Hello! This is another is a series of videos in which I will be answering questions submitted to RF Safe by Email.
A fairly common question we get is whether or not it’s necessary to have a radiation-protective shield for your laptop, and why RF Safe hasn’t offered one in over 20 years even though we were the first to make them in the late 1990s. It’s a good question, and the answer may surprise you.
Buy a better laptop, and keep it off your lap..
First of all, calling these computers laptops is a bad thing, as they should never be used on your lap when possible to avoid this.
RF Safe used to offer laptop shields over 2 decades ago, when wireless WiFi technology for laptops wasn’t the primary form of internet connection, and stopped offering them when laptops began to rely on wireless. At this point RF Safe realized the transmitter was too close to the body for shielding to be effective. Placing a piece of shielding on your legs will not protect your body.
Companies selling this style anti-radiation laptop case are misleading consumers about the increase risk of using a laptop against the body with completely ineffective radiation shielding.
Nowadays, consumers have a much wider variety of lower radiation choices. Certain laptops emit much less radiation than other, older models. There are very distinctly different types of radiation coming from your laptop. Magnetic fields as a result of spinning motors, such as the hard drive and CD Rom, and microwave radiation in the form of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Thus, setting your laptop on a so-called radiation shield will only protect the part of your body directly below the shield. Laptop shielding designed like this will be useless when it comes to protecting the most important parts of your body, especially when pregnant. Your groin and torso aren’t benefitting from a shielded femur bone when the WiFi transmitter is on your lap.
One great reason to upgrade your old laptop is that most older laptops contain at least two high-rpm motors, so your exposure to electromagnetic fields is very high.
You’ll notice I said only certain laptops emit more magnetic radiation, and this is true. Any laptop with a disc drive will, because the spinning motors that turn the disc create a great deal of electromagnetic radiation. We have safer and better technology now using solid-state drives with no moving parts. The future is here!
These computers that require spinning disks for storage are SO last decade. While SSD is more expensive, this technology has actually been available for many years and comes down dramatically in price every year, too
So all you need is a computer with a solid-state drive, or SSD, with no disk drive.
These computers contain no moving parts for storage like the 7200 rpm motors used for hard-drive storage on outdated laptop hardware. No high rpm motor means no high magnetic radiation either, which means no need for protective magnetic/ELF shielding. How convenient!
Since these computers still use wireless technology, you’ll want to make sure that you turn off the wireless connection before placing the computer close to your body, like on your lap. To disable WiFi, it’s just a click. On Windows 10 computers, simply right-click on the Wi-Fi icon in the Windows notification area and select Disable (or Turn off) from the pop-up menu. Make sure you’ve already downloaded any content you need first, as placing your laptop in airplane mode will disable you from being able to access a wireless signal. If you need to turn the WiFi back on, take it off your lap first.
So if you really want to protect yourself, get rid of your old-fashioned computer with spinning motors that produce very strong magnetic fields and invest in a laptop with a solid-state drive. It’s really that simple! The money you save by purchasing a regular laptop case versus a shielded laptop case will probably be enough to cover the upgrade to avoid the strong B-field radiation, otherwise known as magnetic fields, altogether!
You can still use a case to carry it in order to help protect your investment, but there is no need for any kind of magnetic shielding when using SSD technology combined with airplane mode. Its as safe as you can get.
If you have any questions for my mailbag, please send them to support@rfsafe.com
