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A Channel Victoria
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 27, 2011 10:29:41 AM PDT
BC Greens say Smart Meter health concerns demand action: stop installation, create long-term ‘Smart Grid’
Health, privacy, security and individual rights concerns demand use of Precautionary Principle to guide planning
(Bio – Dr. Magda Havas PhD) (Publications)
July 27, 2011, Victoria, BC –– All jurisdictions imposing blanket implementation of wireless Smart Meters face citizen backlash. Many have placed a moratorium on the installation of wireless Smart Meters pending further study. Others have cancelled their programs.
BC Greens support development of a Smart Grid, of which Smart Meters may be one small and expensive component. If we are to encourage conservation, many other things need to be in place long before a decision is made to purchase a different kind of meter. The type of meter should be the last part of the plan and only implemented if they are proven cost effective and safe.
BC Greens believe feed-in-tariffs, time of day pricing, incentives for conservation, programs and incentives to make homes and buildings more energy efficient, and a distributed grid must all be in place before switching meters. A cost benefit analysis needs to be presented to the public. BC should not follow Ontario down the road to higher costs and no net benefit. As well, wireless technology poses a potential risk to health and the environment and further research that is independent of industry funding is needed.
Prior to implementation, all aspects of the plan must be placed before the regulator. The Clean Energy Act has done the opposite and removed the ability of the BC Utilities Commission to provide oversight on behalf of the citizens of BC.
Magda Havas is Associate Professor of Environmental and Resource Studies at Trent University where she teaches and does research on the biological effects of environmental contaminants. Since the 1990s, Dr. Havas’s research has focused on the biological effects of electromagnetic pollution including radio frequency radiation, electromagnetic fields, dirty electricity, and ground current. She works with diabetics as well as with individuals who have multiple sclerosis, tinnitus, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and those who are electrically hypersensitive.
Dr. Havas joins Jane Sterk, leader of the Green Party of BC in calling for cancelling implementation of the wireless smart meters. Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada and MP for Saanich supports this change.
“The smart meter program is another example of unsupportable assumptions based on industry lobbying rather than best practices,” says Jane Sterk, leader of the Green Party of BC. “Greens believe all public policy should be evidence based and founded in the Precautionary Principle.
“BC Hydro’s wireless smart meter program violates that principle. There are environmental, privacy and security concerns as well as the potential for adverse health risks. This is an issue that hits at the heart of democratic rights. Individuals have no ability to opt out of a program that may impact the health of those with electro-magnetic sensitivity,” says Sterk.
“I have great concern regarding the current levels of microwave radiation in North America,” says Dr. Magda Havas. “Instead of promoting wireless technology, we should be promoting wired technology and reserving wireless for situations where wired in not possible.
“Shortly after X-rays were discovered, they were used in shoe stores to determine shoe-size for young children. Fortunately, we recognized that X-rays were harmful and we restricted their use to essential medical diagnoses.
“We need to recognize that microwaves are also harmful and we cannot use this technology in a frivolous manner. With more frequencies being used, with the levels of radiation increasing, and with so little research on the long-term, low-level effects of this technology we are creating a potential time bomb. If smart meters are placed on every home, they will increase our exposure to radio frequency radiation–a potential human carcinogen–and this is both unwise and unsafe,” says Havas.
“The Green Party of Canada, through a resolution of our entire membership, has called for the current inadequate Health Canada regulations to be upgraded to the equivalent of the EMF regulations in Germany,” says Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada. “We are entirely too complacent about the growing evidence of health effects from wireless technology.”
“BC Greens believe people should have a right to feel safe and secure in their own homes,” says Sterk. “As it stands now, people cannot opt-out of the smart meter program.
“We favour a well formulated long-term plan with conservation as the driver. Most conservation goals could be achieved without replacing any meters. If it is determined we need new meters, people still need to be able to say no. With pricing and incentives and technology that has been demonstrated to be safe, opting in can be made the more attractive option,” concludes Sterk.
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Contacts:
Jane Sterk, leader Green Party of BC
(250) 507-1715
[email protected]GPBC office
(250) 590-4537
[email protected]Dr. Magda Havas
(250) 478-7892 or
(705) 748-1011 ex 7882 after Thursday
[email protected]Elizabeth May, O.C., M.P., leader Green Party of Canada
(250) 657-2000
[email protected]
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Halt smart meter installation, says B.C. Green Party
CBC News Posted: Jul 27, 2011 3:15 PM PT Last Updated: Jul 27, 2011
The Green Party of B.C. is calling for a halt to smart meter installation across the province over health and environmental concerns.
