Replies

1. Expert Member
   BILL WICHERS | Jul 28, 2026 10:12am | #1

   It doesn't matter. There are a lot of people out there trying to make this stuff sound scary, but it's really not. If this was "a thing", people who work in power plants would have all kinds of problems, but they don't, and it's common for multiple generations of the same family to work in these industries. Don't worry about it.

   Now for some stuff to make you feel a little better about this anyway, in terms of fields:
   The incoming feed from the utility for the typical 120/240 volt AC residential electrical service is three wires, two "hots" and one "neutral". The neutral just caries the imbalance current, which means whatever the difference in load is between the two hots, basically. What makes this interesting for what you're concerned about is that the waveform in each of those two hots is 180 degrees out of phase with each other -- they are opposites. That means their electromagnetic fields cancel each other out. It's not a perfect cancellation, but it's significant. If those wires are inside of steel conduit, you now have a shield around them and there is essentially zero magnetic field being radiated outside of the conduit. If you want to put some shielding in, some sheet steel will work for that, even thin stuff like 24 gauge, but I wouldn't bother.

   BTW, My professional work involves large electrical power system design, primarily for datacenters and telecom sites. I deal with this sort of thing all the time. Strong magnetic fields are something that can mess with things like computer data storage, but even with that issue, we never have any problems and trying to limit magnetic fields isn't something we have to be concerned with in our designs. We're working with very much larger amounts of power in these facilities compared with what you have in a house too ("very much larger" is in the tens of thousands of times more range). The "EMF" thing is just a non-issue. If you see anything out there about "dirty electricity", that is a bunch of hooey too, you need not worry about it, and certainly don't waste any money on the quack products they try to sell you to "fix" that non-problem.

   Bill

2. Expert Member
   MALCOLM TAYLOR | Jul 28, 2026 12:02pm | #2

   RK,

   You may find these links useful:

   https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/emfs-and-human-health

   https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2016/feb/17/electromagnetic-radiation-doesnt-make-you-ill-or-give-you-cancer-heres-why