Smart meters are being stealthily installed by water, gas and electric utility companies on houses and buildings across the country, despite that the majority of the public still doesn’t know about their potential health risks.
From the moment smart meters began to be installed, a rash of serious health complaints in each community has followed – to date largely going unheeded by officials. This isn’t hysteria or hype but a bonafide national health concern about what is being emitted from smart meters and their cumulative effects on electrosmog in our homes.
In short, electrosmog is pollution through electromagnetic energy. It is being produced by a vast post-Edison world in which electromagnetic fields and flows have inundated the space around us. And one of the newest and most pervasive emitters of electrosmog is being funded by the federal stimulus monies and being strapped to your house.
It is a smart meter, which is basically a digital meter or device that records electrical energy, water or natural gas used by consumers and then remotely (wirelessly) transmits that information back to a utility company. (The smart meter replaces the old analog, turn-dial style of meter and the subsequent need for a “meter reader” or utility worker to read and record the data.)
Utility companies pitch them as a regulation aid for consumers, but many are questioning the real value of that benefit, especially in light of the meter’s potential health risks. While utility companies promise rewards for customers who shift energy use to off-peak periods, health practitioners and experts are saying there is no savings when your health is in jeopardy.
Of course, utility companies are downplaying any negative health effects of smart meters. For example, the website of Pacific, Gas & Electric company in California explains they are “a small 1-watt radio … (that) transmits relatively weak radio signals, resembling those of many other products most people use every day, like cell phones, baby monitors and microwave ovens.”
PG&E cites the January 2011 report from the California Council on Science and Technology, or CCST, “Health Impacts of Radio Frequency Smart Meters,” which states no additional standards are needed to protect the public from smart meters. But they fail to note in the April 2011 final version of the same report how the CCST concludes, “Not enough is currently known about potential nonâ€thermal impacts of radio frequency emissions to identify or recommend additional standards for such impacts. … It is not scientifically confirmed whether or what the nonâ€thermal effects on living organisms, and potentially, human health might be.”
It is not merely the individual radiation levels of smart meters that warrants our attention but the cumulative levels of all the electro-radiation-emitting appliances and devices within our proximity. As the CCST report again concluded, “Concerns about human health impacts of (radio frequencies – RF) emissions from smart meters should be considered in this broader context,” especially since each one includes a second transmitter that will be initiated sometime in the future for further monitoring.
While utility companies claim that radio frequency emissions from a smart meter are comparable to a microwave oven, they also fail to disclose that smart meters are “a relay between other smart meters and utility access points”; hence, unlike a microwave oven, they can be transmitting information and emitting RF waves 24 hours a day.
And experts have shown there are adverse effects to long-term exposure to RF emissions. For example, Dr. David Carpenter, a Harvard Medical School-trained physician who headed up the New York State Department of Public Health for 18 years, during which time he administered a program studying the effects of electro-magnetic fields and before becoming dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Albany, where he currently directs the Institute for Health and the Environment, recently concluded: “We have evidence from a whole variety of radio frequency exposure that demonstrates convincingly and consistently that exposure to radio frequency radiation at elevated levels for long periods of time increases the risks of cancer, increases the damage to the nervous system, causes electro sensitivity, has adverse reproductive effects, and a variety of other effects on other organ systems.”
Beyond health concerns are the questionable liberty and consumer violations, as we are being misled and forced to attach non-ionizing radiation-emitting devices on our houses and businesses. The CCST explains how that domestic mandate was the result of an overreach of the nanny state: “the federal government has required utilities to take steps to implement smart grid networks, including the use of smart meters.”
Interestingly, again according to the CCST, “Some California utilities … have received significant federal funding for smart meter deployment from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (federal stimulus package).” Your tax dollars hard at work authorizing more electrosmog into your home! Smart grids might sound green, but forcing increased levels of non-ionizing radiation isn’t exactly a widespread deployment of ecofriendly and healthier renewable energy.
Smart meters pose not only an American health problem, but also a global one. Since 2000, millions (literally) have been installed in countries like Italy, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and beyond. And since 2005 in the U.S., an onslaught of millions of smart meters has been fastened to the sides of our homes and businesses from sea to shining sea. If the wave of meters has not infiltrated your neighbor yet, consider this article a fair warning for attachments coming soon to your home.
The way I see it is that we as consumers have a choice: Will we believe countless specialists who are saying that smart meters are at very least unnecessary health risks and contributors to overall electrosmog? Or will we believe public utility companies and the feds, which have divested interests in Smart Meters’ installations, are harmless to our health and are being mandated by law to save us money?