Musicians and Electromagnetic Radiation Health Risks

By Sean Alexander Carney of Safe Tech International

Musicians today must be “Jacks of all trades” when it comes to navigating the increasingly internet-connected world of technology. From increasingly complex stage rigs that include wireless products to digital music production and sustaining social media engagement with fans, musicians must utilise an array of technologies to survive in the music industry. The question that is beginning to be asked as they are increasingly exposed to the digital demands of industry is “how is this affecting health and wellbeing?”

It is a vitally important question, especially as stage performances have grown in both stature and scale and have become resonant electromagnetically driven events and environments that are not without their risks to audiences and musicians. On stage wireless devices can remove the need for cables and are appealing to musicians who believe they remove onstage hazards and promote mobility. Audiences wirelessly continue their social media pursuits and technological voyeurism through their smart phones. Wireless stage lighting rigs utilise electromagnetically powerful LED systems making spotlights brighter than ever and stage atmospherics wirelessly controllable. These technological realities are sold as progress – sold as “better.” Yet, as this article reveals, such technologies create hazards of their own which are kept out of the marketing angles and hype, leaving professionals and consumers neglectful of technological radiation and its health impacts.

Powerful wireless devices from “smart” stage lighting to wireless microphone, guitar and amplification systems introduce EM (electromagnetic) fields into performances which are a form of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) and electromagnetic interference (EMI).

The dense cocktail of wireless radiation from devices can interfere with guitar signal quality and microphone latency, for example, and from a health perspective actively alters us at the cellular electrochemical level when we are exposed to it.

Wireless devices create radiofrequency radiation (RFR), and the most modern systems transmit coherent digitally pulsed RFR, like Blutooth and Wi-Fi does. Scientists note that “An internal EM field is induced in the tissue when a biological tissue is exposed to RF waves” from electronic devices. This can cause physiological as well as “mental and psychological effects.”

As digital wireless technology infiltrates the professional and consumer markets of amplification and musical instrument systems the potential to sustain physiological and neurological injury amidst the densification of legacy and novel wireless technologies in our environment increases. Macular degeneration, Alzheimer’s Disease, Cancer, electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) and digital addiction are just a few of the potential consequences of working in today’s electromagnetically intensified digital environments.

With awareness of the problems faced in today’s technological landscape informed choices concerning technological implementations onstage and in the home can be made to avert serious miscalculations that could impact the health and wellbeing of consumers, audiences, musicians, road crews, event staff and stage performers.

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