For years, electromagnetic hypersensitivity research has faced a fundamental problem. Studies tend to be small, often under 50 participants, with methodologies that vary wildly and assessment tools that aren’t standardized. Geographic scope is usually limited to a single country or region. And the people most affected are often too sick to participate in lengthy research protocols, which means the very population we most need to understand is systematically excluded from the data.
We set out to address this. Between August and December 2025, the EFEIA Foundation released a new evaluation protocol and conducted the first EHS Global Census: a systematic, three-survey assessment of electromagnetic hypersensitivity across 286 participants from more than 20 countries. The goal was straightforward: Collect rigorous data, analyze it honestly, share everything.
What we found confirmed some of what we expected. It contradicted other assumptions. And a few findings ask us to rethink how this condition is understood and treated.
The Protocol
EHS is not a single-variable condition. You cannot assess it by asking “do you feel symptoms near EMF sources?” and expect meaningful data, because the experience involves exposure patterns, symptom profiles, sleep disruption, biological vulnerability, and how all of these interact with each other over time.
We designed a three-survey protocol to capture this complexity.
- Survey A: Multiple Habits & Sensitivities measures lifestyle and EMF exposure, covering technology usage patterns, device proximity during sleep, screen time, grounding practices, hydration, nutrition, and environmental sensitivities beyond EMF. This survey establishes the exposure profile and identifies vulnerability factors, and 283 participants completed it.
- Survey B: 25 Common Symptoms of Potential EHS quantifies symptom burden across six domains: neurological, cardiovascular, dermatological, auditory/visual, cognitive/emotional, and somatosensory. Each of 25 symptoms is rated on a 0-10 scale, yielding a total score from 0-250 that answers a central question: what symptoms are present, and how severe are they? 141 participants completed it.
- Survey C: Sleep Disorders evaluates sleep architecture, symptom severity across 10 dimensions, binary disorder indicators like bruxism and restless legs, and functional impact on daily life. We positioned sleep as the physiological bridge between exposure and symptoms, and 113 participants completed this final survey.
The sequence matters: Lifestyle context first, then symptoms, and, finally, the sleep assessment that often explains the connection between the two.
Surveys were available in Spanish and English. Data collection ran from August through December 2025, with participants from over 20 countries across North America, South America, and Europe.
Who Participated
286 people enrolled in the census. They ranged in age from 10 to 78, with a mean of 44 years. About three-quarters were female.
94 participants completed all three surveys. This 33% completion rate is itself a finding, one we’ll return to shortly.
The population skews female and clusters around midlife. This isn’t sampling bias. It reflects who seeks EHS assessment and, as we’ll see, who bears the greatest burden.
The Completion Paradox
Before presenting our findings, we need to address who isn’t fully represented in them: Of 286 enrolled participants, a third completed all three surveys, seven percent completed two, and sixty percent completed only one. When we compared scores between those who finished everything and those who stopped after one survey, a clear pattern emerged: the single-survey group scored 10% higher on lifestyle exposure, 15% higher on symptoms, and 29% higher on sleep dysfunction. This means that the most affected participants couldn’t finish.
This makes biological sense. Severe sleep disruption impairs cognitive function, energy, concentration, and follow-through capacity, which means the very symptoms we’re trying to measure prevent people from completing the measurement.
The implication is significant: our complete-cohort findings likely underestimate true population burden by 20-30%. The 94 people who finished all three surveys represent the healthiest third of those who sought assessment, and traditional EHS research, which relies on complete-case analysis, systematically excludes the most severely affected.
Five Headline Findings
1. Sleep disruption explains 40.7% of EHS symptom variance
This is the dominant finding in the entire dataset. When we correlated all survey scores against each other, the sleep-symptom relationship emerged as the strongest by a wide margin: a correlation of 0.638, explaining over 40% of symptom variance, which is more than double any other factor we measured.
