1) Microwave News reports that a new major study will be released within days, confirming the results of the NTP study. Of specific interest is the evidence that health effects from exposure to microwave radiation is better understood now that NTP’s increase in schwannomas is replicated. An excellent article that will help to understand the final report when it is released next week.
(click on photos to enlarge)
“More Than a Coincidence” – New Large Animal Study, Like NTP’s, Links RF to Schwannoma of the Heart
“The malignant schwannomas of the heart seen in the Italian study are the same as those described by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) earlier this month as the basis for their concern that cell phone radiation, both GSM and CDMA, can lead to cancer. Ramazzini embarked on its RF project in 2005, about the same time as the NTP effort was taking off.
A paper detailing the Ramazzini experiment is expected to be published in Environmental Research, a peer-reviewed journal, within a week.
“It is a positive study and will buttress the findings from the NTP rat study,” Tony Miller told Microwave News. Miller, an emeritus professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto, is serving as the guest editor for a special issue of the journal, which will include the Ramazzini paper. Miller declined to offer any other details prior to publication.”
http://microwavenews.com/news-center/more-coincidence
2) The “Windsor Hum” is driving people crazy, and seems to be without explanation. Several of our members have reported hearing a hum. I believe the video in the article captures the hum in Windsor. Is the “BC Hum” similar?
There’s a Persistent Hum in This Canadian City, and No One Knows Why
“A persistent noise of unknown origin, sometimes compared to a truck idling or distant thunder, has bedeviled a Canadian city for years, damaging people’s health and quality of life, numerous residents say.
Those who hear it have compared it to a fleet of diesel engines idling next to your home or the pulsation of a subwoofer at a concert. Others report it rattling their windows and spooking their pets.
Known as the Windsor Hum, this sound in Windsor, Ontario, near Detroit, is unpredictable in its duration, timing and intensity, making it all the more maddening for those affected.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/world/canada/windsor-hum.html
or https://tinyurl.com/yadkdxt2
[http://www.zugislanddocumentary.com/]
3) We all joined together to fight against the government mandated installation on our homes of microwave transmitters that are fire hazards and invade our privacy. This resistance must continue, but equally important (if not greater) is the virtually mandated installation of cell transmitters in the form of microcells outside our homes. This will increase the power density to which we are exposed every hour of every day, inside our home as well as outside. It is vital that we all become educated about 5G and help educate others who will hear nothing but the “benefits” of faster internet and phone service. Is our health and that of our children worth it?
Cell Tower Radiation Facts & 5G Unknowns
“Cell phone towers dot the landscape every so many hundred or thousand feet in most places, especially along interstate highways and on higher or hill-top locations. Because there is such a demand for cell phone service—more cell phones now than the total global population—more and more technology means of providing service have to be implemented. However, cell towers cost around $150,000 each to erect. Consequently, cell providers want less expensive ‘infrastructure’ to be able to provide faster and ‘better’ service, therefore, the introduction of “5G”, which no one knows what that “generation of service” will do to humans, wildlife and the environment.”
https://www.activistpost.com/2018/02/cell-tower-radiation-facts-5g-unknowns.html
Embedded in this article is a link to a very interesting video interview:
5G Ground Based Web System
Barbara Johnson, an electrical engineer and star wars tactician, discusses 5G weaponized frequencies and the dangers of this unproven and untested energy field that will engulf much of the US. She examines the unavoidable health risks associated with 5G and questions why our government is all too eager to roll this out throwing caution to the wind. Unlike conventional wireless technology, the 5G ground based web system generates an energy “field” vs. a wave transmission despite the fact many refer to this as millimeter wave technology. Fields are constant and create a grid like topography, whereas waves do not. Waves can be cancelled whereas fields can not without creating an equal but opposite field – so what’s gained or negated?
https://www.level9news.com/5g-ground-based-web-system/ (55 minutes) [https://vimeo.com/229873954]
Letters:
Please note that I changed the colour of the font from red to blue to accommodate our members who are color-blind.
From: Carol Hall (name provided with permission)
Sent: February 20, 2018
To: EMPR EAED Correspondence EMPR:EX <MEM.EAED.Correspondence@gov.bc.ca>; Michelle Mungall <empr.minister@gov.bc.ca>; John Horgan <premier@gov.bc.ca>
Cc: Scott Fraser <scott.fraser.mla@leg.bc.ca>
Subject: Re: Response to your email regarding BC Hydro’s Smart Meter Initiative (SMI) program, Ref: 102097
Dear Mr. Wieringa,
Please see my comments (in red)[changed to blue] regarding your response to my original email of September 25, 2017, Ref. 102097. I would appreciate a real response to these comments (as opposed to canned talking points provided by the smart meter industry) from the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources.