Party Leader Jane Sterk said the meters that record energy use in homes and businesses would expose people to electromagnetic radiation, much like microwaves.
She said the World Health Organization has cited electromagnetic radiation as a possible carcinogen.
“So the Green Party is calling on BC Hydro to halt the installation of smart meters, to put in place a long-term energy plan,” Sterk said during a news conference Wednesday.
Sterk appeared with Dr. Magda Havas of Trent University in Ontario, who has written about the possible impact of cell phones or microwaves on fertility rates.
Electromechanical meters throughout B.C. will be replaced by Smart Meters by the end of next year. BC Hydro
“The meters affect reproduction. It’s been shown that sperm are affected by this radiation,” Havas said.
BC Hydro is set to replace electromechanical meters across the province by the end of next year as a way to reduce consumption.
Hydro has said people cannot opt out of the smart meter program, although customers can choose to relocate the meters on their properties at their own expense.
Sterk said the Green Party has supported smart meters in the past, but is now calling for a long-term plan to cut energy consumption, perhaps through the use of wired smart meters that would be safer.
B.C.’s provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall said the meters emit the same kind of radiation as cell phones, microwaves and baby monitors but he notes people won’t have a choice when it comes to having the smart meters.
Dr. Peter Driessen of the University of Victoria added that smart meters transmit only a few minutes a day.
“So I think you could argue that smart meters are less than or equal to or certainly no more than wireless internet on your laptop.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/07/27/bc-hydro-smart-meter.html
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The Canadian Press
Green Party wants halt to Smart Meter installation over health concerns
By: The Canadian Press Posted: 07/27/2011
VANCOUVER – The Green Party of B.C. is calling for a halt to Smart Meter installation across the province over health and environmental concerns.
Party Leader Jane Sterk says the meters that record energy use in homes and businesses would expose people to electromagnetic radiation, much like microwaves.
BC Hydro is set to replace electromechanical meters across the province by the end of next year as a way to reduce consumption.
Hydro has said people cannot opt out of the Smart Meter program, although customers can choose to relocate the meters on their properties at their own expense.
Sterk says the Green Party has supported Smart Meters in the past, but is now calling for a long-term plan to cut energy consumption, perhaps through the use of wired Smart Meters that would be safer.
B.C.’s provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall says the meters emit the same kind of radiation as cell phones, microwaves and baby monitors but he notes people won’t have a choice when it comes to having the Smart Meters.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/greenpage/126277953.html
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Elizabeth May wages war against WiFi
Daniel LeBlanc July 28, 2011
The Green Party is waging war against WiFi pollution, and Elizabeth May is leading by example.
Ms. May, who was the first Green candidate to win a seat in the House of Commons in the last election, took to Twitter on Wednesday lay out her concerns over “electromagnetic frequencies.” The Green Party’s main targets are so-called wireless “smart meters,” which are set to come into use in British Columbia to monitor the use of electricity.
More related to this story
- WiFi in schools spark parental fears
- Barrie parents demand schools turn off Wi-Fi
- Teachers vote down Wi-Fi ban
Writing on her Twitter account (@ElizabethMay), the Green Party Leader said she was glad not to have WiFi at home, and joined ranks with parents who are concerned about the increased access to wireless Internet hookups in schools across Canada.
“It is very disturbing how quickly WiFi has moved into schools as it is children who are the most vulnerable,” said Ms. May.
Faced with critical reactions from some of her 28,700 followers, Ms. May said the World Health Organization lists electromagnetic frequencies as a “possible human carcinogen.”
“I do not act without scientific info,” she said, as she called on Canadian authorities to adopt stronger controls on WiFi that are in place in Europe.
However, Ms. May’s comments on the fact that the use of WiFi might be related to the “disappearance of pollinating insects” fuelled attacks over the soundness of her views.
Still, the Green Party issued a news release shortly after Ms. May took on the issue in social media, calling for the cancellation of plans to introduce smart meters in British Columbia.
“Wireless technology poses a potential risk to health and the environment and further research that is independent of industry funding is needed,” the Green Party said in its news release.
The federal Greens are supporting the B.C. Greens on this file, relying on the studies of Magda Havas, an Associate Professor of Environmental and Resource Studies at Trent University.
