Are wireless baby monitors a good choice to help keep your child safe while you are out of the room? What about digital or video-based monitors? Well, consider this…
If a mobile phone company applied for a permit to install a cell tower next to a school in your community, do you think there would be a large public outcry?
Most likely there would be very vocal outrage from the surrounding neighborhoods and the story would be featured prominently in the local news as many concerned and informed parents are increasingly taking precautions to minimize their children’s exposure to any sort of microwave technology.
The fact is that the long term effects of microwave radiation on children’s developing brains are completely unknown.
What is known is that a child’s brain is not fully developed until about age 20 and until that time, the skull is thinner to permit its continued growth and development.  Hence, a child’s brain is extremely sensitive to the effects of any type of EMF radiation (1).
Wireless Baby Monitors: Â The Elephant in the Nursery
While most parents would agree that installing a cell phone tower next to a school would be dangerous and definitely not a good idea, many of these same parents are unaware of the very similar danger posed by baby monitors, devices ironically designed for child safety!
When my first child was born, like all the other mothers I knew, I had a baby monitor on my baby shower list.
At that time, baby monitors were corded and plugged into a wall outlet, so I was very careful to keep it away from the baby’s crib and on a bureau across the room out of concern for strangulation risk from the cord.
In recent years, however, corded baby monitors have all but disappeared in favor of the new wireless models which pose a very severe risk of continuous microwave radiation in your child’s room.
According to Wired Child, a wireless baby monitor at less than 1 meter away from the baby’s crib was roughly equivalent to the microwave radiation experienced from a cell phone tower only 150 meters away.
With most baby monitors now wireless and the risk of strangulation from the cords no longer an issue, many parents are putting them right in the crib so a distance of 1 meter or less is not so far fetched. Even a wireless monitor across the room would still pose a danger, albeit a reduced one.
How to Keep Tabs on Your Baby Without Wireless Baby Monitors
The best way to keep tabs on your baby is to have the child’s nursery next to the master bedroom and use your ears.  It’s how Grandma did it after all!
If you absolutely must have a baby monitor for when your child is napping during the day and you are elsewhere in the house doing chores, then use one of the old-style corded (analog) monitors that you can probably find at a garage sale for next to nothing.
While all wireless baby monitors are a problem, the high-frequency digital models are the absolute worst.  Analog monitors are a better choice than digital and if you can find one that is non-pulsing and low frequency in the 35-50 MHz range then that would be the only wireless option that should be considered. Typically, these analog monitors only have a few channels.  Even analog monitors, however, should be kept at least 3 feet from the child’s bed and if possible, used sparingly.
According to PowerWatch, parents that switch out wireless baby monitors for an old-style plug-in monitor or none at all report the child crying less, having less irritability and sleeping better.
Taking care to get the microwave radiation out of your baby’s room to protect her developing brain may have the distinct advantage of a better night’s sleep – for everyone in the house!
References
Digital Cordless Baby Monitors (PowerWatch)
More Information
Reducing Exposure to Dirty Electricity
Are AMR Devices Safer than Smart Meters?
Harvard Medical Doctor Warns About the Dangers of Smart Meters
Fitbit Health Dangers
How to Protect Yourself from a Smart Meter
Christine Ching Smith
For this you can get a Torus from Earthcalm.ca
Barina Bryant
We bought a EMF meter before we started house hunting 🙂 We also used it to find the best placement for our beds. Thankfully we have no Wi-Fi or cell phone towers around us or in our house. We actually live on an island that will not allow cell phone towers. I do my best to put my cell on airplane when not being used. Our power lines emit a high reading if we stand under it so we try to stay away from that area. We also trashed the microwave years ago. I feel most people think it’s too much work or too costly to worry about this kind of stuff but our health is truly the only wealth we will ever have.
I have been doing my own research and there is something called Blue Angel Consumer information that is looking out for the welfare of others. http://www.eurofins.com/product-testing-services/information/ecolabels,-quality-labels/blue-angel.aspx
There is a baby monitor out there that was approved by “Blue Angel” you might want to investigate for yourself. I have nothing to gain from this – I only want to purchase this for my niece’s newborn but we cannot get this in North America!
I think there is some confusion here. The fact that a baby monitor is “plugged into the wall” for power instead of using battery doesn’t mean it’s not a “wireless” baby monitor. If the signals are sent through the antenna of that baby monitor unit, then it is still a “wireless baby monitor”, and is still emitting microwave radiation.
If the baby monitor sends its audio or video signals via a cable,then it can be considered a “wired”(safer )baby monitor. Even with that, you have to be careful not to put the monitor right next to the baby, as there can still be frequency and magnetic fields emitting in close proximity from the baby monitor.
Apperantly, ignorance is not bliss.
Electromagnetic fields, or rather electromagnetic radiation caused by EMF, may indeed be harmful for an infant. However, harm caused to human cells by EMR entirely depends on its frequency. That is, high frequency EMR causes more damage.
So what is high frequency? Will a 2.4 GHz wireless signal from your baby monitor cause any harm? I cannot say for sure but I can give you some information as to where 2.4 GHz radiation falls in our lives. As it may come as a surprise to many people, visible light is also EMR. Its frequency ranges from 400 THz to 770 Thz, meaning it is approximately 200000 more than 2.4 GHz. Ultra violet (UV) light, being the lowest frequency harmful EMR with any certainty, ranges from 700 THz to 30000 Thz; followed by a more harmful X-Ray radiation at higher frequencies. This means you cannot really say the wireless technology is harmful and cite the EMR frequency being high. After all, its frequency is much lower than visible light and nobody keeps their kids in dark all the time.
However, all this does not mean all wireless products are safe. Microwaves, for example, also have much lower frequencies but they cause water molecules to heat up (cleverly used in microwave ovens :)) so you do not expose your child to microwaves of certain frequency for long times. Ultimately, we do not know what adverse affects long term EMR exposure due to wireless technology will cause, but I would not throw out my baby monitor based on what this article states. Also, the recommendation of “wired” monitors is a joke.There is no wired monitor as far as I understand. Unless, of course, your old fashioned “plugged” monitors are somehow connected to the parent’s unit with a cable running from the babies room to the parents. The fact that there is a cable going into the monitor does not make it wired, ALL monitors use wireless technology. Additionally, if electrical current is passing through any wire (which happens in all your homes all the time, especially with a truly wired monitor 🙂 ) it is generating EMR.
I hope this helps some of you.
Thank you for a voice of reason. This is plain old fear mongering designed to attract hits on a website…
It might be far worse than losing some sleep. If this gentleman is correct, we have an unmitigated disaster on our hands.
http://thefullertoninformer.com/carbonyl-iron-and-orange-county-the-autism-capital-of-the-state/
I’m glad to read this. Very interesting insights. I think it’s about using the device properly like maximizing its benefits without putting health at risk. I have been using baby monitors for years and the latest devices have become sophisticated now in terms of features and considering healthy safety.
This is good, but almost all homes have WiFi and most parents use cell phones, but, I guess you can reduce the amount you have in your home…