Esmog hoodies

Hello everyone,

On indiegogo a company has esmog hoodies. They appear to be very conductive  (Faraday cage) jackets.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/urban-shield-protective-hoodie-for-ecd-and-esmog#/

I bought one. Thoughts?

Thanks

I also manufacture, wear and sell RF protection Jackets, other clothes & Hats on my store site. I recommend to get the hat first so you can see if you are OK with the fabric and if it helps you.
Please see - http://www.4ehsbyehs.com/protection-clothes
amirb

The nature of microwaves is that they will pass through cracks and gaps a tiny fraction of their wavelength.  2Ghz-15 CM.  Gaps an cracks to to 110-1/100th of a wavelength are a concern for shielding, depending on the goal.

The nature of ES is that -30dB (voltage) improvement is noticeable, just.  

Those two combined make half hearted shielding measures fail (except for placebo effect).
 
Short of a full enclosure including a bee keeper's hat, including gloves, socks, etc.,  I think you are only soothing your anxiety.

You will note that none of the manufacturers offers any independent blind test data. There is a reason for that.  

BruceM wrote

The nature of microwaves is that they will pass through cracks and gaps a tiny fraction of their wavelength.

I've been curious about that, but haven't been able to test it without a good meter. (I just ordered that Cornet meter, so that should be fixed soon.) The gratings on microwaves are definitely much smaller than the wavelength, but I'd assumed (or maybe just hoped) that that was due to the high flux inside, and that anything less than the wavelength would provide a useful benefit.

Typical aluminum bug screen (16 threads per inch) provides about -20dBm (power) or 40dB of voltage (v/m2) reduction (at 1 Ghz). That is a (just barely) noticeable improvement, assuming you tolerate the alloy or urethane finish OK and if bare, can get the machine oils off of it adequately.  Always test your shield materials for compatibility BEFORE you spend a bunch of money and do a lot of work!  

There is virtually no such thing as ES without MCS.  There are only those with ES who are unaware of how foods and chemicals are affecting their health. (And vise-versa.) The provocation-neutralization interdermal injection testing done by Enviromental Medicine docs can immediately make a believer of you, since they can blindly turn on and off your regular symptoms from an unknown to you substance.  Just pass on the treatment shots after testing...they didn't work for me or anyone in my family. Find someone using preservative free testing solutions.

Dell was one of the first companies to reduce toxic chemicals in their printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing. Dell has had serious problems but I applaud  (and use myself ) their noticeably less toxic Inspiron laptops.  After moving to my off grid, -60dBm shielded DC only home, I can now use my laptop directly for 20 minutes and recover in an hour.  In my on grid home it took me days to recover from 5 minutes. Normally the laptop is my remote low power computer with it's display turned off.

It's a pisser that it is this way but EMF exposures, even the one's you don't notice, are all cumulative. That's why I encourage people to clean up their environment as much as practical, even things you don't overtly and immediately feel.  I was just as naive as everyone else, thinking what I didn't feel was OK for me. Big mistake.

I could tell a lot of stories from years of volunteer consulting, but the short form is-  I have never yet run into someone with ES who didn't have a home situation that had a high frequency EMI problem, and usually high ELF magnetic fields as well.  The smart meter or WIFI or new cell tower is the last straw.

Pity we ignored Marino and Beck for over 50 years.

You can find a short video showing how easy it is to measure the shielding performance of garments here:
http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html

(it's right near the top of the page).

If you test it yourselves, a 99 % improvement probably will not be made at every covered location, and inside the skull one can not even test it this way.
The directions of the attacking waves, including through reflection, do matter.
99 % sounds great, but it is only a 20 dBm difference, and likely the result of ideal circumstances.
In addition, all this metal fabric may act as an antenna for frequencies that are not measured here.
And last but not least from my point of view, the shielding diminishes also natural cosmic radiation in which life on earth has evolved for billions on years and what could play an essential role in the healthy functioning of organisms, humans included.

