A recent submission from a SSM! member, who didn’t believe PG&E’s claims that smart meter radiation is insignificant. The other day she went out into SF to do her own readings with an electromagnetic analyzer- what she found shocked her:
By Amy O’Hair
RF microwave radiation is invisible. It’s creepy to think about. No wonder many people would rather trust their government’s regulation of it than give it a second thought—or maybe just not think about it at all. PG&E tells me that RF radiation is everywhere in the modern world, so what can one more little emitter in my life matter?
I decided I wanted to know just how much there was around me, in this so-called RF-saturated urban world I live in. I got an instrument to measure the “power density” (in µW/m2) of radiation in the microwave range (from cell phones at 900 MHz to wifi at 2.4 GHz). I wanted to see the invisible.
I took readings around cell phone antennas, both small and large, cell phones themselves, the new wireless parking meters, wifi in cafes and libraries, my own microwave oven, and, of course, ‘smart’ meters in my neighborhood. I did this repeatedly. Things like cell phones and wifi fluctuate somewhat in radiation readings, but are fairly steady.
This is what I saw that alarmed me: ‘smart’ meters are very different, in that they emit extremely short, extremely sharp spikes of radiation, sometimes called pulses. I wouldn’t personally choose to stand in those other RF fields for long periods of time—but then none of them emit 24 hours a day, stuck to the side of my house, and none of them pulse high spikes like ‘smart’ meters do.
Some ‘smart’ meters pulse way more often than anything I’ve read about from PG&E. The radiation readings were so often I couldn’t count them, and so high I had to get an additional piece of equipment, an “attenuator,” to read how high the spikes went. Unfortunately, even with that extra equipment, I still couldn’t see the top of some spikes. Some spiked lower, some less often. But who knows what kind of emissions you will get when they install one in your home?
It has been an exciting few weeks. In numerous locations in San Francisco I’ve taken out this bit of equipment, and walked around taking readings. People come up to me to ask what I’m doing. It’s been great—I’ve never met so many strangers all at once. They are interested. Mostly, they don’t have much information about RF, and want to know a bit more. They often communicate to me a sense of helplessness and distrust of the corporate entities that hold so much power in their lives. (Of course I take the opportunity to talk about ‘smart’ meters…)
One woman came out of her house in Glen Park while I was measuring a “microcell” antenna, the tip of which was located about 15 feet from a bedroom wall. She’d watched it go up, and didn’t know who to call to say “No” to. What power did she have? Who was looking after the levels of radiation she and her family would be exposed to? (Happy note: I was able to tell her the antenna wasn’t yet turned on—there were no readings from it!)
I’ve also received mail via my YouTube site from people all over—helpless victims of ‘smart’ meter health effects. I can only write back to say how sorry I am to hear of their difficulties. Please, everyone, keep writing letters, keep speaking up, and keep educating your friends and neighbors—it matters!
Editors Note: You may have heard PG$E say things like:
“radio waves from a SmartMeter™, at a distance of 10 feet, are only about one one-thousandth as much as a typical cell phone.”
To arrive at this comparison, they use time-averaging and other sleight-of-hand techniques to obscure the powerful peak pulses from ‘smart’ meter devices. They also use inconsistent units of measurement on the same chart. In other words, bad and deceptive science. What matters here is peak power density, which our reader above, as well as other independent studies have demonstrated is well above other typical household exposures. Something like 100 times the full body exposure of using a cell phone, according to UC Nuclear Policy lecturer Dan Hirsch who kindly corrected the inaccurate figures published by the CCST. And utilities like PG$E are now approaching 90% installation of 10,000,000 meters in CA.
An unsolicited lab experiment indeed…
