Does a Magnetic Field Affect Water? What One Study Measured

In one lab setup, yes: a strong static magnetic field produced a particle-free zone in water that resembles the zones next to water-loving surfaces. In a 2022 study, Valery Shalatonin and Gerald H. Pollack of the University of Washington placed a neodymium magnet in a dish of water and tiny plastic microspheres. Its field measured 1.44 tesla (14,400 gauss) near the poles. After 20 to 30 minutes, the microspheres near both poles had thinned out, and a strip took shape that they had largely left. It was less than 1 millimeter (about 0.04 inch) wide. Wrapping the magnet in a plastic film 70 micrometers thick made no difference. Size and timing resemble the exclusion zones the same lab has measured at water-loving surfaces for years (Shalatonin & Pollack, PLOS ONE 17(5): e0268747, 2022). What the study measured is where microspheres sat in a petri dish, with a very strong field, under a microscope. Whether the water itself changed inside the zone was not measured. The result says nothing about cells, the human body, or devices and jewelry. The authors themselves write that the reasons for the features they observed remain unclear.

What is an exclusion zone in water?

An exclusion zone is a region of water next to a water-loving surface from which dissolved substances and suspended particles are pushed out. Researchers abbreviate it as EZ.

The zone is easy to make visible. You stir plastic microspheres a few micrometers across into water and place a water-loving material in it. Under the microscope, an empty strip appears along the edge of the material. The width of that strip is the size of the exclusion zone.

According to Shalatonin and Pollack (2022), such zones reach tens to hundreds of micrometers from the surface into the water. Their physical and chemical properties differ from those of ordinary bulk water. How the lab discovered the zone at surfaces, and what role light plays in it, is the subject of What Makes Water at Surfaces Different From Water in a Glass.

Until 2022, the zone was tied to a solid boundary between a material and water. That made the question behind the 2022 paper new: does such a zone also form when the trigger is a magnetic field rather than a water-loving surface?

How was the magnetic field experiment set up?

The experimental setup is the exact arrangement of water, magnet, and microscope that produced the result. Anyone who wants to judge the finding needs these details, because each later statement holds, for now, only under exactly these conditions.

The lab worked with two arrangements. In the first, a single bar magnet lay in the middle of an open petri dish. In the second, two bar magnets stood parallel, 8 millimeters (about 0.3 inch) apart, spaced by aluminum blocks. In both cases the team watched from below through an inverted microscope at 5× magnification (Shalatonin & Pollack 2022, Materials and methods).

Feature	Setup 1	Setup 2
Magnet	1 neodymium bar, 50 × 7 × 7 mm (about 2 × 0.28 × 0.28 in), nickel-plated	2 neodymium bars, each 76 × 12 × 3 mm (about 3 × 0.47 × 0.12 in)
Field strength near the poles	1.44 tesla (14,400 gauss)	1.35 tesla (13,500 gauss)
Amount of water	4 mL, a little under one teaspoon, in a dish 60 mm (about 2.4 in) across	1.5 to 2 mL, roughly a third of a teaspoon, between the magnets
Fill height	2 to 3 mm (about 0.08 to 0.12 in)	not reported
Microspheres	2.0 µm, polystyrene (PS) and carboxylate polystyrene (CPS)	same as Setup 1
Temperature	room temperature, 296 to 299 kelvin (about 73 to 79 °F)	same as Setup 1

All values: Shalatonin & Pollack 2022, section “Materials and methods.”

The water was highly purified, deionized lab water with a pH between 6.0 and 6.5. For every 25 milliliters of water (about 0.85 fluid ounce), the team added 45 microliters of microsphere suspension, roughly one drop. The data were analyzed with a two-sample t-test at a significance threshold of 0.05 (Shalatonin & Pollack 2022, Methods).

What appeared under the microscope after 30 minutes?

The central finding of the paper is a microsphere-free strip right next to the poles of a magnet lying in water. The authors call it an exclusion zone because it resembles the zones at water-loving surfaces.

The microspheres began to move as soon as the suspension was poured in. After 20 to 30 minutes, their concentration near the magnet had dropped, and farther out a layer with more microspheres had formed. The team plotted the zone from 30 minutes on, because before that it was not defined well enough to measure with confidence. By 60 minutes it was easier to make out, and by 2 hours it was fairly clear, because more microspheres had been pushed out. Later it shrank a little (Shalatonin & Pollack 2022, Results).

The zone formed at the north pole and at the south pole. It formed with both kinds of microspheres. Its size stayed below 1 millimeter. The authors consider that typical, and the same goes for the build-up within a few tens of minutes. In the setup with 2 magnets, a bright, microsphere-free band 30 to 200 micrometers (about 0.001 to 0.008 inch) wide also appeared halfway between them. It showed up in all of the more than 10 experiments with this arrangement (Shalatonin & Pollack 2022, Figure 5).

