CPUC President Michael Peevey, “There really are people who feel pain, etc., related to EMF”
More incriminating e-mails coming out between the CPUC and PG&E, confirming that Peevey was more of a servant than a regulator, as EMF Safety Network reports:
“Peevey believed people were suffering from smart meters. He believed PG&E should do something about it. However, instead of regulating the utility to ensure public safety, he deferred his lawful responsibility to PG&E.
Michael Peevey wrote, ‘One thought for the company: If it were my decision I would let anyone who wants to keep their old meter keep it, if they claim they suffer from EMF and/or related electronic-related illnesses….I would institute such a policy quietly and solely on an individual basis. There really are people who feel pain, etc., related to EMF,etc., and rather than have them becoming hysterical, etc., I would quietly leave them alone. Kick it around. And, it sounds like the company may already have taken this step, based on a couple of the comments at yesterday’s public hearing.’
He writes, ‘If it were my decision’. As the Commissioner assigned to the proceeding- it was HIS decision. Yet, Peevey defers his lawful duty to PG&E. And he delayed on this case for years.
Peevey wanted PG&E to keep it quiet– didn’t want other customers, or the rest of the world to know there’s a problem with smart meters causing customers pain, etc.”
Last Monday night, another preventable tragedy unfolded as a 74-year-old Dallas man named James Humphrey Jr. was killed in a fire that his family is blaming on a recently installed Oncor smart meter.
The victim’s family say the new smart meters are electrically incompatible with the wiring in older houses, which is something we have been documenting for years and a fact the utility industry is well aware of.
Our thoughts go out to James Humphrey Jr.’s family and friends and again we ask how many more have to die?
More details, video and interviews with the family:
A journal article entitled “Self-Reporting of Symptom Development From Exposure to Radiofrequency Fields of Wireless Smart Meters in Victoria, Australia: A Case Series” by Federica Lamech, MBBS has been published in the November/December 2014 issue of the peer-reviewed medical journal Alternative Therapies. Lamech, who has suffered symptoms from wireless smart meters herself according to the EMF Refugee site, says she was “unable to function” after smart meters were installed in her neighborhood near Melbourne Australia. She describes the context of her research at the outset of the article (emphasis ours):
“In 2006, the government in the state of Victoria, Australia, mandated the rollout of smart meters in Victoria, which effectively removed a whole population’s ability to avoid exposure to human-made high-frequency non ionizing radiation. This issue appears to constitute an unprecedented public health challenge for Victoria. By August, 2013, 142 people had reported adverse health effects from wireless smart meters by submitting information on an Australian public Web site using its health and legal registers.”
“(It appears that)…the effects of these symptoms on people’s lives were significant.”
Records from the study- according to Lamech- were stored in her home office “under lock and key.”
“Of the 92 participants reporting symptoms from exposure to wireless smart meters, 87 were adults and five were children. Of the adults, the youngest person was 23 years of age and the oldest was 74; 55 (63%) were female and 32 (37%) were male.”
“Five most common symptoms were (in order of frequency: Insomnia (48%), headaches (45%), Tinnnitus (33%), Lethargy (32%), and Cognitive Disturbance (30%)”
Lamech addresses critics who imply that people are just suffering from hay fever:
“It is..unlikely for the reported symptoms to be associated with any seasonal factor (eg, extremes of temperatures, degree of humidity, bushfire smoke, or high pollen count), because the reporting period stretched between September 2012 and August 2013, which meant that symptoms were reported during all 4 seasons.
Smart meters represent an ubiquitous presence throughout the state of Victoria, having been rolled out across the entire state. Their presence is not subject to seasonal variation. Therefore they are a credible possible cause of the symptoms reported in this study, although a case series cannot prove causality. It can and does, however, offer a new hypothesis, one that will have to be tested by further research.”
Lamech cites similarities between her research into smart meter health impacts and previous studies:
“What is immediately apparent is the fact that most of the symptoms reported in the current case series were also present in the Naval Medical Research Institute report.”
Lamech notes that the frequency of specific symptoms reported in the Swiss study very closely mirrors the data she collected.
Mandated, Involuntary Exposure
Lamech identifies the difference between past wireless exposures and that imposed by the smart grid:
“With regard to smart meters, 2 unique features should be considered:
(1) exposure may be involuntary.
(2) exposure can be universal.
In Victoria, smart meters were mandated, thereby removing the individual’s choice to avoid exposure in his or her own home, and involuntary exposure also occurred to meters in neighboring homes. Each smart meter in the mesh networks transmits an unknown and variable number of burst transmissions per day, which typically reach into many thousands in number.
…belief is increasing in the concept that intermittent pulses of radiofrequencies, such as those used in the smart grid, are more biologically significant compared with constant-type exposures, even when the time-averaged exposure is miniscule.”
The report concludes:
“Victorians in this report claimed a direct chronological association between exposure to wireless smart meters and symptom development.”
Lamech comments on the urgency of additional research:
“An evidence based approach, such as the one used in all other areas of medicine, must be applied, which would mean the establishment of a post rollout surveillance study and funding for further research into the particular effects of wireless smart meters, in conjunction with research into the short-term and long-term consequences of EMR exposure. Until more knowledge is accumulated and until this type of wireless technology can be proven safe, the author believe that communities should use a cautionary approach, asking for a moratorium on deployment of wireless smart meters and smart grids and for the use of safer technologies for smart meters, such as hard-wiring, fiber optics, or other non harmful methods of data transmission, including reading of meters by meter readers. Living in a wireless smart grid makes the Austrian Medical Association’s recommendation to ‘take all reasonable measures to reduce exposure to electromagnetic fields’ impossible to implement.”
