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In this chapter will explain what a smart meter is and how and why it radiates. We will also review the deployment of Smart & Radiating meters in USA, Canada, Australia, and other countries.

No Smart meter sign
Not smart, Not healthy, Not green and Not private smart meters, from the USA anti-smart meter protest site http://stopsmartmeters.org

Fanny and sad video about the situation in USA, Canada, and Australia 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N29AtA3VodU

 What should you do if a smart meter is already installed on my house?
These are the steps you can take:
1. Make sure no one stayד or sleeps in the rooms next to the meter.
2. Buy an RF/ELF meter and measure the RF and ELF in your house.
3. Use RF and ELF protection to minimize your exposure from the meters.
4. Join a “Stop Smart Meters” group in your area.
5. Make videos about your radiating smart meters and upload them, so people can see the truth.

For more info read on and see below.

Preview for Smart Meters

“Smart meter” is a promotional code name for wireless gas, electric and water usage meters that are now being installed, around the world, instead of the good old analog mechanical meters. These smart and radiating meters collect and process all the data of the customer’s usage and then send it over to the utility company headquarters using wireless technologies ( radiating people) or as ADSL over the electric wires (PLC – creating dirty electricity). In some of the meters, especially when remote controls of usage and problems finder services are available the meter will send the data every couple of seconds, In addition, some wireless meters can receive transmissions from a neighboring meter and transmit the data forward to the nearest collector. This Transmission will increase (increase the periods of time the RF is transmitted from each meter) the overall emitted radio frequency electromagnetic radiation. In some meters there is also the possibility to communicate (wireless) to home appliances, again transmitting RF EMR more often and for longer periods of time, exposing people that live next to the meter to more RF EMR for longer periods of time. 

Wireless communication form smart meters to the company headquarters

Some of the smart meters use wireless(RF) or cellular technologies (3G/GPRS) to communicate (2-way communication) and to pass all the usage data to the company headquarters. By that These smart meters become radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation sources and also use more bandwidth of the cellular and wireless networks increasing the need for more cellphone and wireless antennas and increasing the EMR pollution in our environment. 

Other types of smart meters communicate over the electric wires(PLC). These smart meters produce dirty electricity in and outside the house. Dirty electricity is a high-frequency noise that is passed over the electric wires. Dirty electricity is suspected to have a negative effect on human health.

All digital electric meters have an inside switching power supply that supply the low voltage required to the operation of the Digital Electric meter. These switching power supplies, as every switching power supply, create Dirty Electricity that is added to the house electric network and to which some people can and will react (most of the time much less than their reaction to RF). 

Wireless communication and the “Smart Grid”

These smart and radiating meters communicate the usage data to the company headquarters do it either by using the existing cellular network or by using a separated, new, wireless networks also known as the smart grid. In both cases, this means taking more and more bandwidth and increasing the need for more antennas and transmitters (collectors in case of a separated network). It also means more environmental radiation and more people that will be exposed to more RF EMR for longer periods of time. Please note that in digital wireless communication both the radiating smart meter and the wireless collector receive and transmit, so both of them emit RF EMR, The saying “it only receives, so there is no radiation” does not apply here.

“The Smart Meters transmit only for a fraction of a second”

In many cases, both in formal and informal publications industry spokesmen say that the smart meters radiate only for a fraction of a second and in levels that are much lower than a normal cellphone. In reality, measurements show that the meters transmit and radiate between 6-10 times in every minute and for several seconds each time. The radiation levels that where measured 1 meter away from the meter were several times higher than a GSM cellphone.

This Video clip addresses these publications, measure several smart meters and compares them to GSM and 3G phones. The full story is available on http://stopsmartmeters.org/2011/09/04/comparing-cell-phone-and-smart-meter-radiation/

 Video – smart meters’ measurement in Texas, USA shows they transmit every 12- 20 seconds.

