Charles Bolta will be happy to do it for you. One of only twenty electro-ecologists in the country, he tests houses for electromagnetic fields (EMFs). A former lighting designer (and self-described "hippie-turned-new-ager"), the appropriately named Bolta was thrown into his new profession by a bicycle accident. After a thorough workover by a hospital's high-powered diagnostic tools, he claims that he discovered he was sensitive to electricity.
"I was doing a seminar on yoga and spent a lot of time being quiet, peaceful and relaxed," he explains. "But I couldn't figure out why I was so hyper. Then I looked up and saw the fluorescent lights and thought, `Son of a bitch--it's the electricity.'"
Bolta's newfound interest in EMFs led him to a New York health fair, where he met Spark Burmaster, America's original electro-ecologist. Burmaster, a former electrician from Wisconsin, received his training at the German Bau Biology Institute, and in turn taught Bolta how to cure what ails people by measuring and reducing the electrical fields in their homes. "It's a lot like what I was doing," Bolta says, "because in display lighting, you're trying to figure out how to make people more comfortable. This just takes it further, because I'm not only looking at the lighting, but the fields that go along with it."
The theory, he says, is that EMFs interfere with everything from brain waves to general energy levels, in the process afflicting the modern family with disorders ranging from depression and eczema to weather sensitivity. Although Bolta acknowledges there's no hard proof that EMFs can be hazardous to your health, he's not the only one investigating the matter here in Colorado. The ground-breaking research on EMFs came out of Boulder in the late Seventies. And today, the Public Service Company of Colorado takes the issue so seriously that PSC offers free EMF home inspections. The utilities company also has started hanging its wires in a way that reduces the fields, and last year poured $25 million into research on the issue, according to PSC spokesman Mark Stutz.
"The problem is interpreting the data," Stutz says. "I can go into your home and tell you that your TV is giving off three milligaus...but whether that's an unsafe level--whether there is a safe or unsafe level--nobody really knows." Bolta's inspections go considerably further than PSC's, and his fees reflect it: A thorough survey of a moderate-sized house, including air and water sampling, can cost up to $500. Bolta not only tells his customers their EMF ratings, but actually helps them reduce the fields. Today Bolta is on a follow-up call. The couple renting this south Denver home hadn't slept soundly since they'd moved in a year and a half before. They had resorted to separate beds, but weren't pleased with that solution. When he first checked the house, Bolta measured EMFs coming off the plumbing and found several pipes running under the bedroom floor. It's common for electricians to ground their systems on plumbing and for power companies to shoot electricity straight into the ground, he says; EMFs then sneak into houses through cement foundations, sinks, toilets and ungrounded appliances. Initially Bolta recommended that the couple move their bed to another side of the room and at night shut off the circuit breakers leading to the bedroom. He also suggested they toss out their digital alarm clocks and stop using the kitchen's fluorescent light. Two weeks later, he demonstrates how a digital alarm clock raises the EMF on the bed a volt or two. Turning off all electricity to the bedroom sends the field from about seven volts to an eighth of a volt. "Pretty weird, huh?" Bolta asks. He talks as he works, offering a constant stream of theories proven and suspected. "Now watch this--you take a compass and run it along the bed--look how far off it goes." Springs carry magnetic fields, he explains, which is a good reason to sleep on a foam mattress or futon.
Once his clients began shutting off the electricity, they started sleeping soundly. "My husband tends to be skeptical of everything, because he runs a health food store and knows how these kinds of things can be," says the woman, who asked that their names not be used. "But we noticed an immediate difference."
Now Bolta is checking out the woman's home office. She's a reflexologist with an affinity for crystals, and worries that EMFs from the metal desk, stereo system and electric foot-soaker may be keeping her clients from relaxing.
Bolta pulls out his gear--mostly homemade, low-tech instruments, including a "buzzstick" whose ceramic ferrite core came from a 1940s radio antenna. He puts a ground on the chair, pulls plugs, flips switches, studies the dials and delivers the good news: The EMFs aren't too bad in here. "We could fix this whole house if we wanted," Bolta says. "But it could get pretty expensive, which probably isn't worth it since they're just renting. And then what about the rest of the neighborhood?
