No To Smart Meters » Health Issues

Smart meters will operate within a wider ranging “Smart Grid” and there are numerous health issues related with this grid. The information-carrying radio waves, transmitting 24/7, will effectively blanket homes and neighbourhoods with radiation that could adversely affect not just humans but all living systems.

In particular, these meters have the potential to affect not only electrohypersensitive persons, but children and pregnant women, persons with medical conditions such as heart arrhythmia, those with compromised immune systems, and others who rely on medical and/or metal implants or equipment.

Adding to the health concern is the fact that the microwave radio frequency radiation emitted day and night by the smart meters is basically forced upon us without choice. It is known that it may cause cancer, as well as many other disabling physical reactions.

Here I will mention just a few of the health issues that may occur after smart meter installation: headaches, dizziness, insomnia, , memory and concentration problems, heart irregularities, nausea, and everything between anxiety, to depression. What can you actually expect after attaching a continuously radiating device that communicates with a smart grid system on your home’s exterior wall? This is a sure bet that you and your family will experience health problems, sooner or later.

A huge health concern is especially for those people with medical devices and implants. They are not warned that the wireless signal could disrupt function, nor expecting malfunctioning of those – some life sustaining- medical devices. Honestly, I don’t even want to think what can happen and how many medical dramas will go unexplained, not even connected with smart meter activities, or not even reported.

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“Smart Meters: an Uncontrolled Experiment on Public Health”

VANCOUVER COURIER DECEMBER 9, 2011 2:22 AM This week, The City of North Vancouver called on the provincial government to halt plans to install smart meters or allow the program's inspection by the B.C. Utilities Commission. In California, 43 cities, towns or counties have publicly opposed the devices, with 11 jurisdictions banning them outright. Are civic leaders bowing to pressure from paranoid Luddites, or are they wising up to a multibillion-dollar boondoggle that's outfitting homes with fry-and-spy devices? Or is the answer huddling somewhere in between the contending claims? The public debate about electromagnetic emissions has never moved me that much, for one simple reason: the inverse square law. Move a few feet away from a power source and the emission strength drops off greatly. It comes down to cumulative exposure over time. There might be problem in the making if you hold a cellphone a few inches from your brain for hours every day-or there might not be. It all depends on which expert you ask. Both cell phones and smart meters employ radio frequency electromagnetic radiation, and there is no scientific consensus on the health effects of radio frequency (RF) fields. At Olson manor, our old analogue meter is positioned on the wall outside my wife's office, just inches away from her desk. It is also only a few feet away from our sleeping heads in the main bedroom downstairs. B.C. Hydro insists on replacing it with a smart meter, and the inverse square law has come back to haunt me: emission strength scales up exponentially as you move closer to a radiation source. B.C. Hydro claims that exposure to radio frequency during a 20-year lifespan of a smart meter is equivalent to the exposure from a single 30-minute cellphone call. Not so, according to social scientist Daniel Hirsch, a senior lecturer on nuclear policy at the University of Santa Cruz. At a 10-foot distance, the whole body exposure to radio frequency from a smart meter may be up to 80 times higher than the whole body radio frequency exposure from a cellphone. In an interview on the news site indybay.org, Hirsch was asked what health risks these devices present to the public. "We don't know," he replied. "At the moment it's uncertain what the health effect is from RF radiation. It could turn out to be significant. It could turn out to be insignificant. It's a large experiment on a very large population and a big chunk of that experiment is involuntary."

Did you tell B.C. Hydro to go to hell when it tried to install a smart meter?

The Georgia Straight is interested in YOUR answers to the above questions. Please email us at contact@straight.com and let us know.
Have you told B.C. Hydro—either by phone, letter, email, outdoors sign, or verbally to an installation technician—that you do not want to have a “smart meter” installed at your residence?

Did you state the reasons for your wishes, whether they be related to health, safety, or privacy concerns?

Have you received a reply from B.C. Hydro? Did Hydro threaten to cut off your power if you refused to have a smart meter installed? Did Hydro threaten legal action of any kind?

Was a smart meter installed despite your stated preferences?
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