This doesn’t mean sleep matters more than EMF exposure. Sleep itself is affected by EMF, often profoundly. What the data reveals is that sleep functions as a bridge, the physiological system where EMF exposure translates into functional impairment. When sleep is disrupted, everything downstream suffers: cellular repair, glymphatic clearance of metabolic waste, autonomic regulation, immune function, pain threshold modulation. The body accumulates damage it cannot repair, symptoms worsen, and worsening symptoms further disrupt sleep, creating a vicious cycle that can accelerate rapidly.
Sleep disruption is the canary in the coal mine. It’s often the first system to show strain, and it’s where we can most clearly observe the effects of electromagnetic exposure on biology.
We found something else in Survey C that crystallizes this: Nearly two-thirds of participants reported sleeping six to eight hours per night, which sounds adequate, but only 31% woke feeling refreshed. The sleep is happening; it’s just not working. This is the signature of non-restorative sleep, where duration looks fine but quality has collapsed. The body lies in bed for seven hours but doesn’t recover.
This is why we position sleep assessment as central to the EFEIA protocol. It’s not that sleep is separate from EMF exposure; it’s that sleep is where EMF exposure shows up most clearly.
2. 76% have environmental sensitivities beyond EMF
We asked participants about sensitivities to chemicals, foods, seasonal changes, and other environmental factors. Over three-quarters reported at least one sensitivity beyond electromagnetic fields.
Scent and perfume sensitivity affected 57%. Seasonal sensitivity, 48%. Lactose intolerance, 35%. Food additive sensitivity, 32%. The list continued through sun sensitivity, skin allergies, and histamine intolerance.
The presence of additional sensitivities correlated with worse symptoms. Those with three or more sensitivities showed substantially higher symptom scores than those with none.
Here’s what surprised us: environmental sensitivities explained more symptom variance than EMF exposure habits did. Biological vulnerability appears to be a stronger predictor than exposure level.
This supports what some researchers call the “total load” model of environmental illness. Each person has a finite capacity to process environmental stressors. EMF is one contributor. Chemicals, foods, and other triggers are others. When total load exceeds capacity, symptoms emerge. This explains why two people with identical EMF exposure can have dramatically different experiences. Their buckets are different sizes, and they’re filling them with different things.
3. Eight distinct EHS phenotypes identified
EHS is not one condition with one presentation. The data revealed eight distinct patterns based on the relationship between exposure, symptoms, and sensitivity burden.
We classified participants along two dimensions:
- The first was exposure-symptom pattern: some people have low exposure and low symptoms (Healthy Baseline), others have high exposure but low symptoms (Resilient), still others have low exposure but high symptoms (Reactive), and finally some have high exposure with high symptoms (Overexposed).
- The second dimension was sensitivity burden, meaning how many environmental sensitivities beyond EMF someone reports. We split each exposure-symptom pattern by whether someone had few sensitivities or many, and four base patterns times two sensitivity levels yielded eight phenotypes with substantially different clinical implications.
Reactive individuals, about a fifth of our sample, have already minimized their EMF exposure. Their lifestyle scores indicate good electromagnetic hygiene, yet they still suffer high symptom burden. For these people, further EMF reduction alone will not resolve their situation; they need interventions targeting biological dysfunction, including autonomic support, inflammation reduction, and functional medicine workup.
Resilient individuals show the opposite pattern: high exposure with minimal symptoms. Something is protecting them, and understanding what could unlock prevention strategies for everyone.
The largest high-risk group, representing a fifth of participants, combined high exposure with multiple sensitivities. These people face a double burden and require comprehensive intervention addressing both exposure reduction and broader environmental load.
4. 44.7% require professional-level intervention
Based on composite scores across all three surveys, we stratified participants into risk categories. About 37% fell into low-risk categories needing only lifestyle guidance, while another 18% showed moderate risk that would benefit from coach support.
The remaining 44.7% scored in ranges indicating need for professional evaluation, intensive intervention, or urgent multidisciplinary care. Nearly half of those who sought EHS assessment need more than lifestyle guidance.
And remember: this is the healthiest third of participants, those who could complete all three surveys. True population burden is higher.