Thank you,
Carol Hall
= = =
From: “EMPR EAED Correspondence EMPR:EX” <MEM.EAED.Correspondence@gov.bc.ca>
To: Carol Hall
Sent: December 20, 2017
Subject: Response to your email regarding BC Hydro’s Smart Meter Initiative (SMI) program, Ref: 102097
Ref: 102097
Ms. Carol Hall
Dear Ms. Hall:
A copy of your September 25, 2017 email to Honourable Michelle Mungall, Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, has been sent to me for response regarding BC Hydro’s Smart Meter Initiative (SMI) program.
Modernization of the electricity grid is critical to provide an efficient, secure and reliable power system including the replacement of obsolete mechanical meters with modern smart meters.
Real modernization of the electrical grid would involve fibre optic cable right up to every household and include fibre optic connections within the home. In places where this has been done on a large scale, such as in Chattanooga, TN, permanent benefits have been tremendous and no harmful radiation has been involved. If the NDP government was serious about modernizing the grid, it would begin studies on how to accomplish this.
All electricity meters must pass Federal and North American standards set by Measurement Canada, the American National Standards Institute, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the International Electrotechnical Commission. All BC Hydro meters comply with the applicable standards.
None of these standards address the health risks of the microwave radiation (radiofrequency radiation/electromagnetic fields or RF-EMF) emitted by wireless smart meters, nor do they address the known risk of fires. Microwave radiation has been proven to cause adverse health effects on animals (most recently in the 10-year, multi-million dollar study by the National Toxicology Program in the US) and is listed as a possible human carcinogen by the World Health Organization.
The Itron meter in use by BC Hydro’s Smart Meter Program has received Federal Government certification.
“Certification” has nothing to do with the health and safety risks just described. It merely means the object in question conforms to the official description of that object.
The BC Utilities Commission (BCUC) confirmed in a 2013 decision regarding the same technology that the human exposure limits under Health Canada Safety Code 6 is the relevant standard regarding radio frequency emissions and the potential for impact to health. BC Hydro must ensure the smart meter technology it uses operates within Safety Code 6. Health Canada made Safety Code 6 more stringent in 2015 and BC Hydro implemented technical updates to the smart meter system in that year. Follow-up studies were undertaken to demonstrate BC Hydro’s compliance and are publicly available.
Safety Code 6 does not address low-level non-thermal microwave radiation, such as emitted by wireless smart meters, at all. This fact has been admitted in court, under oath, by Dr. James McNamee, a lead researcher at Health Canada.The only concern of Safety Code 6 is the heating of tissue, which is not applicable in this case. Safety Code 6 (one of the least protective in the world, even with the 2015 revisions) is still totally irrelevant in setting safety standards for RF-EMF. Please do not continue to cite Safety Code 6 as a protective standard in regards to wireless smart meters, because it simply is not.
Regarding your concern that smart meters are a fire safety hazard in British Columbia, the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC) responded in July 2016 to this concern as a result of a customer complaint to the BCUC (see BCUC Document G-126-16, online at http://www.ordersdecisions.bcuc.com/bcuc/orders/en/item/168896/index.do). Based on the data before the BCUC during the complaint process, the BCUC found “no evidence that smart meters materially increase the risk of fires in BC over analog and digital meters.” However, the BCUC directed BC Hydro and Fortis BC to report on a semi-annual basis to the BCUC regarding “all incidents where a meter and/or meter base is reasonably assessed to be the possible or likely source of a high temperature or fire event that results in the meter and or meter base requiring replacement.”
In its February 14, 2018 reply to Sharon Noble’s Fire Report, the BCUC did not refute a single one of her points. Their reponse, along with the original Fire Report of September 2017, can be read here.
https://stopsmartmetersbc.com/bcuc-smart-meter-fires-the-failure-to-protect/ The Fire Report.
On December 21, 2016, BC Hydro filed with the BCUC, further to BC Hydro’s Fiscal 2017-Fiscal 2019 Revenue Requirements Application (RRA), the “Smart Metering and Infrastructure Program Completion and Evaluation Report”. This report includes a review of concerns relating to health, safety, and the risk of a security or privacy breach that could impact customers or system operations.
This “review” merely lists some of the concerns. It does not adequately address any of them. Please re-read it.
The report updates the BCUC on responses to these matters. It also quantifies until Fiscal 2015-16 the benefits SMI has realized in dollar terms, and provides an outlook for these benefits until 2033: http://www.bcuc.com/Documents/Proceedings/2016/DOC_48502_B-1-4_BCH-Appx-P-Update-SMI-Report.pdf (see pages 19 to 23 of 74, and pages 41 to 48 of 74).
In the report, BC Hydro notes the old metering equipment provided only basic consumption information. Upgrading the technology and telecommunications infrastructure along with new meters reduces theft, provides accurate bills and new conservation tools, streamlines the move-in and move-out process, and enables distributed generation and faster outage restoration.
All this could be done more easily, faster, much more securely (not possible to hack), more economically (vastly increased future capacity) and above all safely – no health hazards, no fire hazards – with fibre optics.
