enjoy a natural, low-noise environment when you have the choice.

7: Then check RF

Now check the RF environment. Personally, I'd want an outdoor area where I could sit and spend time without significant RF readings—ideally with no lights at all and no sound on RF Sound Mode.

But don't immediately reject a property because you find RF coming from one direction.

Take a sheet of aluminium flyscreen or suitable shielding material, like a roll of sarking and experiment. (Take a person or some tape to pin the sheilding up.)

If the RF is predominantly coming from one direction, usually from a cell tower or cell site, you may find that relatively simple shielding around a window or particular part of the building can make a dramatic difference. Often, a decorative RF fence or wall can do the job.

If you're moving interstate, overseas, or to an unfamiliar area, try to tap into some local knowledge first. Getting some insight into low-nnEMF, quiet spots can save you a lot of time. I know a lot of spots around here.

8: Find where the RF is coming from

If you find elevated RF inside the property, don't automatically assume the source is outside.

Walk around between rooms. Measure near windows. Measure all sides of the building. North, East, South, West to give you an indication of which way the radiation is coming. Hold the meter close to your chest and spin around to determine the direction of the radiation.

Look for patterns using sound signature mode. (RF-Xs Mode) If you hear constant noise, it’s far from a clean RF environment. If you hear clicking, it's a local source and easier to eliminate or shield.

If the RF appears to be entering primarily through a particular window or wall, temporarily placing aluminium flyscreen or sarking over the area using tape can help determine whether the external signal is responsible. If the reading drops significantly, it gives you a good indication that RF is entering through that part of the building.

For example, you may find that a bedroom showing a few green lights on RF Mode drops to nothing when the window is temporarily shielded.

That's useful information. You're not just measuring the problem anymore, you're identifying how the problem can potentially be managed. Then check the power distribution board and measure the meter to see whether it's an RF-emitting type (smart meter). Use both RF Mode and RF Sound Mode.

In Queensland, Australia, most smart meters only broadcast for a few seconds each month, so they aren't generally a significant RF source. In some other states, however, smart meters can communicate much more frequently, including potentially 24/7. If this is the case, have the communications modem removed from the smart meter, or, if that can't be done, arrange for an external directional antenna for the smart meter to be mounted on the roof. ... As far as I'm concerned, anything can be achieved if you put your mind to it.

9: Finally, check the electric fields

The last part of the basic property screening is using LFE Mode (Low Frequency Electric-field) to check electric field levels.

If possible, turn off the electrical circuits supplying the bedrooms, including the light circuit(s), as light circuits are the most problematic, in most cases.

Then check around the areas where the beds will be positioned.

Secondly, check the living room and kitchen, or the main areas you spend time.

Range hoods and cooktops usually have high levels around them, which is normal.

If the range hood is still high at 1 meter, it usually just needs to be grounded.

As per normal, if it's a low ceiling home, you will have high readings from the kitchen ceiling light(s), and this is why high ceiling homes have far less electric field issues.

The idea is to establish what the electric-field environment is like when the electrical circuits are removed from the equation. If the readings drop and you have no lights on the meter, you've learned something useful. It means there is a particular circuit(s), wiring arrangement(s) or electrical appliance(s) that can be investigated and reconfigured once you move in.

Occasionally you'll find a property where elevated electric fields remain even after the electrical circuits have been switched off. (One or more green lights around common areas you spend time.) If I found that, I would look elsewhere for another property.

If you know what you're dealing with, you can make an informed decision about whether the problem is manageable — and what it might take to improve it.

The Eliza’s List principle

Look before you commit. 
Measure before you move in. 
Understand what is around the property.
Find the sources. 
Then work out what can be changed.

We love our technology but it's a bit of a juggling act to master if we want to thrive in the digital age. The above is just the basics and although you know a lot of the above, I'm working on part two, which will include dirty electricity, how to wire or re-wire a home, how to configure your electronics and ways to limit exposure. All you need to know about dirty electricity for now is that it's a rapidly growing problem in modern society. And if there's no electric field, there can be no dirty electricity being radiated. That's why keeping electric-field levels low is more important today than ever. Plus, your Dad always has plenty of different types of dirty-electricity filters on hand, so you can help yourself to whatever you need.

You simply need to understand your environment and manage your exposure intelligently.

I didn't know any of this when you kids were born. I only learned about it because of what happened to you. That's why I created Eliza's List — so other people can have the knowledge I wish I'd had back then. ...Dad Any questions? just ASK here.