Shalatonin and Pollack sum up the finding in one sentence:

“Here we report that exposure of standard aqueous microsphere suspensions to static magnetic fields creates similar microsphere-free zones adjacent to magnetic poles.” (Shalatonin & Pollack 2022, abstract)

In plain words: a static magnetic field, applied to an ordinary suspension of microspheres, clears similar zones right next to the poles of the magnet.

Is the zone bigger at the north pole than at the south pole?

The polarity of a magnet tells you whether the face pointing toward the water is its north pole or its south pole. Many experiments treat both poles as equivalent. The 2022 paper questions that, but the evidence for a difference comes from part of its data.

With polystyrene microspheres, the zone at the north pole was 15 to 20 percent larger than at the south pole. The difference between the averaged curves was statistically significant, with p = 0.012. With carboxylate microspheres, the difference was smaller and not significant, with p = 0.22. Each curve rests on n = 3 independent experiments (Shalatonin & Pollack 2022, Figure 4).

Three experiments per condition are a small basis. A difference that appears with one kind of microsphere and not with the other points to an open question. It is not yet a rule. The authors offer a cautious explanation based on the surface of the microspheres. Polystyrene repels water, while carboxylate carries water-loving groups and could itself interact with the water next to it.

Is it the magnetic field or the magnet itself?

The control question for an experiment like this is whether the zone comes from the magnetic field or from the metal surface of the magnet. A nickel-plated metal bar is a boundary surface in its own right and could produce a zone in the familiar way.

The lab therefore wrapped the magnet completely in a polyethylene film 70 micrometers (about 0.003 inch) thick. The results could not be told apart from those without the film. In the authors’ reading, the material of the magnet does not appear to be responsible. They add a physical argument. In their reasoning, charged objects in a magnetic field generally move perpendicular to the field lines. In this experiment the microspheres moved along the field lines. The authors consider a direct force of the field on the microspheres unlikely and suspect an effect on the water itself.

A second test concerned the surroundings of the dish. To check whether the environment played a role, the team covered the dish with a glass slide. The microspheres slowed after 20 to 25 seconds, and after 2 to 3 minutes their motion had nearly stopped. The zone stopped growing as well. Once the slide was removed, the motion gradually came back (Shalatonin & Pollack 2022, Results and Videos S1/S2). The authors take this as a sign that infrared radiation supplies the driving energy, as it does for zones at surfaces. They did not measure the radiation in this experiment. The glass slide blocked it, but it also cut the dish off from the surrounding air. For that reason, the test does not separate infrared from other influences of the environment.

What did the 2021 study on weak electric fields find?

An alternating electric field is a field whose direction reverses at a fixed rate, measured in hertz. In December 2021, about half a year before the magnetic field paper, Iman Rad and colleagues in the same lab tested whether such fields change the structure of water. The electrodes never touched the water (Rad, Stahlberg, Kung & Pollack, PLOS ONE 16(12): e0260967, 2021).

The platinum electrodes sat 1 millimeter (about 0.04 inch) above the water surface or 1 millimeter below the bottom of a flat dish. The dish held 3 milliliters of water, a little over half a teaspoon. A voltage of 6 ± 1.5 volts gave nominal field strengths of 450 to 750 volts per meter, calculated from the voltage and the electrode spacing. Each exposure lasted 30 minutes. The team tested frequencies from 0 hertz to 100,000 hertz. They measured the infrared emission from the water surface and the contact angle of droplets on different surfaces (Rad et al. 2021, Materials and methods).

The result was narrow. Several frequencies lowered the infrared emission of deionized water. One condition, a 75-hertz field applied from above, made its emission profile resemble that of exclusion zone water. According to the authors, other frequencies “had no such impact.” From this they cautiously infer a possible molecular ordering. They leave the interpretation open:

“how the molecular ordering of EZ and ‘75 Hz exposed water’ are similar or coincidental is a matter for future study” (Rad et al. 2021, Conclusion)

Whether the resemblance reflects a real connection or a coincidence is a question for later work.

How disputed is the exclusion zone itself?

The interpretation of an observation is the explanation of why it happens, and it has to be kept apart from the observation. Several research groups have seen particles being excluded next to water-loving surfaces. The cause is what researchers disagree about.

Pollack interprets the zone as an ordered, liquid-crystal-like arrangement of water that he calls a fourth phase. A critical review from 2020 finds a different explanation more convincing. It relies on diffusiophoresis, the movement of particles along concentration gradients (Elton, Spencer, Riches & Williams, International Journal of Molecular Sciences 21, 5041, 2020). The competing explanations are laid out side by side in What Causes the Exclusion Zone in Water? Three Theories.

For the magnetic field paper, this dispute has a direct consequence. The paper shows that a particle-free strip forms at the magnet and resembles the zones at surfaces. Someone who reads the surface zones as a separate phase of water will read the strip at the magnet the same way. Someone who explains them through concentration gradients can just as well explain the strip at the magnet through ions and charges. The 2022 paper does not settle the dispute, because it measures the empty strip and no other property of the water inside it.

