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What we don’t test, and why

Most home-health testing is honest and useful. Some of it is not. You deserve to know where we draw the line, so this page is about something we deliberately keep off your report: EMF, and the idea sold alongside it, “dirty electricity.”

Our bar for what we test

Before anything earns a place on your Stasis Score, it has to clear three tests. This is the same bar we hold every exposure to, from lead at your tap to the fine particles in your air.

  1. A settled dose-response harm

    Peer-reviewed evidence shows that more exposure means more harm, through a mechanism we understand. Lead does this. So do fine particles and radon.

  2. A home-relevant, measurable exposure

    The hazard actually shows up in a real home, at a level we can measure with an instrument or a certified lab, keyed to your address and your rooms.

  3. An action that changes the number

    Once we find it, there is something you can do that lowers your exposure, and we can tell you whether it worked.

If a hazard fails any one of these, putting it on your report would be noise, or worse, a reason to sell you a fix for a problem you may not have. EMF fails at least two of the three. Here is the honest version of why.

Where EMF actually stands in the science

EMF is not one thing. It covers the radio waves from your phone and wifi, the magnetic fields around power lines and wiring, and a marketing term called dirty electricity. The evidence is different for each, so it is worth taking them one at a time. None of this is us waving the concern away. It is us reading the same mainstream science a regulator reads.

Radio waves from phones, wifi, and cell towers

Studied for decades

This is the most studied of the three. In 2011 the World Health Organization’s cancer agency, IARC, classified radiofrequency fields as possibly carcinogenic (Group 2B). That label sounds alarming, so it is worth being precise about what it means. Group 2B is the tier IARC uses when there is limited evidence and a possible link the studies can neither confirm nor rule out. Here that came from a weak signal for one type of brain tumor among the heaviest early mobile-phone users, not a confirmed effect.

Since then the evidence has gotten stronger, and it points the other way. A 2024 systematic review commissioned by the WHO, pooling decades of human studies, found that mobile-phone use likely does not increase the risk of brain cancer. The WHO’s standing position is that no adverse health effect has been causally linked to wireless exposure at the levels people actually encounter.

The mainstream safety framework, the ICNIRP guidelines, is built around the one effect that is real and established at high exposures: tissue heating. Everyday phone and wifi exposure sits far below that threshold.

Magnetic fields from power lines and wiring

Weak, unexplained signal

Extremely low frequency magnetic fields, the kind around power lines and household wiring, also carry an IARC Group 2B label, from a 2002 review. The basis is a consistent but weak association between higher average residential fields and childhood leukemia. Two things keep it from being treated as a home-health priority: there is no accepted biological mechanism for how these low-level fields could cause cancer, and the WHO’s own assessment concludes the evidence is not strong enough to be considered causal. The association is real enough to keep studying, and too weak and too unexplained to build a paid home test around.

“Dirty electricity”

Not a recognized measure

Dirty electricity is a marketing term for high-frequency voltage on home wiring, usually sold with a meter that reads in Graham-Stetzer units and a filter to fix it. Unlike radio waves and magnetic fields, it is not a recognized exposure metric. The international guidelines do not define a limit for it, and the peer-reviewed reviews that examined the health studies found the work so methodologically flawed that no valid conclusion about biological effects can be drawn. We will not test for, or sell a filter for, an exposure the science has not established as a valid, health-relevant metric.

So why isn’t EMF on your Stasis report?

Put the three cards next to our bar and the answer is straightforward. For radio waves, the best current evidence does not show harm at home exposures, so there is no settled dose-response to grade you against. For magnetic fields, there is a weak association but no mechanism, no causal finding, and no meaningful home action that would change your risk. For dirty electricity, there is not even an agreed way to measure it.

So we leave all of it off. Not because EMF is a taboo subject, but because putting a number on your report that we could not stand behind, or that would nudge you toward buying a fix you do not need, would break the one thing this whole product is built on.

We would rather spend your report on the exposures where the science is settled and the fix is real: lead and PFAS in your water, fine particles and radon in your air, and the carbon dioxide in the rooms where you sleep and work. That is what our methodology is built to grade.

If you’re still concerned

Plenty of thoughtful people worry about EMF, and that is reasonable. New technology, invisible exposure, and a real Group 2B label are enough to make anyone want a straight answer. We are not here to tell you the concern is silly. We are telling you what the weight of evidence currently supports, which is that at the exposures inside a normal home, EMF is not where your attention or your money is best spent.

If you want to go deeper, the WHO and ICNIRP pages are the mainstream, non-commercial sources, and they are more useful than a meter sold with the anxiety it is meant to measure. And if the science shifts, we will change our answer. That is the deal.

Questions people ask

Does Stasis test for EMF?

No. We deliberately leave EMF off your report. At the exposures found in a normal home, the weight of mainstream evidence does not support it as a health priority, and it does not clear our bar for what we test: a settled dose-response harm, a measurable home exposure, and a fix that actually lowers your risk. We spend your report on exposures like lead, PFAS, fine particles, and radon, where all three are true.

Is EMF from phones and wifi dangerous?

At everyday levels, the best current evidence says no. Radiofrequency fields carry an IARC Group 2B (possibly carcinogenic) label from 2011, based on limited evidence. Since then a 2024 systematic review commissioned by the WHO found that mobile-phone use likely does not increase the risk of brain cancer, and the WHO's position is that no adverse health effect has been causally linked to wireless exposure below international guideline levels. The one established effect, tissue heating, only occurs far above normal use.

What about dirty electricity?

Dirty electricity is a marketing term for high-frequency voltage on home wiring, not a recognized exposure metric. International safety guidelines do not define a limit for it, and peer-reviewed reviews of the health studies found them too methodologically flawed to draw any valid conclusion about biological effects. We do not test for it, and we do not sell filters for it.

Sources

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