Ben Salem is a real estate agent, not a doctor. But that didn’t stop him from developing a sticker that deflects radiation from wireless earbuds away from the brain.He started his company WaveBlock in Woodland Hills to sell the product, which is available through its website for $30. The WaveBlock stickers went on sale in December.The price reflects all the engineering and lab testing that went into developing the stickers.“Just figuring out the right adhesive to use probably took about six months of testing different glues,” Salem said. “Figuring out what kind of metals to blend together for deflecting also took a year to figure out.”While the development of the WaveBlock stickers may have been complicated, how they work is actually simple. The stickers wrap around the stem of the earbuds and reflect the electromagnetic field (EMF) waves away from the wearer’s head.“That is all I am doing. It’s very simple,” Salem said. “Before that (the earbuds) were shooting the radiation right between your skull.”Testing done by the San Diego lab of German company TÜV SÜD Aktiengesellschaft showed that the stickers deflect about 95 percent of the radiation generated by the earbuds. Currently the company is involved in other research about the technology’s efficacy.WaveBlock has an international patent pending on the design and the use of the stickers.Advertising has been limited as Salem said he wanted to start out just marketing the product in the U.S. He has used Instagram, Facebook and word of mouth to generate sales. Also, influencers in the music industry, including disk jockeys, use WaveBlock and write about the product on social media.“Just with that alone we are selling hundreds a day,” Salem told the Business Journal. “Especially right after Christmas, a lot of people received earbuds as a gift and that helped tremendously.”Lab resultsLindsey Carnett, chief executive of Marketing Maven Public Relations Inc. in Camarillo, said that Salem has a good concept with WaveBlock stickers but that it would be stronger if the company could emphasize the results of the third-party testing.A lot of businesses with products that could be met with skepticism handle it by showing the results of laboratory testing, Carnett said.“They could even link in their press release to the results of the study or have a page at their website about the study itself,” she added.The company said agreements with private labs prohibit it from publishing the actual results online, but the company plans to put a summary of lab findings on its website.Also, the company has aligned with Dr. Lisa Cook, a private practice neurologist on staff at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, who gave a testimonial about the stickers in an October press release.Salem said that in selling the stickers, WaveBlock is not trying to frighten people into thinking they will get cancer or tumors from prolonged exposure to wireless earbuds. In doing research on the need for such a product, Salem said that all he saw was cell phone sleeves available through Amazon that could block any harmful radiation.“I have a cell phone in my pocket and will hold it to my ear for a few minutes during a call,” he said. “Having something that is inside my ear for hours and hours during the day is a whole different game.”The idea for the WaveBlock stickers came from how much time Salem said he spends mountain biking and snowboarding with his three sons who are always borrowing his wireless earbuds.“This is not about me making money,” said Salem, a real estate agent for luxury properties. “It is about me protecting my three little boys and how to block the radiation because I love wearing my Apple earbuds.”Orders for the stickers have taken off, Salem added, with the average order more than $500. People are not just buying one pair of stickers but also purchasing them for their friends and family, he said.People who are health conscious are buying the stickers, as are parents whose children wear wireless earbuds when on Zoom for school.At the TÜV SÜD lab in San Diego, the engineers were impressed by the product and told Salem they couldn’t believe that nobody had thought of the idea before.But Carnett, the marketing expert, said that the claim that the stickers block more than 95 percent of the radiation needs to be supported with more research to convince questioning potential buyers.“You have to start somewhere,” Carnett said. “I do think without having a published study it can lack credibility for a consumer.”