Video – comparing smart meters radiation and cell phone radiation

Video – RF radiation measured from a bank/cluster of smart meters in the USA (from 03:38)

Video – a Technical explanation of the emission from smart meters in the USA 

Personal RF EMR exposure from the Smart Meters

In addition to the increase of the environmental RF levels, the personal exposure to RF of people living next to where these meters were or will be installed has or will be increased. Smart and radiating meters are usually installed on the external wall of the house, in the electric cabinet, in clusters of many smart meters in service rooms or outside the building. The proximity of these meters to apartments and places where people live and work increase these people exposure to Radio Frequency radiation. The exposure is the highest next to smart meter’s clusters or when the smart meters are installed inside an apartment or next to the bedroom.

Advanced services via Smart & Radiating Meters

The utility companies offer their customers real-time usage tracking services via websites, leakage pipes, and faulty wiring detection, and electric appliances control services that make use of the bi-directional wireless communication to and from the smart radiating meters. In order to allow these services, the meters have to receive and transmit almost constantly, to and from the smart grid and to and from electric appliances in the house. This results in more frequent RF radiation transmissions for longer periods of time, making both the meters and home appliances wireless hot-spots and sources of RF radiation.

Link – a web page about advanced services and options of smart meters: http://www.geappliances.com/home-energy-manager/about-energy-monitors.htm

Big brother is following you

Apart from radiation exposure, there are also some privacy issues. The smart meter can collect, store and pass data about the customer’s usage. The utility companies can collect this data and can make use of it whenever they want. They can detect the type of electric appliances you have, the time you are home, and gather more useful info on you and your lifestyle. In addition, this info can make its way to a third party who can then make use of it in many ways. This issue is a big privacy and security risk.

Link – a post on the IEEE blog about privacy on the smart grid http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/privacy-on-the-smart-grid

Picture - the utility company can know which appliance you use, when and how often. From the IEEE website.
Picture – the utility company can know which appliance you use, when and how often. From the IEEE website.

Fire safety issues with smart and radiating meters

Since the smart and radiating meters are not simple mechanical devices, but highly complicated electronic devices with wireless capabilities, there is a clear danger of overheating and unit meltdown. In the use many meters were reported to catch on fire and caused the wooden walls there were installed on to burn down, sometimes taking all the house with it.

Picture – smart and radiating meter that burned down the house from http://stopsmartmeters.org

Video – smart and radiating meter catching on fire.

Overcharging since smart and radiating meters were installed

Smart meters are promoted as a means to control and reduce customer expenses over his energy and water bills. This is supposed to happen since the customer who uses the smart and radiating meters now have a better way to control their usage, because of different rates for different parts of the day and because the meters will alert the customers of pipe problems, leakage, and critical overuse. In reality, many customers have complained that their bills have only gone up because of errors in the process of the usage data and other types of overcharging.

This was recently (03/2017) backed up by a study done in Holland that showed that 5 out of 9 smart meters were overcharging & 2 undercharging. The reason was according to the researchers, the inability of some of the smart meters to handle non-linear consumption created by switching power suppliers that are embedded in CFLs, LED light bulbs, electronic equipment and also by Dimmer switches – https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170303180139.htm

 Links about smart meters overheating and overcharging: 

“The smart meters are within the health standards”

The companies that manufacture and deploy these smart and radiating meters declare that the meters are safe to use and are compliant with the most protective safety standards that are used today for RF radiation, like the ICNIRP safety standard. They also claim that the RF levels that emit from these smart and radiating meters are safe. I would like to remind you all that the ICNIRP standard for RF radiation Takes into account only the heat effect of the RF radiating and it is based on the IEEE standard that dismisses any health effect of RF radiation over human and living tissue and that is in contrast to the WHO/IARC resolution from 2011 that RF radiation is a possible carcinogen in humans. The WHO resolution is supported by the EU assembly resolution and The Russian National Committee on Non-ionizing radiation protection, both published few days before the WHO’s resolution, and by many studies that show added risk of getting brain cancer in cell phone users and adverse biological effects in living tissues exposed to radiation levels much lower than the thermal levels or ICNIPR so-called “safety” standard. Just as a reminder the ICNIRP so-called safety standard for RF radiation at the frequency of 900MHZ is 450uW/cm2 (!!!) while the strict standard in the world (city of Salzburg -Austria) is only 0.1uW/cm2 and while studies showed that DNA breaks happen in non-thermal levels.

