There are more and more products entering the EMF protection space every day as companies recognize consumer demand. The problem is, many of these new products are not based on any research, and likely don’t work. However, one product I’ve found that does work, and I’m recommending more and more is a WiFi router guard.
Essentially what a router guard is, is a small faraday cage custom built to house a home WiFi router. Although there are quite a few different ways to protect your home from the EMF radiation emitted by your router, a router guard is one of the best.
Don’t worry though, I’ll cover all the different ways to protect against WiFi in this article.
However, I think it’s important that we talk about what a Router Guard is, how it works, which ones you should buy (and which ones you shouldn’t). I’ll try to stay as focused on this as I can, but I think it’s important as part of this article to briefly talk about WiFi is even dangerous in the first place.
So let’s start there.
Note: If you’re just wondering what WiFi router guard I recommend, I like this one you can pick up on Amazon.
Why Do I Need A Router Guard – WiFi Danger Basics
I
I think it’s really important to give you a little understanding of why you might want a product like the Router Guard I’m going to review here in a minute.
What Is “WiFi Radiation”
When you’re reading about EMF radiation, you’ll probably come across the term “WiFi radiation,” which is actually just referring to the radiofrequency radiation emitted from a WiFi router. This is no different than the RF radiation emitted from your cell-phone or smart meter.
Really, the primary difference is just the fact that WiFi routers are built to push that radiofrequency far, and penetrate walls. WiFi routers are also constantly emitting so that you can connect any time, and stay connected.
This results in constant EMF radiation exposure, which certainly has health effects. If you want to read more specifically about the potential negative health effects of EMF radiation exposure, you can use the search bar on my site, or visit the knowledge section. I’m not going to cover it here so that I can stay a bit more on topic.
WiFi Radiation And It’s Impact On Our Sleep
If you haven’t read my article on EMF radiation and how it affects our sleep, I’d highly encourage you to do that real quick.
I honestly think that this is one of the least talked about issues with having too much EMF radiation in our homes, especially from WiFi routers.
Although the WiFi router guard I’m going to review here shortly is a great option for limiting your exposure to WiFi radiation, I also have a great article on how you can automatically turn your WiFi router off at night that you should take a look at.
So, back in 2013, the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Melbourne in Australis conducted an extensive study on how EMF radiation, specifically RF radiation from things like routers and cell-phones, affects the quality of our sleep.
What they found is extremely telling.
They discovered that our bodies interpret the electrical nature of EMF radiation similar to how we perceive light, in that our pineal gland (the gland responsible for producing and regulating melatonin) inhibits that production. Remember that melatonin is the hormone that regulates the quality and quantity of our sleep, as well as our circadian rhythm.
So, essentially they found that when you have large sources of EMF radiation around you, such as a WiFi router on in the home, or a cell-phone next to your bed, that it is likely to decrease the quality of your sleep.
When we don’t get good sleep, our bodies don’t have all the tools they need to fight disease, cleanse toxins, repair cellular damage, and so much more.
How WiFi Radiation Affects Our Bodies
There are many symptoms that come about as a result of EMF radiation exposure, especially if you have something called Electro-hypersensitivity (EHS).
However, we don’t often hear much about this actually happens, how does EMF radiation from things like WiFI actually affect our bodies.
Our bodies produce between 2 and 3 million red blood cells every single second, of every single day. Since we’re producing them so fast, the creation process of these cells is extremely vulnerable to disruption from things like EMF radiation.
Inside each of our cells is a small membrane that you can think of sort of like an antenna. The primary responsibility of this microscopic antenna is to communicate with the brain and the body through chemical signals. However, research has shown us that they can also pick up signals from EMF radiation, and they interpret it as danger and go into a sort of defense mode.
So, when you’re exposed to large amounts of radiation from things like your WiFi router, it is believed that it inhibits a few different things
- Impacts our bodies ability to create round, complete, and healthy cells (see dark field microscopy videos for examples)
- Reduces our cells ability to absorb healthy and crucial nutrients
- It impacts our cells’ ability to shed toxins and free radicals.
It should be pretty easy to understand that the combination of these things reduces your body’s ability to function at optimal health.
