photon78s Have you tested air quality and chemicals like VOCs?

Speaking of VOCs and other emissions, I have a personal anecdote I have been wanting to share regarding environmental factors. The beginning of my story is here, but in summary a few years ago right before my eye strain started, we renovated our house which included some new electrical wiring (new receptacles and some low-voltage equipment) and painted the entire interior. Soon after, as soon as I would enter my desk/work area I would experience an odd feeling which I would describe as a warmth or buzzing sensation in the back of my head with an accompanying brain fog. At first I thought it was literal warm air from my equipment, but after experimenting with disabling various equipment, I could not identify the cause (the sensation seemed to persist after the equipment was shut down).

I was away from my home environment for a few weeks recently for travel, and upon returning I could feel the sensation more distinctly. There was a very specific cross-over point of about six feet from the wall (for me), and at that point I had my wife try to feel it as well and she felt a similar sensation at about four feet from the wall. While subjective tests were difficult, we tentatively concluded that the sensation was reduced when equipment was unplugged and reduced further (possibly entirely) when power was shut off at the breaker.

So, I'm not sure if I have a newfound EMF or RF sensitivity, or if the newly-painted walls with warm equipment next to them causing VOC emissions were a factor. Interestingly though, every device that has "gone bad" for me went bad after being used in this location. This includes the 2015 15" Retina MacBook Pro, which I had used at work for several years, and was even my "good" comparison display when testing out new monitors. Then, after I bought a few of these MacBooks and used them at home in this area, all of them (including the one at work that I had used for years) became uncomfortable.

      macsforme VOCs are fairly easy to measure with an Airthings device. High frequency sound from wiring can be measured with some iPhone apps, at least to a certain point. If it is high frquency that is pretty easy to block with some materials for testing, or just wearing headphones.

        macsforme

        Some of this sounds like dirty electricity or other kinds of EMF as well. Their may be the option of hiring a so-called "building biologist" but I have no idea the costs or even if they are available where you are. Their are a bunch of options to test EMF, RF and similar with handheld devices as well since you mentioned a specific cross-over point indicates to me perhaps a field that reaches your sensitivity threshold at the location and distance to the source.

        https://safelivingtechnologies.com/building-biology/

        I think in 2012, I went away on vacation and came back and found out they replaced the analog meter with a smart meter in our neighborhood. Felt nauseous for a few days but the symptoms eventually went away.

          macsforme

          One problem with the whole emf madness is even if you do not feel anything right now, this does not discount long term effects such as changes from 20 years of exposure leading to more immediately felt sensitivity down the road.

          And as other posts have mentioned, the more mundane electrical issues from bad wiring and dirty electricity can also affect the power electronics of the computer causing it to flicker and in turn adding to your symptoms. This to me may be a factor contributing to your observations of devices going bad after being used in that specific location.

          A similar power electronics effect might have happened to my once good M2 MBP touchbar causing it to exhibit significantly more pixel flicker considering their were to my knowledge no relevant software changes prior to it going bad.

              photon78s Great info and sounds spot-on. I have long suspected there is a cumulative effect, or to put it another way there may be an overall “load” that your body can tolerate, but after exceeding it we begin to develop symptoms (this is in general, not accounting for every single individual’s condition). This theory would provide for the possibility of healing, if the overall load can be reduced below the individual’s tolerance threshold.

              I found a local EMF specialist who supposedly has high-end measurement equipment, who will do a comprehensive home evaluation (including client education and further referrals) for about $600. This is fairly steep, but we are considering doing it at some point.

              photon78s A similar power electronics effect might have happened to my once good M2 MBP touchbar causing it to exhibit significantly more pixel flicker considering their were to my knowledge no relevant software changes prior to it going bad.

              To clarify, do you believe the laptop may have been permanently affected by these electrical problems, such that the strain-inducing behavior is there to stay? Or are you suggesting that your body/brain developed a negative association with the device, but the shift on the hardware itself is temporary depending on the power connection?

                    macsforme To clarify, do you believe the laptop may have been permanently affected by these electrical problems, such that the strain-inducing behavior is there to stay? Or are you suggesting that your body/brain developed a negative association with the device, but the shift on the hardware itself is temporary depending on the power connection?

                    I think both can be reasons. I know the mbp changed permanently verified through pixel flicker videos because I had recorded it showing almost no pixel flicker prior to the "change". Power of suggestion and nocebo effect is powerful but in my case the videos show the change and edit: the laptop remained that way on battery power and with no peripherals attached so it is not solely due to negative association. It does not surprise me that complex electronics are super sensitive.

                    Do let us know what the EMF specialist says if you go ahead with the evaluation. I sometimes check EMF stuff here:

                    https://microwavenews.com/

                        photon78s When it comes to macbooks, one factor is - apple removed grounding plug as standard, so you have to buy plug extension in order to have grounding. If it is not grounded, then laptop aluminum body during contact with your arms will cause tingling electrical feel. And if you use battery only during a contact as a possible solution, then there was a report that EMF reader picked up exponentially more EMF exposure whilst using battery. So generally grounding when it is possible is a positive thing, since you do not want electric current to flow through your body.

                        Dirty electricity the most important factor where you are stationary for long time, usually bedroom, and workplace. And to my understanding, even if EMF is lower frequency, it probably has high energy.