Link – studies about RF biological effects on www.norad4u.com site: EMR Science, reports and Studies

The smart meters’ deployment is not economical

The federal German government ordered a report about the economic cost-benefit of the smart meter plan from Ernst&young. The final report concluded the deployment of smart meters will not be economical.
http://www.bmwi.de/EN/Press/press-releases,did=588354.html

In Maine, USA, the Maine Public Utilities Commission called for an audit over the smart meters plan after the plan cost more than $80 Million when it was supposed to save $25 Million.
http://www.mainecoalitiontostopsmartmeters.org/2013/05/mpuc-orders-audit/

Security breach – the smart meter system is not secured

A report by an independent group of security experts tested the system and found many holes and security breaches, right from the unsecured wireless RF and IR communication, via exposed USB & LAN sockets on the collectors and the smart meters hardware, via poor security of the data centers and websites of the utility companies.

The findings are reported in the following video – http://youtu.be/6HIFmLtetSY

Reports about negative health effect from exposure to RF radiation from the smart meters.

Many people, that have smart radiating meters which were installed in and on their homes, started complaining about negative symptoms and health effects, including RF radiation sickness and EHS symptoms. People that are at potentially high risk are people who have cancer, Electromagnetic hypersensitive people, people who suffer from autoimmune sickness, kids and old people. In some cases, in which the wireless meters were changed with PLC meters (that communicate over the power line and not wirelessly) that may cause dirty electricity, people still reported health symptoms like headaches, chronic fatigue, dizziness, and other RF radiation sickness symptoms.

Video: reports of people that experienced negative health effects after the installation of smart and radiating meters.

Current status around the world

In many countries, the deployment of smart and radiating meters is underway.  In countries like USA, Canada, and England the deployment started a few years back, mostly last year at 2011. In these countries, people already started protesting about the smart meters and reporting health problems both from the wireless meters and the PLC meters.

  1. 2012 – 40 world scientists and health professionals sign the letter “Smart Meters: Correcting the Gross Misinformation” explaining that smart meters are not safe, RF exposure is not safe and that EHS is real.
  2. 05-2013 – Several law suite were filled in US and CANADA by smart meters victims.
  3. 05-2013 – UK Parliament pause smart meters deployment in a year
  4. 07-2013 – Electric smart meters pilot in ISRAEL
  5. 07-2013 – Mandatory smart meter bill was filled for the Congress.
  6. 07-2013 – Mew petition to stop smart meters in the US and worldwide.Protest against smart and radiating meters in the USA
  7. 11-2013 – The “American Academy of Environmental Medicine” reports a case study of 92 cases in which people suffered from health effect from the EMF (RF) radiation emitted from smart meters).

The protest against smart and radiating meters started in the US. Worried citizens, EHS people, RF health risk awareness activists, civil rights activists, overcharged customers all were united in the protest that aimed to stop the deployment of these smart and radiating meters and to remove the new RF source out of their house. Reports of the protest made their way to Canada, England, and France in which similar protest groups were formed.  Recently the US protest has won a great achievement when the utility company PG&E agreed to allow their customers to stay with their good old analog not radiating gas and electric smart meters, something that a few weeks ago seemed to be impossible. 

Picture – a cluster of analog gas meters with notes and request not to install new wireless smart meters: http://turn.org/article.php?id=1154  

A Solution with no radiation or dirty electricity.

If we put the privacy issue aside for a minute, the RF radiation issues could have been solved if the smart meters would have use wired interfaces. It is possible to connect all these meters to a wired communication network. A wired technology will also reduce the cost of the meters since the parts and infrastructure are cheaper. Wired technology is also more secure than wireless technology. Over a wired smart grid it would be possible to have all the features that the wireless smart grid is supposed to have, plus no health effects and more security.

