The other issue is what is being done to us by the government and even the hometown entities we trust to protect us, like our utility providers, as in the case of smart meters. In a nutshell, smart meters are advanced technology electric meters placed on our homes to record our energy use and also transmit information to and from our utility company. They have been popping up all over the United States for the last few years now under the guise of meter updating. The smart meters are quickly replacing analog meters. This sounds innocent enough, but the electric company does not tell us that these meters emit a pulsed, spikey radio frequency. They also fail to tell us that they create dirty electricity on our electrical lines, which surrounds us like an EMF prison in our own homes, and we cannot turn them off. Voltage spikes that cause flickering lights, appliance short outs, and house fires are other reported and big concerns with the meter, and some people believe that smart meters could be the reason that our honey bees are dying off in droves. http://stopsmartmeters.org/…/…/smartmeters-are-hurting-bees/
Here is a description of "dirty electricity" from PREVENTION.COM “…a relatively new suspected carcinogen known as high-frequency voltage transients, or "dirty electricity." Transients are largely by-products of modern energy-efficient electronics and appliances—from computers, refrigerators, and plasma TVs to compact fluorescent lightbulbs and dimmer switches—which tamp down the electricity they use. This manipulation of current creates a wildly fluctuating and potentially dangerous electromagnetic field that not only radiates into the immediate environment but also can back up along home or office wiring all the way to the utility, infecting every energy customer in between” (http://www.prevention.com/…/electromagnetic-fields-and-your…).
The FCC set specific absorption rate (SAR) levels to protect us from being harmed by the amount of energy absorbed by the human body when exposed to a radio frequency electromagnetic field, but technology has advanced so quickly and the science that was used to decide exposure levels is now outdated. Even electricians and those who should know about the dangers, because they work around them, do not. Some refuse to look at any new science, or even facts. Maybe this is because they assume they already know it all, or maybe they have bought into the propaganda of those who have the most to lose if the whole world finds out that the technology they’re selling is very dangerous. The exposure regulations only consider the thermal effects of radio frequency exposure. Just because an electromagnetic field does not burn you, does not mean that it can’t harm you. In other countries, the limits for human exposure to all EMFs (not only radio frequency) are much, much lower than ours are in the USA. Why is this? Why are doctors and scientists all over the world now getting together and agreeing that we are being exposed to far too much EMF radiation from our gadgets and our smart meters and stating that this is making people sick? Why isn’t the government listening to them instead of trying to discredit them? I am pretty sure that the answer is money.
When I talk about this with some people, even if they agree it is a legitimate concern, they complain that, “it’s everywhere.” They are correct. Cell phone towers, powerlines, etc., are everywhere. The Earth, itself, has its own electromagnetic field (although these levels are much lower than the man-made variety and are also natural), but in spite of the fact that, “it’s everywhere,” we cannot just give up and walk into the man-made mushroom cloud while playing our latest Xbox One game! There are still some things we can do and many measures we can take to make things better, instead of continuing to allow them to become worse. People are so addicted to their modern conveniences and toys, that they become defensive when I even mention that these things could be harming them. I find this sad. How dumbed down, dependent on technology, and distracted we have become—like frogs, boiling to death in a kettle of “electrosmog.”
Technology is moving much too quickly to truly test if all of these man-made gadgets are safe before their creators roll ‘em out to the public. This fact and the close up exposure rates to radio frequency, for instance, is many, many times more than what you would be exposed to walking around outside in most cases, and it’s inside your house if you have the things that most people have, like Internet gateways, microwave ovens, cellular phones, smart appliances, Xbox One, and other gaming consoles, and wireless controllers, smart meters, etc.
I recently went around our home and measured the radio frequency coming from several of the electronics in our home. I also measured the AC magnetic fields, but I am discussing the radio frequency here, mostly. I was blown away by our Xfinity/Comcast router/modem. I measured higher than 23.9383V/m from the router with my radio frequency meter. That is 1,520,000 microwatts per square meter.
At one point the meter was maxed out, so I do not know how high it actually went, as I could no longer measure it, but the red warning lights were flashing on and off on my meter. This was just one item in our home. Imagine our exposure rates when you factor in all of the rest of our modern conveniences?
