By DEBRA KAHN of GreenwireGreenwire
Published: January 5, 2011
Citing alleged health effects from electromagnetic waves, a county in the North San Francisco Bay Area has criminalized the installation of “smart” electric meters.
The law applies to unincorporated Marin, home to about 70,000 of the county’s 260,000 residents. In addition to electromagnetic health risks, the board cited concerns about meters being used to collect information about residents’ activities, impacts on aesthetics and potential damage to amateur radio networks.
The board has asked the California Public Utilities Commission before to declare a moratorium on the meters, following the lead of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
A spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., which dismissed an executive last November after he admitted to monitoring smart-meter opponents online, said the company planed to continue smart-meter installation despite the ordinance (Greenwire, Nov. 11, 2010).
PG&E’s meter installation is being done by a contractor, Wellington Energy, and is supposed to be finished by the end of next year to comply with a state mandate. The towns of Fairfax and Watsonville, as well as Santa Cruz County, have also passed laws against the meters.
“We continue to be committed to engaging fully with our customers as well as in communities where smart meters are being installed or are about to be installed,” utility spokesman Jeff Smith said. “Ultimately, continuing the program will allow all our customers to enjoy the benefits of them.”
Among the benefits, Smith said, are faster power-outage detection, daily and hourly summaries of energy use for residents and alerts when a home is about to use enough energy to enter into a higher pricing tier.
Katharina Sandizell, a mother of two who was arrested last week for blocking Wellington trucks on a public road in Inverness Park, noted that San Francisco passed a law last year requiring cell phone retailers to post information on the radiation produced by each type of phone. Smart meters emit more radiation than phones, she said.
“With cell phones, you can choose not to have them, or to turn it off when you’re not using it or you can use a headset,” she said. “With the smart meter, it’s just constantly on and you can’t turn it off.”
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Marin County Supes Approve One-Year SmartMeter Moratorium
January 4, 2011
My dear friend, Catherine Gamba, recently pointed this web link out to me. A very good
read for anyone interested in the mast cell/EMF/EHS issue:
Best regards
Yours
Olle
(Olle Johansson, assoc. prof.
The Experimental Dermatology Unit
Department of Neuroscience
Karolinska Institute
171 77 Stockholm
Sweden
&
Professor
The Royal Institute of Technology
100 44 Stockholm
Sweden)
The Hindu
Behari said the reports have concluded that RF-EMW from commercially available cell phones might affect the fertilising potential of sperms. …
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article1033086.ece?homepage=true
By Kelly Wallace
For many years now, skeptics have argued that the epidemiological studies pointing to a tumor risk from cell phones must be wrong, because no one has seen an increase in cell–phone related tumors in the general population. … A recent re-analysis of the Hardell data by the Hardell team, published December 17, 2010 in the International Journal of Epidemiology, finally now explains the difference in brain tumor risk found in the two studies. …
http://thedrcoldwellreport.blogspot.com/2011/01/more-evidence-linking-cell-phones-and.html
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W.E.E.P. – The Canadian initiative to stop Wireless Electrical and Electromagnetic Pollution