With the option of a radio-off meter, BC Hydro is addressing concerns of customers who do not want a standard meter.
This statement is a very bad and very unfunny joke. By the time the so-called Meter Choices Program was announced in September 2013, only about 60,000 BC Hydro customers still retained their analog meters due to their diligence in protecting them from “stealth” change-outs by BC Hydro’s Corix installers. When the punitive “legacy meter fees” were announced, this number dropped to about 20,000, mostly due to the simple and stark unaffordability of paying $32.40 each and every month in perpetuity. (As a well-paid government employee, you are probably out of touch with the realities of budgeting and bill-paying for the majority of BC families. For many people, this is a major monthly expense.) Furthermore, many these 20,000 BC Hydro customers have been forced to “accept” a wireless smart meter because of moving house, changing the name on the account, or other such arbitrary conditions established by BC Hydro. Let’s say there are 19,000 left. THIS IS ONE PERCENT OF BC HYDRO’S CUSTOMER BASE of 1.9 MILLION. ONE PERCENT. Mr. Weiringa, many more thousands of BC Hydro customers who have educated themselves about the dangers of wireless smart meters also do not “want” one – BUT ARE FORBIDDEN BY LAW FROM REQUESTING A RADIO-OFF METER because a wireless smart meter has already been installed on their home. This blatant discrimination, currently enshrined in BC law, could easily be reversed by the government of which you are a part. All it would take would be an Order in Council.
The BCUC has set tariffs to cover the additional cost to serve customers with a radio-off meter.
These tariffs have never been justified, nor has any accounting of what they were actually used for been made public. What has happened to the tens of millions of dollars collected in the last four-plus years? By any stretch of the imagination, it does not cost $64.80 for every bi-monthly manual reading of every analog meter, or even $40.00 per reading of every radio-off meter. What other “additional costs” are there? What “infrastructure” was installed where? What happened to that “infrastructure” as the number of analog meters in the system has steadily dwindled? Why does a person who has been paying the extortion fee (for that is what it is – pay us not to harm you) for several years all of a sudden have those fees cancelled when they reluctantly agree to have a wireless smart meter installed because they simply can’t afford the fees any longer – even though the actual installation won’t take place until several months in the future? What makes the “additional costs” (including manual meter reading) suddenly not applicable for several months? If it really cost $64.80 for every actual manual reading of an analog meter or $40.00 for every radio-off meter, how did the meter reader get paid during this interval? I would appreciate specific answers to these questions.
The opt-out program that you are proposing would reduce the benefits of the SMI program and increase costs to customers with a standard meter.
These are vague and meaningless statements directly from BC Hydro’s propaganda arm – the same one that maintained the grid “would not work” unless every single meter in the system was a wireless smart meter, or that a person “could be arrested” for refusing one. What benefits would be lost? Considering the multi-millions in “legacy fees” already paid into BC Hydro’s coffers and the prospect of even more fees if more people were allowed to opt out, how could a universal opt-out “increase costs” to other customers?
My original proposal specified mechanical analog meters as the standard opt-out option in a universal opt-out, but new analog meters are apparently no longer available. This does not change the fact that there is no legal way for 99% of British Columbians – including those whose health is already impacted by such radiation – to opt out of having a microwave radiation-emitting wireless smart meter installed on their homes. If the NDP did the right thing by making the choice of a radio-off meter available to all BC Hydro customers, the percentage of customers choosing to opt out would likely be no more than 5%, based on consistent data from other locations where universal opt-outs are offered. Utilities in other jurisdictions have easily accommodated this percentage with no noticeable effect on either their efficiency or their bottom line. Why does BC Hydro maintain that they could not possibly consider such a thing? More importantly, why do you believe them? Please do your own thinking and crunch your own numbers. Sadly, BC Hydro – once an exemplary crown corporation – can no longer be trusted to tell the truth.
Finally, Mr. Weiringa, for the sake of argument only, let’s suppose that a universal opt-out program – a radio-off meter for everyone who requests one, with a very nominal charge for manual meter reading – did increase the costs to BC Hydro. Are you really saying that people who are concerned for their health and safety, and that of their families, must legally accept the risks of a known hazard attached to their own homes because it might cost a few dollars more to have their meters read manually, as they have been for decades? Can you say this with a straight face to someone who is severely electro-sensitive, or to a pregnant woman concerned about possible health effects on her unborn child, or to someone who is fighting cancer and been told by their doctor to avoid all sources of RF-EMF? What happened to the NDP premise of looking out for “the little guy” in the face of corporate greed?
Please answer all my questions, including the last one.
Thank you for writing
Sincerely,
Paul Wieringa
Executive Director – Electricity
Electricity and Alternative Energy Division
Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources
Sharon Noble
Director, Coalition to Stop Smart Meters
“You will observe with concern how long a useful truth may be known, and exist, before it is generally received and acted on.”
~ Ben Franklin