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
How do I find out if the monitor I have is non-pulsing or within the 35-50mHz range?
This is the monitor I have:
http://www.usa.philips.com/c/avent-baby-health-monitoring/audio-monitors-temperature-alert-scd525_00/prd/en/;jsessionid=EE3C8BE7B274B2B765DE19E89A13B1D0.app101-drp4
Thanks!
Stacy,
That is a DECT monitor and one of the worst. I’d recommend getting something else.
This article seems to be very misinformed although it is true that the effects of microwaves are unknown. Electromagnetic waves easily penetrate materials which do not conduct electricity (like the baby’s skull) and can be shielded against by conductive materials like metals.
So the assertion that:
“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.”
simply makes no sense. The difference in thickness of a baby’s skull and an adult’s skull would make almost no difference because the skull does not conduct electricity.
This leads me to believe that the author knows little about electromagnetism. The baby’s room would likely be permeated by dozens of other sources of microwaves, unless the crib were located in some remote country area without cell service.
Anyway, don’t pay to much attention to an article that clearly hasn’t done its research.
The biological effects of electromagnetic frequencies(emfs) has been researched by scientists and governments around the world since the 1950’s. It is well known that there are serious biological effects from exposure to this radiation. The protective blood barrier around a baby’s skull is not fully formed and is constantly changing to accomodate the baby’s growth and development. The World Health Organization has issued a precautionary warning in the use of wireless technology and has classified emfs as possible carcinogens (2b).That’s good enough for me.
Scientific evidence does exist for electropollution, but the community is divided. Who is right and who is wrong? These are tough questions to answer – it depends on who you ask. I am not an insider. So what if no consensus exists? A consensus exists about the dangers of cholesterol and this consensus happens to ignore the scientific evidence that challengers their view.
I wonder about the comments of citing science as the ultimate authority, or practicing scientism. I have a philosophy friend who says since the mainstream dental community doesn’t accept the work of Weston Price, he questions its validity and Dr. Price claims. Fine, but I could care less what they think. I have reversed tooth decay using his protocol and have seen others do so – the proof sometimes can be in the pudding, don’t you think? Do I need to use science to tell me how to go to the toilet or find a mate? Science definitely can be used constructively in these matters , but using science as the sole authority sounds very naive to me.
i will balance the research with my own personal experience. I work with growers to increase their soil fertility and the nutrient density of their crops. We use EMF protectors because we found that electropollution in many cases inhibits nutrient uptake in plants, thereby causing them to be nutritionally poor, prone to illness, etc. We have found that farmers who get great results in using EMF protectors also notice oftentimes significant increases in their health and, as a side benefit, they notice their neighbors get less grumpy. A number of people I have worked with who put these protectors in the cities after seeing great results in the farm. Cities have the most electropulltion, in general. And yes, a good product oftentimes delivers good results. That said, EMF happens to be just one of myriad of factors affecting plant and human health so one can find plenty of cases where putting any of the quality EMF protectors does zilch.
Looking at research may not indicate how EMF affects you individually. A cookie cutter approach here may lead one to a false conclusion Putting a protector and using methods to neutralize the supposed harmful effects effects will yield more insight than armchair theories by themselves, at the least.
A sample of references:
http://www.weepinitiative.org/LINKEDDOCS/scientific/08_Havas_CFL_SCENIHR.pdf
http://www.bioinitiative.org/
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/02/09/new-study-confirms-electrical-pollution-from-cell-phones-and-wifi-is-hazardous.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/Cross-Currents-Promise-Electromedicine-Electropollution/dp/0874775361/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354997200&sr=1-2&keywords=electropollution
http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-50th-Anniversary/dp/0226458121/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355003209&sr=1-1&keywords=thomas+kuhn
Having a strong marketing background, I’ve seen first hand how “Independent 3rd party research” is bent to help turn a profit. The best way to judge whose motives are pure is by following the money trail.
Is it still harmful if the monitor is over 1 meter away?
So… much… scaremongering.
And so little science or evidence.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Not enough evidence? How about 2000 studies from all around the world. These are from reputable universities and scientists (University of Washington for example). Wake the hell up, wireless is the biggest biological disaster to date. There are serious health effects on every cell of the body! It is especially dangerous for children as they absorb more radiation. There is NO adapting to wireless, this WILL harm you, period, especially now that the signal strengths are much stronger and wireless is being installed everywhere. See this link for almost 2000 studies. Even reading the table of contents should scare the crap out of you. Not only is it dangerous, it’s a junk technology and wifi is easily hacked. Baby monitors are often hacked as well. .bioinitiative.org/table-of-contents/
Am familiar with the medical literature re the dangers of this technology. How about church nurseries with wireless pagers?
I didnt even have one on my list at all. I can take time to watch my kid like people use too. however my pushy mom in law ( even about vacc) put it on list. just made me madder at her then I was. She just kept trying to tell us what to do. so i canceled her baby shower. she now has gotten the point that she raised her kids and we are raising ours our way so butt out. helps that deap down she knows she abused my hubby by locking him in a closest. even tho she wont outright admite it. she knows butt out or you don’t see grandbaby at all. i think she knows we would win a grandparents rights fight becuase she has told to many peolpe that she wishes my hubby had died of cancer 11 yrs ago rather then her other son. so what right does she have to the kid that came from him! ok off my soup box. i wont have a moniter even in my home. got enough of the eletirc stuff going dont need more cancer cuasers and that close to my baby. even my alarm clock is battery run so its lower in junk
We had 10 children and I never used any monitor. I did it the old fashioned way and listened and checked on the babies. Life is so much more enjoyable if you stay away from all the “stuff” that everyone says you need for you little ones.
When WAS the last time there was significant public outcry when a cellphone tower was being built next to a… whatever (school, business, homes, etc.)? Fact is, cell phone towers are everywhere and are we are quite literally bathed in EMF throughout our day. It’s simply a false illusion we can “protect” ourselves from massive doses of EMF – unless, perhaps, you live very very far away from civilization (and you’re probably still getting exposed to some EMF even in the middle of the Antarctic). Work, home, school, places of business, and just walking down the street – virtually all have significant microwave radiation. There’s very, very few places in the world where we can get away from it. As long as we consider cell phone and wireless high-frequency radio communications in general essential to our daily lives – and given that hundreds of thousands of cell phones are activated, daily, it doesn’t seem likely we’ll ever get away from not considering it essential – it’s here to stay. Unless you want to wrap your home in a Faraday cage and remove all technology from it entirely you WILL get a big dose of EMF every day of your life.
Scientists have continually ping-ponged between cell phones being toxic and cancerous to being completely harmless. Not that it’s an excuse to not be safe, but I don’t think they really know. Cell phones have been pretty wide use for about 20 years now – while I know the tech has been around much, much longer I got my first cell in 1994 – and unregulated Wifi spectrum legally has to be less than a watt (not that it’s hard to find radios that will transmit in the 2-4 watt range but that’s still very trivial power) and while cell tower microwave can run at considerably higher power the phones themselves run at very low wattage. Perhaps some people have hyper-sensitivity to EMF but I believe it’s mostly psychosomatic just as thousands of idiopathic and autoimmune conditions seem to be.
In short, don’t base your assumptions that wireless baby monitors are “harmful” to your infant child from one unscientific blog post that attempts to stir the radical assertion that all EMF is terrifically harmful and will somehow impede the growth and intelligence and health of your child.