I am still working on a semi-off-the-grid construction with a few shielded AC wires and sockets where these are really practical and which can be switched off at night.
Right now using also a laptop i noticed a strong electrical field, 50 V/m at 1 foot / 30 cm and 1500 V/m both near the external keyboard and the mouse ( which our fingers touch frequently ).
These values drop in half after disconnecting the power-supply and to zero ( ! ) after grounding the laptop.
Grounding is often an important thing.
When shielding a telephone-cable, it also only worked after grounding.
By the way a steel lamp armature can be the worst source of electrical fields, but of course not in a smooth DC system.
When an additional monitor was installed, the vga videocable from the laptop was clearly less of a disaster than the hdmi cable from a mini-pc according to the sound of my esmog-spion.
Perhaps the onboard videocards in both machines had an impact.
The display of the laptop "rumbles" less than the external one tested here when connected to the laptop.
When back at "home" i will repeat some of these comparative experiments with a low emf monitor, but it seems that this laptop of 2008 which runs pretty fast is a good choice emf-wise ( with the lower horizontal part shielded with stainless mesh ), although the ventilator is annoying, but nothing will be ever perfect regarding computers or anything man-made for that matter.
Without good meters that show numbers as well and cover the whole relevant range of frequencies, it remains of course hard to figure out what the worst offenders are exactly, especially for a layman like me.
Apart from that, dominant frequencies may be less detrimental than very weak ones that will go unnoticed, so without an inner meter we are helpless anyway.
On the other hand if an emf-meter calls alarm, yes it is still better to be safe than sorry, as it likely will have at least some nasty consequences.
Concerning shielding a whole home, apart from being rather difficult and expensive and other possible issues, then one can not have a single source of RF within it, including ethernet-cables, routers, visitors carrying a phone, computers and videocables, and a whole bunch of devices, unless extremely well shielded with substantial metal.
In my experience aluminium-foil is actually rather worthless here despite its official shielding capacity.
I taped it around videocables and covered walls with it to no or little avail, especially on the longer term.
The same with "veilshield" from lesseremf.com, which worked a bit but only for a while.

Earthworm, the bit about shielding a home making devices in it worse is not really true.  In my shielded home, even with a 2 GHz test transmitter on in one room, if the steel clad door to that room, with steel door casement, is shut, the signal drops by 40dBm and is much lower than if you were outside and 4x the distance away.  (Note all walls are aluminum foil laminated and all wiring is in steel conduit.) So it is relatively simple to partition a computer using family member, for example.

Likewise, such stories as shielding amplifying outside sources are largely fantasies.  When I open the door facing the cell tower, for example, the levels in my house (normally -60dBm (power) are still lower everywhere than outside the house, since only that bit that comes in the door gets to bounce around, losing energy with every bounce.  Even when I have a transmitter in the house, levels are elevated everywhere to that measured within 8 feet of the transmitter, but are uniform everywhere in the house, there are no significant variations, anywhere, not even 3dB.  So a lot of this talk about the dangers of shielding and reflective gains are just flat wrong, and are a huge disservice to those of use with seriously disabling ES. It's plenty hard enough without the mountain of bullshit and misinformation.

No one should have unshielded equipment and cables in their home, at the current FCC levels of emissions, anyway.  It's just hell to do it properly now because what passes for ES knowledgeable experts and consultants is a travesty.  

Aluminum foil can be effective for far field electric fields, and if thick enough, for high frequency magnetics.  But you have to understand it's limitations and your shielding goals. Taping it over equipment is not very effective because it's too close to the source; the magnetic fields are too high. The discontinuities in foil and tape with then radiate emissions. You have confirmed my observation that 20-30dB of shielding is barely noticeable.  If you are making a "shoe string budget" shield enclosure, put the equipment in a box as large as possible, using a non-metalic stand for the equipment, with 6-12 inches between box and equipment. Use aluminum or copper screen as needed. Cords must be shielded, are best earth grounded.  The black aluminum screen can be used for a see through window, but it must be sanded to bare aluminum where bonded to the foil.  Use 3M or Chromerics conductive copper tape to make connections; the other cheapo brands being sold are not actually conductive adhesive. If you buy a "woodpecker" model airplane tool, you can perforate aluminum tape, and use that as bargain conductive tape, since the copper stuff is quite spendy.

