Meet Nick Pineault, 'The EMF Guy'
Nick Pineault is a man on a mission. A passionate advocate of safe tech and the bestselling author of The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs, he’s busy raising awareness of the health problems associated with the electromagnetic pollution we’re exposed to by our smartphones, laptops, Wi-Fi routers and other electronic devices.
Ahead of Nick’s upcoming EMF Hazards Summit (which this year highlights the hidden epidemic of electro-hypersensitivity), we sat down to talk about environmental toxins, his top 3 EMF mitigation strategies, and his chat with presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy on corruption at the Federal Communications Commission…
What started your journey of discovery with EMFs? Was there a trigger point that led you to where you are now?
I started writing about health in 2010, and quickly felt shocked by how many environmental toxins with known health impacts were present in our tap water, in the air, or on our food.
I also realized that our health agencies (in the US, but also where I live in Canada and around the world) failed to protect the population against these environmental stressors. Worse, many regulatory agencies have been captured by the industries they were supposed to regulate.
This is the case with the US FCC (Federal Communications Commission), which was called a “Captured Agency” years ago in a report published by the Harvard Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics.
Around 2016, I started reading one book after another on the topic of cell phone safety, or biological effects of man-made electromagnetic fields (EMFs). I quickly realized that this type of ‘electro-pollution’ is one of the worst possible kinds of environmental toxins we are being exposed to, and for many reasons:
1) Most people have been convinced by regulators and the industry that EMFs are ‘perfectly safe’, which is the exact opposite of the truth.
2) Regulators who are supposed to make sure we are not overexposed to EMFs are completely captured by the industry.
3) Instead of putting forward preventative measures to lower the global amounts of electro-pollution our bodies are subject to (like the science shows we should do), everyone is busy increasing our exposure through the use of more Bluetooth gadgets, more Internet of Things sensors, more cellphone towers (especially the new 5G cellular networks) and thousands of global Internet satellites.
The 3 realizations above still hold true to this day, which is why I’ve dedicated all of my professional time as a citizen journalist on the topic of EMFs for the last 8+ years, and have no intention of stopping anytime soon.
“Instead of putting forward preventative measures to lower the global amounts of electro-pollution our bodies are subject to (like the science shows we should do), everyone is busy increasing our exposure through the use of more Bluetooth gadgets, more Internet of Things sensors, more cellphone towers and thousands of global Internet satellites.”
Would you consider yourself as having Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS)? If so, what do you do to manage your symptoms and limit your exposure to EMFs?
When I first started this work and published my book, The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs, I used to be more ‘sensitive’. I eventually realized that using a wireless keyboard and wireless mouse, as well as a Wi-Fi-connected laptop, really hindered my ability to concentrate on my work, and essentially kept me in a state of ‘brain fog’.
After working with a functional medicine practitioner who understands EMFs and electro-sensitivity, I was able to improve different aspects of my health, and increase my resilience. As a result, I now rarely feel the symptoms associated with EMF exposure and can handle living in fairly electro-polluted environments.
That being said, I’ve also been very diligent to decrease my everyday EMF exposure, which has surely helped me become less sensitive over time, and prevented me from becoming ‘HYPER-sensitive’ – something I’d never wish on anyone.
My favorite EMF mitigation strategies include:
- Using wired Internet over wireless on my laptop when I work at home. I turn off the Wi-Fi function on my computer, and use a long Ethernet cable to connect it to my router.
- I always put my phone on Airplane mode at night, and also ensure that the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antennas are turned off.
- I also put my phone on Airplane mode whenever I carry it in my pocket. The known risks to my fertility and hormonal production just aren’t worth it.
Why did you feel the need to write your book, The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs?
It took me years to start understanding the topic of EMFs. I was so confused at first when I came across the lingo…“dirty electricity”, “radiofrequency”, “gigahertz”, “polarization”, “electric fields”...