“With more frequencies being used, with the levels of radiation increasing, and with so little research on the long-term, low-level effects of this technology, we are creating a potential time bomb,” Ms. Havas said. “If smart meters are placed on every home, they will increase our exposure to radio frequency radiation — a potential human carcinogen — and this is both unwise and unsafe.”
BC Hydro recently received its first shipment of smart meters, which transmit information about energy use several times a day. The smart meters will replace electro-mechanical meters in every home and business in the province by the end of 2012.
Given health concerns, BC Hydro has decided to allow customers to relocate the meters on their properties at their own cost.
“There are people who adamantly believe there are [health concerns.] They are our customers and we want to be respectful and … responsive. We will do what is reasonable and, to the best of our ability, try to find a mutually acceptable solution,” Gary Murphy, chief project officer for the $930-million program, said earlier this month.
#1 by Mia Nony on July 27, 2011 - 11:24 pm
The smart grid is is “smart” for whom? What is evident is that this is one giant global human experiment which overrides local, provincial and federal laws. If we are to succeed with resistance, we must be able to match the extraordinary speed of this toxic roll out.
If we had been rounded up and taken to camps, perhaps then more people would inescapably understand the nature of this scheme. But when the laws are bent until nearly broken so that we can be experimented on while in place inside our homes and work sites, is this perhaps why some still hesitate?
Yes, the Precautionary Principle is an excellent approach. However, we already have in place something much more effective and totally legit.
It is called Canadian law.
And there is also an equivalent safety clause in place to protect all western democratic nations.
Why NOT make use of the existing Federal laws we already have on the books to block this meter roll out or to reverse it pronto?
The weight of evidence is in.
Why not speak truth to power and demand that they uphold the laws of the land?
Health Canada’s own current overarching law SCS renders smart meters illegal by defining them by their effect, if not by name.
We are suffering from a frequency conflict capable of destroying us as biological entities. Even short term exposure does measurable damage. Some of it is irreparable.
On pages one through nine Health Canada’s SCS law states that ANY high frequency which stimulates and excites human biological tissue, thereby creating the “heat effect”, ” IS TO BE AVOIDED”? Translation: they are describing the effect of frequencies which cook our bodies, that is the meaning of”the heat effect” right there in their very own working document, pages 1 to nine of Safety Code Six.
The science IS in. And that science already DOES make it self evident that we are electromagnetic beings on whom this “heat effect” is disallowed by law.
Health Canada describes us as such throughout their own literature.
Medicine knows we are low frequency biological beings.
How else could they use our body’s own natural ultra low frequency electricity (7 hertz) to measure brain waves? How else could they use use electrocardiograms?
Electricians know wer are low frequency beings. That is the peer review science taught throughout the western world. Every electrician knows we are subject to “induction”.
Why then do we not challenge the horrific failure by those we elected to use the very national laws put n place to protect us?
In theory, the health laws of Canada ARE there to protect us.
But if we as citizens of this country do not demand that these laws be upheld, then who besides all of us will protect all of us from Health Canada’s failure to uphold their own law?
Given that even a few microbursts from a single meter can travel up to one quarter rural mile with signal relay booster assists, …..given that millions of these microbursts a millisecond in length have already been used as a weapon and proven by military science and other science to lead to nerve and muscle depolarization, cognitive impairment, and latency diseases with the potential to cause a global scale cancer plague in the so called “civilized” world, …..and given that the entire “smart grid” is designed to be wireless, in the absence of such action some or even the majority may perhaps end up with an insufficient sense of the immediacy or the urgency which is needed to address the worst pollution roll out in history before there is mass disability and collapse of all things ecological.
Indeed, even while scientists continue to call the bee version of colony collapse disorder a “mystery”, honey bees we cannot live without are already telling us this is the case, that they are dying of electrical failure, leading to immune compromise.
Due to frequencies which override their own internal guidance systems, honey bees in ever larger numbers now try and fail to flee from these frequencies. And then they lose their way home – for good. They are showing us that their electromagnetic biology’s own immune systems take a dive, that they are unable to stop from succumbing to frequency induction disease. Same goes for masses of bird deaths all over highways, for swarms of migrating butterflies which lose their way, and for bats unable to withstand the destruction of the magnetite in the own brains which make it possible for them to survive.
Dogs and other pets in homes which already have smart meters are slowly going mad, anxious and unable to escape.