                        And of course WIFI which is set at 30dB maximum as standard now, without even vendors allowing to change it down. I am running my devices at home at 1dB transmit power, and in public spaces 1dB to 3dB. Never had issues, but if you know that dB is exponential measure, this is very significant reduction. Long term effects of staring at a screen very close to transmitter are well documented, from deniers of any effects and those who claim it has clear long term consequences. Just like it was with cigarettes long time ago. So if you do not want to gamble, precautions can be taken, by knowing simple radio propagation rule - inverse square law. Generally with every meter from non directional transmitter which all consumer electronics are, EMF reduces exponentially. My personal sensitivity and test are unquestionable and not placebo. One of the scenarios where I really feel sick just by using my phone for 30 seconds, is - being in a location far away from cell tower, and in smallish closed room, e.g. basement. In this scenario since cell tower is far away, your phone will transmit maximum in order to reach cell tower, and signal will bounce many times from the walls, creating not very nice place for your health. The same goes with travelling in a car with a cell phone, especially using data a lot. But luckily there are now solutions such as EMF blocking clothing, but this is whole new subject.

                            Donux

                            Agree. I have been following this topic since 2007, way before I noticed anything wrong with computer screens etc. I used to turn down the transmitter power on the wifi router before now going back to all wired ethernet. I have heard about the non-linearities regarding effects independent of power level and inverse square law. Don't remember the source off the top of my head. Their is shielding of many types and materials but again probably the wrong place to go more in depth on this.

                              Example of how to adjust wifi transmit power. Someone mentioned lowering overall radiation in dense apartment situation.

                              https://community.tp-link.com/us/home/forum/topic/205774

                              My over-simplified explanation is that you are energy and your body does not like the "energy interference" of these external sources. This also applies to light from screens through the eyes and the skin.

                              Some list of transmit power standards and claims of evidence of risk or effects:

                              https://bioinitiative.org/rf-color-charts/

                              Whatever the case my be, as Donux said, take precautions if you don't want to gamble.

                              6 days later

                              photon78s I know the mbp changed permanently verified through pixel flicker videos because I had recorded it showing almost no pixel flicker prior to the "change". Power of suggestion and nocebo effect is powerful but in my case the videos show the change and edit: the laptop remained that way on battery power and with no peripherals attached so it is not solely due to negative association. It does not surprise me that complex electronics are super sensitive.

                              If it’s true that our displays are being permanently degraded by dirty power or other similar causes, and if this is a widespread phenomenon, then I find this rather pessimistic since it’s something that can happen unknowingly and (I assume) fixing the cause can be expensive.

                              I don’t know if you’re in a position to try it, but I would be curious whether a full OS and/or firmware restore would restore the original display condition. There was another user here who suggested that certain things would cause macOS to start generating eye strain, but an OS reinstallation would fix it (at least on a certain firmware version).

                                  macsforme

                                  I no longer have the laptop but I did do a simple os refresh (but not bios/firmware rollback) and didn't notice any improvement. The other possibility is some firmware/bios update or similar "intervention" occurred that I didn't notice. My T480s would alternate between almost no pixel flicker and moderate flicker depending on how long it was powered on or off.

                                    I recently bought a used T460. It visibly shows vertical-only pixel flicker - every 2nd column has a brighter color - which can be seen with the bare eye when slightly moving the mouse cursor and following it. Or by moving the whole notebook, which has the same optical effect. Sometimes the flicker is not noticeable, which I have yet to find the reason for, but now that you say it, yes it could depend on the power-on time. Interestingly, although I suffer from every kind of eye strain we are discussing in this forum (PWM, app/os eye strain, bad GPU output, screen brightness), this kind of visible flicker does not cause eye strain for me. I saw someone else talk about it in a ThinkPad forum, but not in the context of eye strain.

                                      KM could it be VCOM that your describing ?

                                        2 months later

                                        Larkenn Sorry for the late reply. It would be complicated to go back to my old office. The somewhat good news (but very frustrating) is that it seems that I don't get really affected anymore unless the sun is really shining hard in the office (this has happened perhaps twice in the last month). The paint on the walls is matte, but the walls have a lot of structure. I do think this might simply be the culprit, but I still fail to understand why it got better unless there is some sort of built tolerance that doesn't trigger the symptoms unless passed a certain threshold (and is that actually a good thing or could it lead to long-term consequences?). I have asked to have the office repainted so we'll see. I have also been extremely stressed with work recently, so although this is not great, I don't think stress can explain the situation.

                                        What I don't understand at all is that in my case, it seems that a very limited number of situations can trigger an enormous response, while I can do many other things daily like using my iPhone, playing my PS5 on my video-projector, … . When not at my desk, I work a lot in a cleanroom where the light is anything but natural (because this would expose the photo-resist) with tons of semiconductor equipment that is shielded obviously but also with tons of screens/computers that I use with seemingly no issues.

                                        The one more piece to the puzzle is that I acquired a PS Portal this week (a handheld device that allows to play the PS5 by means of streaming it to the device) and this clearly makes me nauseous. This device is actually known to have stutter issues (because its display runs at 60Hz while the PS5 output is 59.94Hz, leading to frames being skipped). Interestingly, according to Reddit, many people don't seem to see or be aware of this stuttering. To me, it is super obvious and makes me feel really sick, like perhaps some sort of motion sickness. I have never suffered from motion sickness in cars, buses, or even rollercoasters so I am not sure what this is about but it is clear as day, and happens almost right away. But again, I fail to understand how there are so few devices or situations that seem to trigger those fairly massive symptoms. (Obviously, the device is going back to the store!).

                                          dev