[ACSH – Analog Meters – BC Hydro Substations – Bills – Children – Consumer Benefits – Cybersecurity – Cynthia Ayers – Data Privacy – Doctor Devra Davis – DTE & Consumers Energy & MPSC Opt-out Fees – FCC – Hydro One – Junk Journalism re Wi-Fi in Schools by Alex Berezow & Josh Bloom – NTP – RF – Senator Karen Spilka, SB 1268 re EMF / EMR – Senator Patrick Colbeck, HB 4220 – William S. Bathgate | Vancouver, BC – Maryland & Massachusetts & Michigan, USA]
1) More behind the dropping of BC Hydro’s plan for substations under schools. I wouldn’t be surprised if they try another route that isn’t so open to public review.
(click on photos to enlarge)
2) An expert on hacking and cybersecurity testified before the Michigan Committee reviewing a bill re. smeters.
The testimony of state Senator Patrick Colbeck, who says:
“One of the ways our citizens can secure their own family from [the] threats to our power grid is to opt out of so-called smart meters and retain analog meters, which have served us well for decades. Cybersecurity threats today are very real.” [3]
“Against this increased risk, there is little to no consumer benefit to the adoption of smart meters.” [3]
“Cynthia Ayers is a national security threat analyst, currently working as an independent consultant within the Mission Control and Cyber Division of the Center for Strategic Leadership, U.S. Army War College. She is also serving as Deputy to the Executive Director of the Congressionally sponsored Task Force on National and Homeland Security. On March 7, 2017, Ayers presented testimony [1] before the Michigan House Committee on Energy Policy. Her testimony included an analysis of how smart meters introduce safety and security threats to the electric grid and to civilization itself.”
https://smartgridawareness.org/2017/03/13/secure-your-family-with-an-analog-meter/
[HB 4220 – https://skyvisionsolutions.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/proposed-mi-2017-hb-4220.pdf]
3) William Bathgate, an Electrical Engineer, has provided some additional information from his testimony in Michigan and it is below in “Letters”.
4) “MASSACHUSETTS – Bill calls for study on effects of electromagnetic fields
27 feb 2017
TR’s State NewsWire
© Copyright 2017. Aspen Publishers. All Rights Reserved.
A bill being considered in the state Senate calls for a special commission to study “the health impacts of electromagnetic fields on the citizens of the Commonwealth.”
SB 1268, sponsored by Sen. Karen Spilka (D., District 75), directs the commission to examine “non-industry funded science for all facets of health impacts of electromagnetic fields from all sources, including but not limited to the use of cellular devices, utility smart meters, Wi-Fi, and the use of Wi-Fi in public facilities, including but not limited to public schools.” The commission should include in its report an investigation of the health impacts of electromagnetic fields, including but not limited to “the effects on reproductive systems, brain function including memory loss, diminished learning, performance impairment in children, headaches and neurodegenerative conditions, melatonin suppression and sleep disorders, fatigue, hormonal imbalances, immune dysregulation such as allergic and inflammatory responses, cardiac and blood pressure problems, genotoxic effects like miscarriage, cancers such as childhood leukemia, and childhood and adult brain tumors,” according to the bill.
The commission should also study whether electromagnetic radiation exposure may have “a disparate impact on potentially vulnerable subgroups including children, fetuses, pregnant women, the elderly and those with preexisting illnesses or impairments,” and “whether children are more vulnerable to electromagnetic radiation due to their developing nervous systems or other physical characteristics. “
A report on the commission’s findings would be due no later than July 31, 2018.
The bill has been referred to the Joint Committee on Public Health.”
[SB 1268 – https://malegislature.gov/Bills/190/S1268]
5) Devra Davis has written to the editor about the opinion piece in the Baltimore News, written by people from a group known to support industry and to mock serious science. Her letter is below in “Letters”. She has asked for it to be shared widely via social media, so please – put on your Facebooks, twitter, etc. The industry is feeling the heat about Wi-Fi in schools because of the recent increase in awareness. We must push back every way we can.
Letters:
I testified on 3/7/2017 to the MI House Energy Committee.
I have included here a copy of my testimony. (included in an earlier update.) So far I have witnessed the DTE and Consumers Energy testify also. I want to mention some inaccuracies that have been portrayed by the utilities as evidenced by my testimony.
1. DTE stated they only read the meters once per day and to only retrieve energy consumption, I reject that statement, and offer proof of that in my testimony. You can see by the meter readings are not a brief transmission. The uploads are over many hours, why? The type [of] data they are downloading is extensive and highly intrusive. Why does the utility need this volume of data other than [to] analyze and profile its customer base. This information then can be shared with third parties and with NSA, CIA, FBI etc. compromising our 4th amendment right to privacy.
2. I have heard DTE and CE both mention in the hearings, on Radio interviews and separate TV spots after the hearings that the RF from the meters are no more than a what is emitted from a baby monitor. No sane parent would ever expose their baby to such a hazard. None of these utility personnel have any qualifications to make that kind of reckless statement. The FCC limits are over 100 times higher than any other country in the world, except for Canada which basically copies the FCC specs.