This is the first peer-reviewed and published study into smart meter health problems, but something tells us it won’t be the last. Thank you Federica Lamech for your important research into this area.
This article is in the print version of the Nov/Dec 2014 Journal Alternative Therapies. The digital version of the article can now be bought online for $15 via this link.
Individual issues can be purchased directly from the publisher. The cost of the Nov/Dec print issue is $ 15 incl. delivery within the US and $ 25 incl. delivery internationally. The PubMed listed abstract is available here.
PHOENIX, AZ- On December 12th, the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) took testimony from members of the public and experts, eventually voting to charge the people of Arizona the amount of $50 up front (for those who do not have an existing analog) and $5/ month forever after, just to keep their safe analog meters. You know–the kind that don’t catch fire and kill people?
Not Safe
Safe
Notable about the decision was the relatively low extortion fee compared to California and some other states (in Vermont smart meter “opt out” fees are prohibited by state law)— perhaps a sort of tacit acknowledgement of the serious safety problems with smart meters, and an indication that the smart grid debacle’s chickens are coming home to roost, particularly in light of the continuing fire-related recalls- the latest just a couple of weeks ago in Ontario.
Arizona Corporation Commission Chair Bob Stump- ridiculing disabled people on twitter is fun!
But the most outrageous thing about the hearing was the childish response of the Chairman to a disabled women attending the hearing.
“About 30 people spoke at the recent “smart” meter meeting at the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC). For some reason, the ACC chairman, Bob Stump, has chosen to single out one of them for the benefit of his Twitter subscribers.
Not once but twice, Bob Stump has sent out “tweets” calling attention to Floris Freshman who spoke wearing a hat she made herself to shield her head from EMF.
and
No other person at the meeting received this attention from Stump. Why?
I think it’s a fair guess that Stump is taking delight in calling attention to Floris and her “bicycle helmet covered in aluminum” for the purpose of ridicule.
Floris told Stump during her testimony that she had suffered head trauma, and gave her reasons for wearing the hat. For that she gets singled out for public ridicule by the chairman of the ACC? How sick is that?” (Read full article)
After the ACC’s decision, the Arizona Republic Published a ridiculous editorial stating:
“Everything the Arizona Corporation Commission needed to know about smart meters walked in on one woman’s head.
A Scottsdale woman wore a bicycle helmet to a recent hearing to decide whether Arizona Public Service could charge extra to customers who reject the smart meters, which transmit usage information so employees no longer have to go house to house. The helmet was covered in tin foil and patterned cloth, which the woman said protected her from radio frequencies.
An actual tinfoil hat could not be more symbolic of the crowd that is clamoring not only to keep the meters off their property, but to have them banned nationwide.
The meters pose a danger to human health, they claim, a message they spread via website to laptops connected to wireless networks and through calls on cell phones. The large contingent that drove to the hearing from Sedona and Prescott may have listened to their car radios on the way.
Smart meters are hardly the only source of radio waves passing through our homes and bodies. They’re not even a major source.
And yet the corporation commission not only humored these people, it took them seriously.
‘I suspect everyone up here who is not here to protest smart meters is sitting here thinking about their own health,” said Commissioner Gary Pierce, who noted he had checked to see if his grandchildren slept near one.’”
Warren Woodward responds to the Commission decision:
“In the end, people wanting to avoid the harm of having their own personal microwave transmitting surveillance device must pay $5 per month. If they have a “smart” meter that needs changing out, that costs $50. It was never explained how someone opposite a bank of meters could avoid harm, or how people can avoid the harm of their neighbors’ “smart” meters. Oh, that’s right; “smart” meters are “not likely to harm” so no one has to worry.
Just in case though, take a tip from commissioner Pierce and move your bed.
Of course you’ll have to move it over 100 yards from the nearest “smart” meter because that’s the distance at which biological effects can still occur (see physicist Dr. Ronald M. Powell’s “Biological Effects from RF Radiation at Low-Intensity Exposure, based on the BioInitiative 2012 Report, and the Implications for Smart Meters and Smart Appliances”, here).”
“Go Tinfoil Hat Lady! Ratepayers never opted in for electronic meters or the extra communication equipment they house…..the Tinfoil Hat Lady brings this issue of safety concern to the forefront.”
The reality is that when ignorance and bullying reign, and those who suffer medical conditions are singled out for public ridicule by state officials, no one is safe.
And, if we allow current deployment of smart grid, smart meter, smart city and “internet of things” technologies to continue unabated in a fog of denial that non-thermal health and environmental damage is not occurring, we may wake up one day to discover that we are all Floris Freshman, clutching the aluminum foil to our pounding, zapped heads, beseeching our friends, families, doctors and politicians to listen to our pleas.
I’ve been there, and believe me it’s no fun.And believe it or not, a tin foil hat actually provided some fleeting, temporary relief from the piercing headaches in my temple caused by (what one comes to realize is) the microwave madness otherwise known as “modern life.”
We are all “tin foil hat ladies.” After all, we all inhabit “electro-sensitive” bodies that are highly reactive to even low levels of artificial electromagnetic fields. When technocratic ideology and an irrational fixation on imposing unnecessary, costly and dangerous technology rules the day, and those with brain trauma are singled out by our public officials as a way to suppress a threatening truth, it’s time to resist. Fight back.
p.s. Arizona residents like Warren Woodward and Pat Ferre are appealing the ACC decision. You can read more about it here and on page 9 of The Noise and watch the ACC meeting below.
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