For shielding cables, I like EMT galvanized steel conduit with compression fittings (a must) indoors, and IMC or Rigid (threaded galvanized steel).  It gets you into the 90dB range where you'd like to be.  

Most of the products currently intentionally marketed to those with ES should be viewed with extreme skepticism, to be generous.  

Gimmel and Gerke's "Designers Guide to Electromagnetic Compatibility" and Donald White's EMC Volume 3 are a good summary for electrical engineers.  Alas, no one as yet written the translation for lay people, and I'm not sure it's possible.  It is a complicated field, even some EE's find it daunting.

Thanks for yor response.
I just meant that shielding of a separate space will increase the radiation from an internal source within the space itself because of refection on the shielding.
However i actually have no idea how bad this increase will be, have just read about it and considered it a plausible concern.
The question is how many times it will bounce back before it dies off either by escaping or being absorbed by the shielding or the interior.
If a transmitter raises the level of its emission ( hence measured at the same frequency ) in the whole place to its strength at 8 feet ( including some reflection even ), then it appears to me that it bounces too many times.
On the other hand i trust that you know what you are talking about, and that the more distantly measured increase caused by the transmitter frequency is nevertheless not large.
Stories as shielding amplifying outside sources seem to make sense when referring to shielded garments since these rest really on top of ones skin, i checked cloth with copper mesh once ( if not mistaken due to a weak memory ).
When my EsmogSpion is held near long rather straight pieces of electrical wire ( with and without tension ), i can hear the news on the radio loud and clear from its speaker.
Dividing up a shielded house in compartments sounds like a good trick, apart from having a guest-room or one with some dubious, easy accessible devices in it, one can also shield a sleeping room extra thoroughly.
I use ( not at the moment while on holidays ) pipes of ( secondhand ) aluminium and stainless steel ( not the chromium steel that attaches to a magnet ) for ethernet- and video-cables, and triple shielded ethernet-cable as a telephone-cable ( grounded since its frequency is low ).
I did not ground these pipes as i thought that the problematic emissions by the videocable are between 1 and 15 MHz, and the ethernet-cable produces about 30 MHz, but i see now that the latter emits actually other frequencies, which are partly electrical fields under 2 kHz, so grouding of its metal conduit should still be done.
So if the source of radiation is too close, the shielding capacity becomes less.
This is interesting and valuable information, good to keep in mind ( ! ).
Not that i understand it or heard before about high frequency magnetics, but that is less important ;).

"So if the source of radiation is too close, the shielding capacity becomes less."
I still wonder what the mathematics are.
But it should have been expected : if the shielded box is smaller, then less shielding material is being used.
There is no free lunch here ;(.

Earthworm, I've very impressed with your responses and the effort you've obviously made to learn how to cope with your disability.  You might find the Kimmel/Gerke EMC book useful for better dealing with shielding, filtering, grounding. I don't think it's over your abilities.

"When my EsmogSpion is held near long rather straight pieces of electrical wire ( with and without tension ), i can hear the news on the radio loud and clear from its speaker."

Yes, you'll need a long antenna for radio, due to the longer wavelength.  Some people get confused on this issue and then think that metals amplify radio waves...they don't. The AM band is so low (500K to 1.6MHz or 605 feet minimum wavelength) the the radio is starved for antenna.  So they use a ferrite rod with a tuned coil around it and pick up the signal from the magnetic field.  Holding an AM radio near any metalic object will always increase the effective antenna size and signal strength.  Just remember it as an artifact of the AM radio.

Well, i am more impressed about your knowledge, intelligence and communicative abilities.
If you write a practical book about ES related issues and solutions, it should become the new bible for building biologists and will be extremely useful for autodidact amateurs that rather do it all themselves than pay up and be dependent on people that may only pose as a professional.
We learned a few essential things just in this thread already :
- The nature of microwaves is that they will pass through cracks and gaps a tiny fraction of their wavelength.
- EMF exposures, even the one's you don't notice, are all cumulative.
- - 20 dBm is a barely noticeable improvement.
- There is virtually no such thing as ES without MCS.
- No one should have unshielded equipment and cables in their home.
- Shielding needs to be more solid close to a RF source.
- Metals do not amplify radio waves.
I greatly appreciate your input and feedback.