3. There is much discussion on who is going to pay to fund the Analog Meter costs. This is a talking point from both utilities and what is amazing is that all customers have been paying the rates that have fully included the costs for manual meter reading for the last 40 years. How the utilities were able get the MPSC to authorize the current Opt-Out fees is truly amazing. This is double billing for the same service that was already in the current rates. Currently the rates we pay include all the capital cost, and on top of that the cost to read the meters. The utilities plan to lay off hundreds of meter readers, but there is no refund to those customers that have a smart meter. This is all double dealing. You may not know this but customer self reading processes have been in place for almost 50 years with both utilities yet Ms. De Lacy could not give a clear answer on this inferring this process is not in place, but it is with both utilities. Basically if you review her testimony it is obvious[ly] evasive and rarely includes a yes or no answer, then Mr. McKee had to interject when he noticed that her testimony needed to be shored up.
4. In DTE’s and CE testimony they stated that all their customers are pleased with the new meters. DTE even stated that customer[s] in Canada were 100 % deployed and happy with the meters is just not supported by the evidence, check HYDRO One and BC Hydro complaints on Google and you see that is not true. What is misleading is that they installed these meters while most people were not home and even today a vast majority of customers did not know it happened, until they got their next bill which is typically 25 to 40% higher than any previous bill, even though there were milder temps. I have spent 8 years developing similar products while employed at Emerson Electric, and I can tell you that the software in the meters is skewed to average their readings in favor of the utilities. The tests that the utilities use is a very simple scenario of a set of incandescent light bulbs (not LED, CFL or electric motors). So a load profile of a typical home was never tested for accuracy in the first place. So to make a statement that these meters are accurate, is deceptive at best when they have gotten many thousands of complaints of extremes of billing increases go unanswered by the utilities.
I encourage you to contact me if you wish to discuss these items or anything in my testimony.
Sincerely,
Pinckney, MI
William S. Bathgate
256-570-5434
_________________________________________________________________________
De: Devra Davis <ddavis@ehtrust.org>
Objet: please share on social media etc…
Date: 11 mars 2017
Just wanted to share my latest screed so that you might make some use of it ..
I have also submitted this as letter to editor…and offered to provide a shorter tighter oped calling for retraction
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-wifi-school-20170312-story.html
Those of you that know how to use social media please do so
[In the past the Baltimore Sun has done a decent job of reporting on the subject. We need to defend the Maryland advisory HOPE you can go online and add comments to my own..]..
Herewith a full copy of what I separately sent to the editor
The authors (Berezow and Bloom, Baltimore Sun)
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/
are gravely mistaken and seriously misinformed regarding the latest research on wireless radiation and health and about biophysics. The recommendation to reduce or eliminate schoolchildren’s exposures to wireless radiation by the Maryland Children’s Environmental Health and Protection Advisory Council (CEHPAC), an agency within Maryland’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene rests on the same public health principles underlying smoking prevention, seat belts and bike helmets: prevention of harm is always better than treatment of damage.
Their first serious error concerns the nature of wireless emitted from the two-way microwave radios that cell phones constitute and that also tie tablets to the internet unless they are hard wired through ethernet cables. All radiation exists on an electromagnetic spectrum. The fastest highest and shortest electromagnetic frequencies constitute ionizing radiation that operates between 3 x 10 to the 16th to 19th power (termed exoHerz) times a second. X-rays are electromagnetic waves with wavelengths in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers and energies in the range of 100 eV to 100 keV.
(Source: Boundless. “X-Rays.” Boundless Physics Boundless, 08 Aug. 2016. Retrieved 11 Mar. 2017 from https://www.boundless.com/physics/textbooks/boundless-physics-textbook/electromagnetic-waves-23/the-electromagnetic-spectrum-165/x-rays-597-11175/)
The high power of ionizing radiation can break the ionic bonds that hold together the basic building blocks of DNA. In contrast, the impact of wireless radiation is not linked to its energy but to the pulsed erratic nature of its signals. Thus, the authors are correct that cellphones are weak in power, but they fail to understand that this weak power is pulsed erratically sometimes with 4 different antennas operating at the same time at between 800 million to 2.4 billion cycles a sec (800 MHz to 2.4GHz); this weak radiation can break membranes and induce a cascade of cellular damage tied with increased risk of cancer and other chronic diseases. Thus, relatively weak wireless radiation, also termed microwave radiation, consistently damages human sperm and induces serious behavioral deficits according to numerous independent studies that can be found on our website www.ehtrust.org
As proof of the capacity of weak wireless radiation like that emitted by today‘s cellphones to have serious biological impact, consider the largest best-designed study yet conducted on the subject. The acclaimed U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) regularly conducts studies with uniformly validated protocols to detect health impacts on rodents in order to predict and prevent human harm. Such tests are used by industry and the government to inform decisions about pharmaceuticals as well as to identify and evaluate chemical or physical environmental hazards. At a cost of $25 million the NTP released its final but partial technical report in May of 2016 finding significant increases in relatively rare tumors of the brain and heart in animals exposed in their lifetimes to the same types of radiation to which humans are regularly exposed. Because these results stunned Dr. John Bucher, Director of the NTP, they were released after blinded pathology review involving numerous experts. Not a single one of these same tumors occurred in the control group. In the NTP study both groups of animals were housed in a facility created by the Swiss national institute for technology that prevented any extraneous exposures to electromagnetic fields.
