Earthing mat is making me ill !

If you think it's making you ill, disconnect it, roll or fold it up, and place it in the bin.
Then stay away from pseudo scientific drivel on social media or the internet, placed there by persons whose only interest is in parting you from your money.

Some interesting information in the 'about' and 'FAQ' sections of that website!

Connecting yourself ‘all over’ to the mains earth is not something that I think is wise. I do understand the concept of grounding and what you are hoping to achieve, but the simple fact is the majority of domestic earth installations in the UK are now TNCS where your E is actually the N conductor outside your installation. So your inside E may not be exactly at Earth potential and this defeats the purpose, in my opinion. The next issue - there is a fault which can make N go to a high voltage, which is your E with TNCS, which you are now wrapped up in ... gulp.

For grounding, I enjoy walking about on grass barefoot

nicebutdim said:

Some interesting information in the 'about' and 'FAQ' sections of that website!

Click to expand...

The FAQ suggest every house is TT, I am sure most are TN

brianmoooore said:

If you think it's making you ill, disconnect it, roll or fold it up, and place it in the bin.
Then stay away from pseudo scientific drivel on social media or the internet, placed there by persons whose only interest is in parting you from your money.

Click to expand...

Yes pseudoscience springs to mind

Wilko said:

Connecting yourself ‘all over’ to the mains earth is not something that I think is wise. I do understand the concept of grounding and what you are hoping to achieve, but the simple fact is the majority of domestic earth installations in the UK are now TNCS where your E is actually the N conductor outside your installation. So your inside E may not be exactly at Earth potential and this defeats the purpose, in my opinion. The next issue - there is a fault which can make N go to a high voltage, which is your E with TNCS, which you are now wrapped up in ... gulp.

For grounding, I enjoy walking about on grass barefoot

Click to expand...

Lovely! Thanks for you reply

I think options 1 and 2 are redundant given the information you shared, so thanks for helping me with that decision bud. I’ll go with option 3 and create my own earth.

Any advice on what type of cabling I could use to run from the grounding rod into the house and then rooms? Is it safe to use thicker cable for that first run then in each room join it with the cable that comes with the mat? If you know the names for ideal types of cabling to do this, I’ll have a dig around

btw there are lots of peer reviewed studies on the benefits of earthing in general but also using mats like this... happy to share if anyone is interested

You should avoid bringing an independent earth connection into the house that is not part of the electrical installation. In the event of an electrical fault or accident this can significantly increase the risk of electric shock, because the voltage present on the independent (extraneous) connection will not follow that of the installation and anything bonded to it in the equipotential zone.

Without trying to doubt what you say, if the mat is making you feel ill it is as likely to be due to outgassing from the material it's made of, or something like that, than any electrical effect. You might consider yourself a reliable observer of your experiences, however with a cause (putative noisy mains earth) and effect (a strange feeling in your body) that are so tenuously linked, it is very hard to exclude experimental bias.

Can I recommend a simple, blinded testing method to discover whether the effect you experience is related to the earth connection? It's what I would do in your situation. Leave the mat in place but hide the earth connection to it, so that you can't tell whether it is connected. Get someone you know to go to the connection once a week for a month or two, and leave it either connected or disconnected according to the throw of a dice, keeping a log e.g. 'C' for connected and 'D' for disconnected. You stay out of contact with them, so they won't hint to you about how the connection is set that week. Keep a log of how you feel about the effects, using a simple scale of 1-5. At the end, give your log and their log to another person who knows nothing about the experiment or your concerns, and get them to check for any correlation between the letters and the numbers. It might cost you a bottle of wine for your experimental assistant but could save you a lot of time and effort once you can be more sure whether the effect you experience is actually due to the earthing of the mat.

Thanks for the details information Lucien, really appreciated. I agree an A/B blind test would be ideal way of working out what's causing the uncomfortable feeling. I'll consider doing that

Could you tell me your thoughts on this earthing rod which is designed to be used with the earthing mat?

It's 2mm cable is unshielded, however do you think it would be safe to use this earthing rod product in my setup and bypass the mains earth idea? If so, do you know of a shielded cable I could use to perform similar function to that used in this product? That's my main issue as I have lots of EMFs running in the house and I wouldn't want to use this product as there may be interference introduced onto the cable.

Lucien beat me to it, but many plastics outgas potentially unpleasant precursor chemicals in their manufacturing process and if you are feeling odd due it its presence, that is FAR more likely to be the reason.

pc1966 said:

Lucien beat me to it, but many plastics outgas potentially unpleasant precursor chemicals in their manufacturing process and if you are feeling odd due it its presence, that is FAR more likely to be the reason.

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To clarify. The unpleasant feeling is more like i've got micro shocks near where my skin is touching the mat. It's not like toxic poisoning, more electrical. I also get tension in neck muscles and headaches, so I'm assuming it's not related to chemicals etc. The mat itself is made from pure rubber with carbon infused conductive elements, afaik this shouldn't be dangerous

I personally think it could be due to electro hypersensitivity on my part more than anything and the grounding rod solution would stop any issues i have if this is the case

If you are getting a tingling sensation, more pronounced if you brush against things, that can be a sign of a faulty earth allowing a few microamps of AC current to flow.

While that current is not dangerous in itself, the whole purpose of having earth (also called CPC here - circuit protective conductor) is to divert fault currents safely and allow the fuse or breaker to disconnect before it is a major hazard. If the CPC is faulty you are a single fault away from a fatal accident!

Having the home wiring checked by a professional is your best option to rule out that sort of thing. Generally this is referred to as EICR - electrical installation condition report. It has become popular recently following changes to landlord rules, etc, so there are a lot of poor players charging little up-front with the aim of making a profit on potentially unnecessary work later. Doing it properly depends on the size of the installation, etc, but would take from a couple of hours to full day and priced accordingly.

There may be someone on here that could quote for doing such a check properly, though expect something like £200 or so.

sorry this post is missing, looks like it needs mod approval so you can't see it

If you get shocks touching the mat, and the mat is connected to the means of earthing of your installation, then you should be getting shocks from all your earthed electrical appliances like your washing machine. Regardless, it would imply that there is a fault with your electrical installation and things that should be at earth potential are not. This should be rectified promptly to avoid risk of serious shock injury.

What is the bulk resistivity and/or surface resistivity of the mat? The reason I ask is that many types of earthing mat (such as the anti-static mat on my bench that protects my equipment) are designed to maintain a significant resistance between any contacting object and the mains earth, to avoid risk of shock. Knowing the spec of your mat might narrow down possible causes.