People sit next to these powerful routers, at their desks, for hours at a time. Even worse, some people sleep with them in their bedrooms. That is a significant amount of exposure, for A LOT of hours. For reference, Safe Living Technologies Inc. recommends, in their Building Biology Precautionary Guidelines for radio frequency exposure in sleeping areas, that anything greater than 10 microwatts per square meter in the sleeping area is cause for severe concern. Hmmm—1,520,000 is a heck of a lot more than 10! This is also long term exposure since people typically spend a third of their life in their bedroom and they do not turn their Internet router off at night, or ever, in most cases. In addition, and I know I mentioned this already, but it is really important, the exposure limits were based solely on the short term thermal effects of radio frequency radiation. Guess who the guinea pigs are for determining the effects of long term exposure to this radio frequency radiation that is engulfing us more and more as technology advances? As I said before, this technology is being rolled out as fast as it can be without testing for its safety to real human beings, living in real homes. We are the guinea pigs!
The other household gadgets that I measured for radio frequency were the Genie HD DVR box that supplies our DIRECTV. This “modern convenience” emitted spiked radio frequency readings of 606,000 microwatts per square meter, throughout our living room and home, without the television even being turned on, and just by the Genie being plugged in.
My son’s Xbox One was another big offender and set off the flashing red warning lights on the radio frequency meter. My husband’s printer also set off the flashing red lights. The microwave oven was radiating so high, it is now unplugged and barely used, and some of the other items I mentioned above are now wrapped in aluminum wire screening to muzzle some of the radio frequency they emit when turned on. Everything that I can turn off or unplug is turned off and unplugged at night. I have hardwired our laptops by Ethernet cords to our router and turned off Wi-Fi, and I am also keeping my cell phone powered off most of the time and forwarding the calls to the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) corded phone.
Unfortunately, the City of Eaton Rapids put a smart meter on our home three years ago before we knew anything about all of this, and we can’t turn it off, at least not without a whole lot of trouble. I am still trying to understand how much of an offender the particular model of smart meter is that was installed on our home. It’s a little trickier to measure a smart meter for EMF “offenses” than some of the other devices mentioned in this article were. For one thing, I can’t turn it off so that I can measure the EMFs with it off and then compare to the measurements I get when the meter goes back on. I understand that smart meters use switch-mode power supply (SMPS) and that devices with this technology are notorious for, as I mentioned earlier, spreading dirty electricity throughout the house wiring; this is in addition to the radio frequency waves they send into the house. This means they are problematic even without the radio frequency issue (and, by the way, so are compact fluorescent light bulbs). All of the above and the fact that I have developed frequent, painful, unexplained headaches and nausea in the last few years is enough to make me want the smart meters gone!
Meanwhile, the man from the City of Eaton Rapids who I spoke with told me the smart meter was no worse than a cell phone or a microwave oven. Even if that were true, cell phones and microwave ovens aren’t healthy, either, and at least we can turn those off. We have a choice with our phones and the other electronics in our homes. To me, it was like he was saying that it was okay for the utility company to force us to have another carcinogen producing gadget in our home, since we already have other carcinogen producing gadgets in our home, so one more should not matter! Was he serious? This lack of choice in what we are being subjected to in our own homes really should make us concerned. This is the USA. How dare they just pop a smart meter on your home, that you cannot turn off. They have taken away your choice to protect your family from the meter’s pulsed, radiating microwave effects, and its switch-mode power supply (SMPS) technology, that is creating dirty electricity throughout your home wiring, 24/7, and tough if you don’t like that! Do we really want to just sit back and allow this?
Please do not take my word for any of this. We all need to educate ourselves and act, now, before we do not have that option. After you have done some of your own research, please consider writing to your representatives regarding the issues discussed here. If you are in Michigan, please help spread the word so that Michigan House Bill 4916 will pass, become law, and allow us to remove the smart meters and have safer analog meters put back in their place.
For your convenience, below is a link to a long list of research on EFM that was compiled on Jeromy Johnson’s informative and exhaustive website that people might like to look at. Scroll all the way to the end of the page to make sure you don’t miss any of it.
http://www.emfanalysis.com/research/
Update: My husband, who has never been sick in our entire 23 years of marriage, was just diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer shortly after I published this blog. We also learned on Christmas day that a neighbor woman died of stomach cancer this past summer at the age of just 46. Her house was across the street from an electric sub-station, and the day before Christmas, I measured high magnetic fields in the front yard of her home.
In addition to this, I was getting high ac magnetic field readings in our home and learned that there is electrical current coming into our home from the utility side of the water meter, onto our copper water pipes. When we cut the water pipe at entry to our home, the magnetic fields in our home plummeted. However, we continue to have some radio frequency waves coming into our home from neighbors and also have high frequency voltage transients "dirty electricity" on our house wiring. We are doing our best to mitigate this and have contacted the city and utility company.