Possible Increased Risk Of Certain Cancers
In my article on cell phone radiation (also a form of radiofrequency radiation similar to WiFi) I go in-depth about the hundreds of studies that have been conducted related to EMF radiation and increased risk of certain cancers.
So, I won’t go into much depth here, but it’s important to know that there have been many studies that connect the possibility of radiofrequency radiation from things like WiFi increasing your risk of certain cancers.
It’s also crucial to remember that the damage from EMF radiation is cumulative. So, over a lifetime, the more we can limit our exposure, the less the health impacts will be.
Alright, now that we’ve talked about some of the risks of WiFi radiation, let’s talk about the WiFi router guard, including what it is, how it works, and my experience with it.
WiFi Router Guard Review – What It Is and How It Works
So, first, let’s talk about what a WiFi router guard really is. The product was developed, I believe, first by a company called Smart Meter Guard, which has a whole line of EMF protection products.
Their flagship product is a smart meter shield, which many companies now make. However, their newest product is the WiFi router guard you see pictured here.
Basically, this is a small faraday cage specifically designed to put a WiFi router inside. You simply unplug your WiFi router, place it inside, feed the cords through the small hole, and it boots back up.
Take a quick look at the video below from the company to get a better idea of how and why the WiFi router guard works.
As you can see from the video, the WiFi router guard uses the faraday concept to block the RF radiation emitted from your router, without inhibiting your ability to use WiFi.
Essentially the metal mesh of the cage is smaller than the shortest wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation, preventing it from escaping almost entirely.
Can You Still Use WiFi With The Router Guard?
Yes!
If you watched the video, the founder talked about this. Essentially the WiFi router guard will reduce the range by a bit. He mentioned it reduces it by about 10-20%, but my experience and estimate put that as much as 30%.
However, it’s important to know that many home WiFi routers are much more powerful than are needed for the space, and often penetrate farther than you need them to.
So, even if the WiFi router guard reduces the range of your connection, it may still be plenty to be connected anywhere in your home.
Their website also mentions that the router guard will not decrease upload or download speeds at all, which has been my experience as well.
I think if you are staying in range of your router when it’s in the router guard, and not forcing it to strain to maintain a connection, you should still have pretty good speeds in general.
How Much Radiation Does The WiFi Router Guard Block?
Ok, so it’s important to clarify something here.
Not that many materials truly block EMF radiation in the classic sense of the word. Typically, they do something called attenuate the radiation. In physics, attenuation is defined as the gradual loss of force as something passes through a material.
For example:
- Walls attenuate sound as it passes through.
- Your tinted windows attenuate sunlight
- The lead vest you wore at the dentist attenuates the x-rays.
Materials like copper, aluminum, or in this case, the metal mesh of the router guard, scatter the photons as they pass through, dramatically reducing their force.
That is why when you look at many of the EMF protection products on the market, you’ll often see this attenuation defined in terms of decibels (dB). Take a look at the chart below to understand a bit better how a decibel value relays a material’s ability to attenuate EMF radiation.
The WiFi router guard from Smart Meter Guard states that it “blocks” between 90-95% of the EMF radiation, meaning it will have an attenuation rating between 10 and 15 dB.
Where Is The Best Place To Buy WiFi Router Guard?
So, there are a few products on the market that we’ll talk about, but first, let’s answer the original question.
The WiFi router guard I’ve been mostly referring to in this video is made by Smart Meter Guard, and you can buy the product in two places:
Either way, you’ll be buying from the same company, just depends on which you prefer to order from, personally, I ordered mine from Amazon because I love the fast free shipping (if you have prime).
My Experience With the WiFi Router Guard
So, I bought this from the Smart Meter Guard Amazon listing, and I bought the smaller one pictured above. Obviously, if you have a much larger router or one that needs to stand on it’s edge, then you may want to look into buying the bigger router guard to make sure it will fit.
I unplugged my router, placed it inside, and plugged it back in, there was no more setup than that, I found the whole process super simple.
After walking around with my laptop, I did certainly notice that the range was reduced a bit, but it didn’t affect us in our home. If you had a much larger house then this is something you’ll want to take into account.