Amongst humans, the distinction between the electrically sensitive and the rest of the population is that the electrically sensitive have a head start on system decline and electrical failure.
So the “sensitives” should already have served as a head start early warning system for the rest of humanity, since the only difference between them and the rest of the population is that they do not go through a period of latency before the symptoms of frequency induction disease surface and electrical failure of our own biology sets in.
Given how quickly the harm becomes irreversible, doesn’t anyone think that urgent action toward immediate prevention of this toxic techno roll out may be the only real answer? Especially when electrical failure of the body itself, when mass cognitive impairment and – to quote Health Canada exactly “depolarization of nerve and muscle” en masse is what we otherwise face as a species?
Unlike whales driven mad by sonar, there is nowhere for humans to beach ourselves to try in vain to escape this corporate implemented insanity.
And if speaking up now, not later, about the risk of our own future human colony collapse disorder from high frequencies is too much of a stretch for too many people, why not speak out for all the other navigational creature species which are already showing us with such silent eloquence that this is madness, a form of ecocide in which we are complicit if we allow the minority who hold power to wreak havoc on the vast majority of all species including our own?
#2 by Mia Nony on July 28, 2011 - 11:18 am
BEFORE YOU JUMP ON BOARD FOR THE SMART GRID, DO YOU TRULY UNDERSTAND THE FULL PURPOSE OF THE SMART GRID?
Interoperability is a multidirectional electronic communication between the utility and the mesh network of meters.
You are not part of this equation and have no input into this system except as a measurable unit of consumption subject to control, monitoring, restriction, redirection, arbitrary time of use regulations and rationing.
With the Smart Grid it is not the electricity which is the unit of measurement under consideration , it is YOU.
Like Smart Meters, the true purpose of the Smart Grid itself seems to be far less about any positive environmental solution and far more about social engineering and political control over our private lives.
Are you aware of SMART METER plans to monitor your well water? your natural gas supply?
http://healthfreedoms.org/2011/07/25/usda-attacks-rural-american-with-smart-meters/
OVER THE NEXT TWELVE MONTHS BY EXECUTIVE ORDER THE WHITE HOUSE IS ABOUT TO IMPLEMENT RURAL SMART METERS THROUGHOUT AMERICA
EXCERPT
WHAT A SMART GRID DOES
In the United States, the Smart Grid concept is defined [2] as the modernization of the nation’s electricity transmission and distribution system to maintain a reliable and secure electricity infrastructure that can meet future demand growth and to achieve each of the following, which together characterize a Smart Grid:
(1) Increased use of digital information and controls technology to improve reliability, security, and efficiency of the electric grid.
(2) Dynamic optimization of grid operations and resources, with full cyber-security.
(3) Deployment and integration of distributed resources and generation, including renewable resources.
(4) Development and incorporation of demand response, demand-side resources, and energy-efficiency resources.
(5) Deployment of `smart’ technologies (real-time, automated, interactive technologies that optimize the physical operation of appliances and consumer devices) for metering, communications concerning grid operations and status, and distribution automation.
(6) Integration of `smart’ appliances and consumer devices.
(7) Deployment and integration of advanced electricity storage and peak-shaving technologies, including plug-in electric and hybrid electric vehicles, and thermal-storage air conditioning.
(8) Provision to consumers of timely information and control options.
(9) Development of standards for communication and interoperability of appliances and equipment connected to the electric grid, including the infrastructure serving the grid.
(10) Identification and lowering of unreasonable or unnecessary barriers to adoption of smart grid technologies, practices, and services.
WHAT THIS MEANS TO YOU
A smart grid will put into place “digitally controlled devices that can alter the nature of the electrical load (giving the electric company the ability to turn off appliances in your home if they see fit.”
If you are using too much electricity, the kill switch is there to make sure that you are in compliance with mandated electrical usage. If you are trying to grow food, and your electrical consumption is high because of it, you can be cut off. No electricity means no water. No water means no crops. This is a total control grid.
Unlike traditional electric meters that merely record power use – and then must be read in-person once a month by a meter reader – Smart Meters measure consumption in real time. By being networked to computers in electric utilities, the new meters can signal people or their appliances to take certain actions, such as reducing power usage when electricity prices spike…
The system also has the ability to remotely disconnect or reconnect service…
The noose is tightening, and food is on the menu for complete corporate control. Control the food, and you control the people. Control the water, and you control the food. Control the electricity needed to pump the water, and you effectively place that noose squarely around our nation’s neck.
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