It’s true that a lot of the information published online about EMF dangers is incorrect, hyperbolic, and sometimes straight-up fear mongering. As a topic, it’s also extremely complex, and requires a lot of nuance. All of this leads to some people feeling that it isn’t serious, or that it’s only relevant to dark corners of the Internet filled with ‘tin foil hatters’.
I wanted to address this confusion right away in the title of my book. My goal is to make people aware that there literally are hundreds of credible, independent scientists and thousands of medical doctors who are publishing on this topic, and have been sounding the alarm about the dangers of EMFs for decades.
I used a familiar writing style that is ‘love it or hate it’. Some academics think that my work is not serious enough because I use humor. Some activists think my work is a scam because I operate a for-profit educational business, and some electro-hypersensitivity sufferers are offended by the title of my book.
And yet, 7 years later, I cannot help but be happy about my editorial choices…and the vast majority of academics, activists and EHS sufferers I’ve heard from appreciate the work I’ve been doing. You can’t please everyone!
“The lineup for our 2024 EMF Hazards Summit is very exciting. I had the immense privilege of interviewing presidential candidate and environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who talked about the incredible level of corruption he’s seeing at the FCC.”
You founded the EMF Hazards Summit. Could you tell us a little about it and what you hope to achieve with it?
A few of my colleagues launched online summits and had good success getting their message out to thousands of people. I also personally love to interview scientists, doctors and activists, so the format naturally attracted me.
I launched the first EMF Hazards Summit in 2021, had to skip a year in 2022, and then launched the 2nd edition in early 2023. The feedback was so great that I decided to turn this event into an annual event where I’d be able to feature the work of so many brilliant people whose efforts deserve to be more widely recognized.
My goal with the EMF Hazards Summit is to raise awareness around the dangers of EMFs, mitigation solutions that are available to us, the latest EMF science, or different closely-related topics such as electro-sensitivity.
With the 2024 EMF Hazards Summit just around the corner (April 11-14), what are you most excited about this year and why?
This 2024 EMF Hazards Summit is focused on a topic that is near and dear to my heart – the hidden epidemic of electro-sensitivity.
For years, electro hypersensitive individuals have been sending me their stories. Some stories are heartbreaking because these people are still struggling, but some stories do have a happy ending – and some of these people were able to recover and return to a good level of health, where they are able to cope with some of the everyday EMF exposures that we are all subject to.
The lineup for 2024 is very exciting. I had the immense privilege of interviewing presidential candidate and environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who talked about the incredible level of corruption he’s seeing at the FCC.
I interviewed EMF scientists such as Dr. Magda Havas, but also environmental medicine doctors such as Dr. Neil Nathan who shared exactly how he’s able to help the most sensitive patients recover. What he and others shared with me, and what you too can discover during this 2024 summit, gave me a lot of hope.
This 3rd edition of the EMF Hazards Summit will empower you with information you can use right away to identify symptoms of electro-sensitivity in yourself or your loved ones, and learn strategies to minimize your exposure to stressful EMFs and start recovering… or simply avoid becoming sensitive in the first place.
What does the idea of a 'conscious space' mean to you and how do you try to optimise your living space for better health?
A conscious space for me is a place you can call home, somewhere you can thrive, somewhere you feel good on a day-to-day basis, and somewhere you can recover from all the environmental stressors we are unavoidably subject to these days.
In the last several years, I tried to walk my talk and started reducing the amount of EMFs me and my family are subjected to. Before the birth of my son (who is now 5 years old), my wife and I agreed to completely turn off the Wi-Fi antenna inside our router, and we have since been using Ethernet cables to connect both our computers and even our phones to the Internet.
I do several other things to make my living environment cleaner, to the best of my ability: I filter my water, use an air purifier, regularly clean the house (I’m a little bit more motivated to do it since I learned that excess dust contains mold and chemicals!), am very aware of areas where mold growth could happen, use non-toxic cleaning products, just to name a few.
Like many of your readers, I’m not an expert when it comes to all of these different topics, and am still learning. I strive to get better over time, and implement a few strategies that can make my home a healthier place, every year.
Find out more about the EMF Hazards Summit 2024
Visit Nick’s website
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