“Everyone asks me, ‘What’s up with this straw?” Sandra Fernandes says in the voice-over for a November 2025 Instagram Reel.
The influencer, who describes herself as a “detox coach,” “wellness leader,” and “holistic momma” in her Instagram bio, is drinking water out of a peculiar-looking, curved metal straw. With her lips pursed above a hole at the top, she looks a bit like one of those MySpace girls who took fingerstache selfies in the early 2010s.
“It’s not just any straw,” the voice-over continues. “It’s my frequency straw.” Fernandes then demonstrates its function, placing the straw between a phone charger and a small device she says is an electromagnetic frequency detector. She claims the EMF signal “stops instantly.” “When you drink with it, whether it’s your smoothie, juice, or water, you’re literally drinking protection,” she says. Those who are interested, she says in the caption, can comment “straw” below.
Fernandes is promoting an “EMF straw,” a trendy wellness product that users claim can protect against supposedly dangerous electromagnetic frequencies that come from products like cell phones, hair dryers, and microwaves. On Instagram and TikTok, there are dozens of videos of women with balayage hair and the word holistic in their bios singing the praises of such straws, claiming they can restore energy, heal the gut, and boost the immune system. The peculiar design, which features a hole in the middle of the straw rather than on the top, briefly went viral on TikTok a few years ago, with some beauty influencers claiming the product prevented mouth wrinkles. (It doesn’t.)
“It’s infused with 11 harmonic frequencies: one for grounding, one for immune support, and eight tuned to your body’s major organ systems,” the Detox Mentor, an influencer with more than 300,000 followers, writes in an Instagram post from last October, adding that it doesn’t only “help block EMF radiation,” it also “harmoniz[es] your cells and recharg[es] your energy from the inside out.” (None of the Instagram influencers I reached out to responded to requests for comment.)
The EMF straws are part of a broader industry of so-called “EMF-blocking” or “-neutralizing” products, including stickers, jewelry, clothing, glasses, and bags. Though none of these products are FDA-approved, the industry is gaining traction among health and wellness influencers, with NHL and UFC athletes collaborating with the EMF protection company AiresTech and Russell Brand promoting a $239.99 EMF-repelling “magical amulet” in a 2024 video. According to Google, searches for the term “EMF radiation protection” went up 1,300 percent in the US in the last 12 months.
The Federal Trade Commission has repeatedly issued complaints against such products for deceptive advertising, saying in a 2011 press release that “there is no scientific proof that so-called shields significantly reduce exposure” from EMF-emitting devices. A 2021 BBC investigation of supposedly radiation-blocking phone stickers also found that such products did not have any measurable effect.
As with most pseudoscience, there is a grain of truth in the concern over electromagnetic radiation. Prolonged exposure to high-frequency radiation produced by x-ray machines or the UV rays emitted by tanning beds is known to cause damage on the cellular level, which is thought by many researchers to raise the risk of certain types of cancer.
But consumer panic largely focuses on the lower-frequency, non-ionizing radiation used by or emitted by everyday electronic devices. And while research into the health effects of cell phones is ongoing, according to the National Cancer Institute, “few studies have reported evidence” of a relationship between non-ionizing EMFs and cancer.
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