So what can you do?

As a citizen and a customer, your rights and actions possibly may differ from one country to the other and from one situation to the other. We at www.norad4u.com suggest you contact the anti-smart meter group for advice, to contact your local administration and parliament representative with the issues.

In any case, you can print a note and a warning asking not to install a smart meter and put it next to your old analog meters. If the smart and radiating meters have already been installed, we suggest measuring the radiation in your house in order to see if the radiation emitted from the smart meter penetrates the walls. If this is the case you might want to install some blocking materials over the walls that face the meters. 

Please also find the page “smart meter action kit in http://citizensforsafetechnology.com  website – http://citizensforsafetechnology.com/smart-meter-action-kit-in-communities-governments,73,0Or The “Actions you can take” page at stopsmartmeters.org http://stopsmartmeters.org/how-you-can-stop-smart-meters/

Stop US and Worldwide Smart Grid – Sign the petition!

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Stop_US_and_Worldwide_Smart_Grid/?pv=11

What should you do if a smart meter is already installed on my house?

STEP 1

First I recommend clearing the room behind the meter. Make sure no one sleeps or stays there for more than a few minutes.

STEP 2

Call your local power company, ask to for the “option out program”.

STEP 3

Second, get an RF meter (like the CORNET ED88TPLUS) and measure the RF and the ELF that manage to penetrate the walls. If the walls are made of concrete or stone, most of the RF will be blocked, if the walls are made of wood or other light material, most of the RF will manage to penetrate it. In any case, most of the ELF will penetrate the walls.

STEP 4

Then I suggest to try and block the RF from penetrating the walls. You can buy an RF blocking paint (like this one: https://www.norad4u.com/emr-protection/rf-protection#RF-blocking-paint ) and paint the wall on which the meter is installed (paint from the inside, use a grounding kid). Measure the RF levels again, if needed put a second layer of paint. The levels in bedrooms should be as close to 0.001 mW/m2 as possible. Do this for every wall the RF manages to come in.
Behind the smart meter check also for ELF EMF. If you find some try to block the ELF using ELF blocking/absorbing materials like the Mu-Metal foil.
For more info about RF and ELF blocking products please see my eStore at www.4EHSByEHS.com

STEP 5 

Please consider joying a “Stop Smart Meter group” in your state or province.

More links and videos about smart meters

Stop smart meters protest sites

USA –  http://stopsmartmeters.org/Canada – http://www.stopsmartmetersbc.ca/Australia – http://stopsmartmeters.com.au/UK – http://stopsmartmeters.org.uk/

Daniel Hirsch about the wrong calculations of the radiating levels being emitted from the smart meters.- http://stopsmartmeters.org/2011/04/20/daniel-hirsch-on-ccsts-fuzzy-math/ 

Report on negative health effect:

http://www.emfsafetynetwork.org/?page_id=2292

Privacy issues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v3zvDufPes

The Guardian -“Smart meters can be vulnerable to attack by computer viruses and there are other concerns about data security, but effective safeguards are essential if customers are to be persuaded of the technology’s benefits.” – http://www.guardian.co.uk/smart-revolution/safe-smart-metering

Overcharging reports:

http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/news/63581287.html?tab=video

England – “Smart meters `could end up costing billpayers more`” –http://www.thinkmoney.com/debt/news/smart-meters-could-end-up-costing-billpayers-more-0-4350.htm

Australia – “Plug pulled on smart meter plan” –  http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/plug-pulled-on-smart-meter-plan-20100322-qrdc.html  

Australia – “An explosive investigation into the massive mistakes being made with power bills reveals serious flaws that affect nearly every electricity user.” – http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/money/article/-/10241945/power-scandal-exposed/#video

How does smart & radiating meters work?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNbE1-Oiq8Y