Letter to Editor, Gulf Islands Driftwood<\/p>\n
July 30, 2012<\/p>\n
This will attempt to correct misinformation presented in a \u201cViewpoint\u201d article which apparently relied on government and industry information to claim that radiofrequency\/microwave radiation \u2013 EMR \u2013 is supposedly safe. This is also to refute some of the misrepresentation found in the letter to the editor defending the flawed \u201csmart\u201d meter program by project head Gary Murphy (both pieces: G.I. Driftwood, 07\/25).<\/p>\n
This is a timely discussion, as we witness the public being forced to accept technology that is failing in all other areas where deployed. Everywhere these invasive systems have been forced on an unsuspecting public, reports of damage to equipment, fires, explosions, huge bill increases and health damages follow. The Gulf Islands can soon expect a swarm of Hydro\u2019s \u2018Corix\u2019 installers, who care less about our \u2018do not install\u2019 signs and other good intentions to avoid the \u201csmart\u201dmeter. This is why our local Safe Technology group will assist in blocking and locking your safe conventional meter. Forcing this on everyone represents an end to our democratic right to a safe, secure, affordable electrical grid as well as to our right to a safe home environment free of genotoxic, cancer-causing EMR. Without this right, it can be argued that we lose what\u2019s left of our democracy altogether. Are we really okay with this?<\/p>\n
Corix is on record \u2013 on YouTube even – for kicking down doors, scaling locked fences, ripping down \u2019do not install\u2019 signs and threatening people, revealing the brutal bully behind the polite mask of an increasingly-privatised BC Hydro. Hydro even uses the words: \u201cprecautionary principle\u201d to sell us on this money grab. There are few if any benefits to customers from the \u201csmart\u201d meter plan.<\/p>\n
Regarding the relatively new form of air pollution \u2013 electrosmog \u2013 by which the \u201csmart\u201d meter plan functions – increasing worldwide reports, both scientific and anecdotal, of adverse reactions in many species, should be taken seriously. In Europe, where pulsed digital wireless radiation was prevalent much earlier than here, the diagnosis of EHS \u2013 electro hypersensitivity \u2013 is an accepted \u201cfunctional impairment\u201d or \u201cdisability\u201d, for which compensation can be awarded. Not so in North America, where medical people have yet to get up to speed with this growing affliction, said to affect 3 to 5% of the population in very serious ways, with around 35% having less severe \u2013 and largely unrecognized – symptoms.<\/p>\n
In a May 2011 position letter signed by forty published scientists and doctors, Dr. David Carpenter, MD, Director, Institute for Health and the Environment, U. Albany, USA, states:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026. people are increasingly affected by ambient microwaves due to the growing popularity of wireless devices such as cell phones and Wi-Fi Internet. Therefore, the mass deployment of smart grids could expose large chunks of the general population to alarming risk scenarios without their consent. According to seven surveys done in six European countries between 2002 and 2004, about 10% of Europeans have become electrosensitive, and experts fear that percentage could reach 50% by 2017. The most famous person to publicly reveal her electrosensitivity is Gro Harlem Brundtland, formerly Prime Minister of Norway and retired Director of the World Health Organization (WHO).\u201d<\/p>\n
Why would we allow \u201csmart\u201d technology that invades privacy and can be brought down by a cyber attack or solar flare? Why accept technology that imposes continuous, powerful EMR spikes from every meter, as well as around 300,000 radiation spikes daily from a network of collector transmitters in every area \u2013 all signalling to massive cellular\/WiMAX antennas via EMR? This is powerful stuff and is best avoided, which is why we are calling for a \u201csmart\u201d meter-free zone status for the Gulf Islands.<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr Carpenter et al: \u201cWireless smart meters typically produce atypical, relatively potent and very short pulsed RF\/microwaves whose biological effects have never been fully tested. They emit these millisecond-long RF bursts \u2026 with a maximum of 190,000 daily transmissions \u2026 Thus people in proximity to a smart meter are at risk of significantly greater aggregate exposure than with a cell phone, not to mention the cumulative levels of RF\/microwaves that people living near several meters are exposed to. With smart meters, the entire body is exposed to the microwaves, which increases the risk of overexposure to many organs.\u201d<\/p>\n Our widely discredited \u2018Code Six\u2019 EMR exposure guidelines are among the least protective in the world. In 2007, the EU called for much stricter EMR standards.<\/p>\n In May, 2011, the Council of Europe called on governments to \u201ctake all reasonable measures to reduce exposure to electromagnetic fields.\u201d It stated: \u201c\u2026 certain high frequency waves used in the fields of radar, telecommunications, and mobile telephony, appear to have \u2026.potentially harmful, non-thermal, biological effects on plants, insects, and animals as well as the human body even when exposed to levels that are below the official threshold values.\u201d And yet our governments remain under industry influence in allowing ever-increasing EMR exposure.<\/p>\n It is fact that replicated, peer-reviewed and published \u201cgold standard\u201d science now shows serious and potentially-irreversible harm from\u00a0 pulse-modulated, microwave radiation.<\/p>\n Dr. Carpenter: \u201cThe apparent adverse health effects noted with smart meter exposure are likely to be further exacerbated if smart appliances that use wireless communications become the norm and further increase unwarranted exposure.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026\u2026 many scientists and medical experts urgently recommend that measures following the Precautionary Principle be applied immediately \u2014 such as using wired meters \u2014 to reduce biologically inappropriate microwave exposure.\u201d<\/p>\n We need to stop the madness now and to claim our rights to safe, secure, affordable electricity. Water and gas \u201csmart\u201d meters are the next targets.<\/p>\n Chris Anderson\u00a0 250-537-5102<\/p>\n <\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=FDMYc1qlhFY<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Letter to Editor, Gulf Islands Driftwood July 30, 2012 This will attempt to correct misinformation presented in a \u201cViewpoint\u201d article which apparently relied on government and industry information to claim that radiofrequency\/microwave radiation \u2013 EMR \u2013 is supposedly safe. This is also to refute some of the misrepresentation found in the letter to the editor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,17,69,109,5,40,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bchydro","category-bc","category-chris-anderson","category-cisco","category-ehs","category-gulf-islands","category-smart-meter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4168"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5170,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4168\/revisions\/5170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}