The speed seemed about the same for us, and overall it was a pretty good experience.
When I tested the radiation with my EMF meter (I used my favorite, the Trifield TF2 for this test), it was almost identical in results to the video I linked above. It certainly does reduce the RF radiation exposure from the device, which I was impressed by.
Other Products For WiFi Router Protection
Alright, now let’s take just a second and talk about some other products that do something very similar. Now, there are other ways to reduce your WiFi exposure that we’ll talk about in a minute. This is just focusing specifically on the products available that help to reduce the radiation from your router.
Signal Tamer For WiFi Protection
The company and website lessemf.com sells something they call the “signal tamer” that you can see here. The product works almost identical to the Router Guard I talk about above, but instead of it being a stiff metal cage, it is instead more of like a flexible mesh bag that you wrap around the router.
So this would work as you think, you essentially just do your best to wrap the mesh signal tamer around your router the best you can, allowing the cables to go out the hole. You can use something like cable ties to keep it wrapped closely to the cord.
Less EMF mentions that it “reduces radiation output by 90-95%,” which is extremely similar to what Smart Meter Guard mentions.
One notable difference is that the Signal Tamer they say reduces the range by about half, instead of the 10-30% that the WiFi router guard claims.
JRS Eco WiFi Router
Another product that I really like, in fact, I wrote a whole post about it, is the JRS Eco WiFi router, which is a bit different than these other products.
I won’t go too deep on this, since I have written an entire post, but I’ll give you the summary.
Basically, this is an actual router, whose firmware has been adjusted so that it essentially emits less radiation.
To quote from my other post:
“Your normal WiFi router pulses at 10Hz, or 10 times every second. If you were to take an EMF meter like the Trifield TF2, or an Acoustimeter, and turn the volume on, you would actually be able to hear this happening.
With the JRS Eco-WiFi firmware installed, the router will emit the same signal, but at 1Hz, or only one time every second. This ultimately results in a 90% reduction in EMF radiation coming from the device.
Next, the JRS Eco-WiFi router is altered so that it allows you to set the transmission power for what you actually need, instead of just blasting at full power all the time. For example, if you live in a small or medium-sized home, you likely do not need a router that is transmitting at full power. This would just be exposing you too much higher radiation for absolutely no gain, as it is pushing the WiFi much farther than you actually need it.”
It’s a really unique and interesting product, and if you’re at all interested in checking it out, I believe you can only get it directly from the JRS website.
Alright, now we’ve talked about a few of the more popular products to protect against WiFi radiation. You will almost certainly find other products if you search around online, but these are the ones I currently believe in and trust to work and do what the companies claim.
Now let’s talk about some of the other good steps you can take to reduce your EMF radiation exposure to WiFi!
Other Ways To Reduce WiFi Radiation
So, we could go with the obvious answer of just using your internet less, but that is tough for many people and certainly impractical.
So, there are basically two routes you can go.
The first one is to just try to turn your WiFi off when you aren’t using it. If you are just sitting around reading, or doing chores or other stuff in the house, just turn off the router or unplug it.
I wrote an article a little while ago about why you should turn your WiFi off night. Which, is similar to the stuff I talked about above, specifically how EMF radiation affects our sleep. In that
That way you don’t have to worry about it, and it will automatically turn off as you’re sleeping. Even if you’re using the WiFi router guard or one of these other products, I still think this is a good idea.
The second thing you can do, which is almost certainly the best long-term decision, is to commit to using hard-wired internet instead.
The idea here is that you use a modem and a switch to provide ethernet access points to the places you use internet most often, and completely eliminate the need for WiFi. Now, obviously there are some drawbacks to this, such as the convenience of being able to move an internet-connected laptop around the home.
However, eliminating WiFi in your home is a great way to reduce your exposure to WiFi radiation. If you’re curious exactly how to do this, I actually wrote up a whole guide that you can check out.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I think doing something about your WiFi is a good idea, whether that is just turning it off at night, setting up hard-wired internet, or getting a WiFi router guard.
This is certainly a simple solution for an obvious problem, and my experience with the product was overall really positive.
If you have any questions or need any help, feel free to contact me!