5. Women bear 88% of severe EHS burden
The gender distribution shifted dramatically with severity. In categories showing no clear EHS indication, women represented about 60% of participants, with similar proportions at intermediate levels. But in the most severe category, meeting full electrohypersensitivity criteria, women represented 88%. The overall symptom burden in women averaged 38% higher than in men, a statistically significant difference.
This gradient cannot be explained by reporting bias. If women simply reported symptoms more readily, we would see consistent overrepresentation across all severity levels rather than escalation. Something biological is happening.
Possible factors include hormonal influences on nervous system sensitivity, autonomic differences between sexes, higher rates of mast cell and autoimmune conditions in women, and overlap with female-predominant conditions like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. The 31-45 age range shows the highest symptom burden, overlapping with hormonal transitions and peak career demands, which means women in this window face a convergence of vulnerability factors that deserves serious attention.
What This Means
The conventional model of EHS is simple: EMF exposure causes symptoms, so reduce exposure to reduce symptoms.
Our data reveals something more nuanced.
- Sleep disruption is the primary indicator, with the symptom-sleep correlation nearly twice as strong as the exposure-symptom correlation. This doesn’t diminish the role of EMF; rather, it identifies sleep as the system where EMF exposure manifests most visibly. Sleep is the bridge between exposure and functional impairment, which makes it both the clearest diagnostic indicator and a critical intervention target. Address the bedroom environment first, because that’s where exposure and recovery intersect.
- Biological vulnerability matters as much as exposure. Environmental sensitivities explain more symptom variance than EMF exposure habits, which means two people with identical exposure can have completely different outcomes depending on their underlying sensitivity profile. Assessment must include sensitivity screening, not just exposure measurement.
- EHS exists within a broader pattern, with 76% having sensitivities beyond EMF. The total load model applies: EMF is one contributor among many, and reducing any contributor lowers total burden. EMF-only interventions miss the picture for most people.
- Personalization is essential because eight distinct phenotypes require different approaches. Reactive types need biological support, not more EMF reduction. Overexposed types need exposure intervention. Multi-sensitive individuals need comprehensive environmental support. Matching intervention to phenotype determines success.
- And current research underestimates severity. The completion paradox means the most affected individuals are systematically excluded from analysis, so published findings, including ours, skew toward the healthier end of the spectrum.
The emerging picture is this: EHS is not simply “sensitivity to electromagnetic fields.” It is a complex functional impairment characterized by biological vulnerability, sleep disruption, autonomic dysregulation, and potential for progressive sensitization. EMF exposure is a trigger, often the primary one, but the condition exists within a broader context of environmental and biological factors that cannot be ignored.
Where This Leads
286 people from over 20 countries participated in this census. Some completed lengthy assessments despite significant difficulty, while others did what they could before their symptoms prevented them from continuing. Both groups contributed to our understanding.
What emerges from their collective experience is a picture of EHS that is more complex, more varied, and more addressable than the simple exposure-response model suggests. Sleep is the bridge where exposure becomes impairment. Biological vulnerability shapes outcomes. Phenotypes differ in what they need. And the most affected among us remain underrepresented in research, including this research.
We’ve tried to present these findings honestly, including the limitations. Cross-sectional data cannot establish causation, self-selected participants may differ from the broader population, and self-report measures lack objective verification. These are real constraints on interpretation.
But within those constraints, this is the most comprehensive systematic assessment of EHS conducted to date, and the patterns are clear enough to inform both clinical practice and future research.
- For practitioners: assess sleep first, screen for sensitivities, match intervention to phenotype.
- For researchers: investigate autonomic mechanisms, include incomplete responders, study the lifestyle-sensitivity correlation.
- For those living with EHS: understand that your condition is real, measurable, and more complex than EMF exposure alone. Your sleep quality is telling you something important, and if you have other sensitivities, addressing total environmental load matters.
The 286 people who participated in this census provided a foundation. Building on it is now the work ahead.
This article summarizes the key findings. For complete methodology, detailed statistics, and comprehensive analysis, the full reports are available at 2025 EHSGC Reports.