EMF Radiation vulnerability- Unborn Babies, babies, toddlers, pregnant women, seniors, teens, youngsters and adults – did we miss out anyone? And then… what about computing systems, data centers, servers and computing environments? 

Look around. Technology revolution has accelerated over the last 2 decades. How many of the current wireless and electrical devices that you use today, do you remember using as a child? Wireless and electrical technology has increasingly become a large part of our lives. Across us is a snowballing of multiple sources of EMF at our homes, work places and other spaces such as schools, hospitals, malls, public spaces etc. The key-trends being –

1. Our addiction to 24*7 hyper connectivity and the age of “smart”
2. Advent of IOT, M2M and Sensor networks
3. Rise of electronic consumerism
4. The new age of ubiquitous computing.

EMF Radiation Vulnerability of biological systems

EMF radiation are key risks to biological systems. As a generation, we have a million times higher exposure to EMF radiation compared to our parents or grandparents. Our cellphones, WiFi and microwaves are so convenient that they are actually inconvenient. Our bodies fail to evolve so quickly as the multiplication in EMF radiation fields around us. This EMF radiation vulnerability has resulted in aggravation of critical ailments such as Alzheimers, Parkinsons, Cancer, Infertility and Autism.

EMF Radiation Vulnerability and its effects

1. Medical studies have proven that EMF radiation penetrates 75% of the developing brains of babies and toddlers.
   • By the same token, it is only able to penetrate only 25% in adults.
2. High exposure to EMF radiation for an unborn baby or infant could lead to Autism spectral disorder and cognitive impairment in kids.
3. 1 in 64 children in India suffer from Autism and India contributes to 40% of the world Autism population.
4. There has been a 30% increase in infertility rates in India in last half-decade (International institute for population sciences, Mumbai 2010). 1 in 5 Indian couples suffer from infertility.
5. Over the last 3 decades (1984-2011), there has been 5 times increase in Parkinson disease in India. (Gouriedevi M, Rao VN, Prakashi R 1984,2011)
6. The national Cancer registry in India reveals 1 in 8 men and 1 in 9 women expected to develop some form of cancer in their lifetimes.
7. Cancer cases are expected to go up to 1.73 million in India by 2020. This is up from 736,000 cases in 2016.

Ironically, EMF radiation has a remarkably “unproven” relationship with all these ailments. These figures point towards a global epidemic on the rise. Not to mention, the epidemiological evidence linking EMF radiation to health problems are not fully formed and may take many more decades to form. However, good sense will tell you it is better to be safe than sorry.

EMF Radiation Vulnerability – How Computing threatens computers.

The effects of EMF are not limited to humans. Excess radiation generated by intensive computing environments produce harmful effects on IT equipment. It also produces harmful effects on in-premise personnel reducing the service reliability, availability and employee productivity. There are multiple standards that legislate EMF at work place and data centres. These include (not an exhaustive list) – ICNIRP 1998, EMC 2004/108/EC (European Union), MICE classification of equipment environment, CEFAW (UK, July 2016), EN/BS 61 000 4-8, EN55022, EN55011, ISO/NCRP/ HPA among others. In-spite of presence of standards & awareness regarding the effect of EMI on data quality and operations disruption, the industry is handicapped by lack of quality solution providers and aggregators.

Here are the risks of high EMF and data, technology and computing systems.

1. Low frequency EMI caused by power sources / cabling and wiring can erase a hard disk or corrupt server database.
2. Unexplained data errors and productivity loss due to data errors.
3. In data communication, excessive electromagnetic interference (EMI) hinders ability of remote receivers to successfully detect data packets.
4. EMI leads to higher network traffic due to packet retransmissions and network congestions
5. Degrades transmission quality
6. High EMF exposure at workplace leads to absent-ism, loss of man-hours and productivity.
7. Logging on and off of terminal equipment
8. Slow down of LAN traffic

Conclusion

EMF radiation effect’s humans of all ages. In the same space, more than 37.5 milliGauss magnetic fields are known to disrupt computing systems. Therefore, a prudent approach to addressing EMF radiation risks and EMF Radiation vulnerability would be to first assess the premise, identify the sources, and pursuing a mitigation strategy. As they say, better late then never and the stitch saves the nine!

Reach out and talk to us – for more details about EMF and its effects! A premise assessment is the first step to identifying the problem and the risks.