What does the magnet study not show?

The scope of a finding is the set of cases its measurement speaks for. For the 2022 paper, that set is small and easy to describe.

1. The measurement concerns water in a lab setup. The experiments used 4 milliliters of water, 2 to 3 millimeters (about 0.1 inch) deep, over 30 minutes to 2 hours at room temperature. The field of the neodymium magnet measured 1.44 tesla (Setup 1) or 1.35 tesla (Setup 2) near its poles (Shalatonin & Pollack 2022, Materials and methods). According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Earth’s magnetic field ranges from about 25,000 to 65,000 nanotesla (0.25 to 0.65 gauss). The field near the magnet’s poles was roughly 22,000 to 58,000 times as strong (our own calculation). For weaker fields, larger distances, or other time spans, the paper provides no data.
2. The paper measured nothing on cells, the body, health, or well-being. No living organism, cell, or tissue appears in its experiments. In a section on biological context, the authors speculate well beyond their data about effects in living organisms, which they call an area worthy of further exploration.
3. The paper is not evidence for any product. That goes for magnets worn around the neck, water treatment devices, and jewelry, including jewelry from Qi Blanco. A lab finding about microspheres in a petri dish cannot be carried over to an object that was never measured in such a setup.
4. The authors name what remains open. The original reads: “the reasons for all of the observed features remain unclear and need to be studied in more detail.” They also write that “other reported features of EZs were not explored.” Charge, light absorption, and refractive index are examples. The difference between north and south pole rests on 3 experiments per condition and was significant with one of 2 kinds of microspheres (Shalatonin & Pollack 2022, Figure 4). Infrared as the energy source is the authors’ reading of the glass-slide test, which also isolated the dish from its surroundings.

One clear statement remains: a strong static magnetic field can create a zone in water that resembles the zones at water-loving surfaces, even with the magnet wrapped in film. The authors call this a feature of magnets not previously revealed. So far it has been measured in one lab.

Frequently asked questions about magnetic fields and water

Did the zone come from the field or from the surface of the magnet?

The magnet lay in the water. Wrapped in a polyethylene film 70 micrometers thick, it gave the same results as without the film (Shalatonin & Pollack 2022). In the authors’ judgment, the magnet’s material was probably not responsible. The film is also a boundary with the water, and the paper does not test its influence separately.

How big was the zone at the magnet?

The authors report a size below 1 millimeter (about 0.04 inch). With polystyrene microspheres, the zone at the north pole was 15 to 20 percent larger than at the south pole (p = 0.012, n = 3).

Has another research group repeated the experiment?

The 2022 paper reports no independent replication. It and the 2021 electric field study both come from the lab of Gerald H. Pollack in Seattle.

Does the finding say anything about magnetic fields in everyday life?

No. At 1.44 tesla, the field near the magnet’s poles was roughly 22,000 times as strong as the strongest part of Earth’s magnetic field according to NOAA (65,000 nanotesla, our own calculation). The paper contains no measurement for everyday fields.

Key takeaways on magnetic fields and water

• A magnetic field can create an exclusion zone in water. A neodymium magnet whose field measured 1.44 tesla near its poles largely cleared microspheres from a strip less than 1 millimeter wide, starting after 20 to 30 minutes (Shalatonin & Pollack 2022).
• The field, not the metal surface, is the likelier cause. The zone formed at the north and the south pole, with both kinds of microspheres, and also with a 70-micrometer film around the magnet.
• The difference between the poles is a hint, not a rule. The 15 to 20 percent lead of the north pole was significant with polystyrene and not with carboxylate, at n = 3 experiments per condition.
• One weak electric field left a trace too. A 75-hertz field of 600 ± 150 volts per meter, applied from above, made the infrared emission profile of water resemble that of zone water (Rad et al. 2021).
• The interpretation is disputed. Whether the zone is a separate phase of water or arises from concentration gradients remains open among researchers (Elton et al. 2020).
• The measurement ends at the petri dish. Neither paper measured anything on cells, the body, health, or products.

Sources and further reading

• Shalatonin, V., Pollack, G. H.: Magnetic fields induce exclusion zones in water. PLOS ONE 17(5): e0268747 (2022). DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0268747.
• Rad, I., Stahlberg, R., Kung, K., Pollack, G. H.: Low frequency weak electric fields can induce structural changes in water. PLOS ONE 16(12): e0260967 (2021). DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0260967.
• Elton, D. C., Spencer, P. D., Riches, J. D., Williams, E. D.: Exclusion Zone Phenomena in Water: A Critical Review of Experimental Findings and Theories. International Journal of Molecular Sciences 21, 5041 (2020). DOI 10.3390/ijms21145041.
• National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA): Geomagnetism Frequently Asked Questions, section on field strength (accessed September 26, 2026, checked again October 19, 2026).