The allegation that the only confirmed impact of phones is psychosomatic ignores the substantial independent literature that comes from infertility clinics finding damage to sperm quality and quantity, such as that amassed by Cleveland Clinic chief of infertility, Ashak Agarwal MD PhD, or Distinguished Vice Chancellor of Newcastle University Sir R. John Aitken MD PhD. Others have confirmed that independently funded studies tend to find an effect, while those funded by industry consultants such as those from Exponent tend to find no such problem.
The NTP results confirm earlier findings from German and Finnish government researchers as well as the Officer of Naval Research indicating that microwave radiation can induce an array of biochemical markers such as increases in reactive oxygen species, leakage of blood brain barrier and damage to mitochondrial DNA. To use such tests in evaluating drugs, but deny their validity for environmental exposures endangers public health.
The public is poorly served by publishing attacks on the independent scientists and pediatricians that serve gratis on the committee by industry-supported young scientists Berezow and Bloom. The authors have a total of ten scientific publications to their names in fields such as dental microbes and yeast genetics and not a single publication in the field of bioelectromagnetics. Those who hold themselves out to be promoting solid science have a duty to be better informed and to fully disclose the nature of the financial support of the institution in which they work.
In light of the major flaws and serious errors in this oped, its failure to take into account a substantial scientific and engineering literature on the topic, the lack of transparency in financial reporting of their institution*, and documented bias of the organization that has been described as ” I call on the editors to retract it.
*In violation of IRS requirements for form 990 for nonprofits they do not name their contributors but list them solely by number.
http://acsh.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/2013-132911127.public.pdf
I would be glad to write a shorter less techy oped to explain further and more clearly and believe you do have an obligation to do due diligence on your contributors and you can certainly delete any of the opaque stuff above especially the second paragraph.
Here’s what a group of experienced reporters have written about their group.
https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/why-you-cant-trust-the-american-council-on-science-and-health/
The American Council on Science and Health is a front group for the tobacco, agrichemical, fossil fuel, pharmaceutical and other industries.
Personnel
- ACSH’s longtime “Medical/Executive Director” was Dr. Gilbert Ross.[2] In 1993, according to United Press International, Dr. Ross was “convicted of racketeering, mail fraud and conspiracy,” and was “sentenced to 47 months in jail, $40,000 in forfeiture and restitution of $612,855” in a scheme to defraud the Medicaid system.[3]
- ACSH’s Dr. Ross was found to be a “highly untrustworthy individual” by a judge who sustained the exclusion of Dr. Ross from Medicaid for ten years.[4]
Funding
ACSH has often billed itself as an “independent” group, and has been referred to as “independent” in the press. However, according to internal ACSH financial documents obtained by Mother Jones:
- “ACSH planned to receive a total of $338,200 from tobacco companies between July 2012 and June 2013. Reynolds American and Phillip Morris International were each listed as expected to give $100,000 in 2013, which would make them the two largest individual donations listed in the ACSH documents.”[5]
- “ACSH donors in the second half of 2012 included Chevron ($18,500), Coca-Cola ($50,000), the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation ($15,000), Dr. Pepper/Snapple ($5,000), Bayer Cropscience ($30,000), Procter and Gamble ($6,000), agribusiness giant Syngenta ($22,500), 3M ($30,000), McDonald’s ($30,000), and tobacco conglomerate Altria ($25,000). Among the corporations and foundations that ACSH has pursued for financial support since July 2012 are Pepsi, Monsanto, British American Tobacco, DowAgro, ExxonMobil Foundation, Philip Morris International, Reynolds American, the Koch family-controlled Claude R. Lambe Foundation, the Dow-linked Gerstacker Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, and the Searle Freedom Trust.”[6]
- ACSH has received $155,000 in contributions from Koch foundations from 2005-2011, according to Greenpeace.[7]
Devra Davis, PhD MPH
Fellow American College of Epidemiology
Visiting Prof. Hebrew Univ. Hadassah Medical Center & Ondokuz Mayis Univ. Medical School
Associate Editor, Frontiers in Radiation and Health
President Environmental Health Trust
P.O. Box 58
Teton Village, WY 83025
Sharon Noble
Director, Coalition to Stop Smart Meters
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr.
Please use the internet wisely. Keep it wired.