University of California at San Francisco faculty members write to John Holdren who is the Assistant to President for Science and Technology with their urgent concern about the public health threat of backscatter scanners, which are a new part of a airport passenger screening process.
Faculty members who signed the letterinclude doctors in biochemistry and biophysics, cancer and xray, and imaging experts. They call for a review of the scanners based on the lack of an independent safety review, and health risks to children, pregnant women, elders, and people with compromised immune systems. They write, “This is an urgent situation as these X-ray scanners are rapidly being implemented as a primary screening step for all air travel passengers. Our overriding concern is the extent to which the safety of this scanning device has been adequately demonstrated. This can only be determined by a meeting of an impartial panel of experts that would include medical physicists and radiation biologists at which all of the available relevant data is reviewed.”
Daniel Favre examines the connection between cell phone radiation and honey bees in “Mobile Phone Induced Honey Bee Worker Piping“. Colony Collapse Disorder has been linked to a variety of potential causes, including pesticide poisoning, and varroa mites. With the onslaught of environmental radiation from cell phone, cell tower and Smart Meters networks it is important this study be widely read and disseminated. The study abstract states,
“The worldwide maintenance of the honeybee has major ecological, economic, and political implications. In the present study, electromagnetic waves originating from mobile phones were tested for potential effects on honeybee behavior. Mobile phone handsets were placed in the close vicinity of honeybees.
The sound made by the bees was recorded and analyzed. The audiograms and spectrograms revealed that active mobile phone handsets have a dramatic impact on the behavior of the bees, namely by inducing the worker piping signal. In natural conditions, worker piping either announces the swarming process of the bee colony or is a signal of a disturbed bee colony. ”
PG&E admits billing errors alleging a defect in their Smart Meters and states they will offer full refunds, averaging $40 to approximately 1600 customers.
PG&E states, “We take this issue very seriously and will do the right thing for our customers. We are committed to accurate metering and billing and will contact our affected customers immediately and issue full refunds,” said Greg Kiraly, Vice President, SmartMeter™ Operations. ”
Anyone who has been overcharged might want to wait before they accept a $40 check from PG&E, as PG&E was ordered by the CPUC to refund $1,400.00 in smart meter overcharges.CPUC smart meter refund
From the decision: “The metered usage reflected by complainants’ billing information for the period from November 18, 2009, through April 29, 2010, supports their contention that their billings tripled in amount after SM#1 was installed. The cause of the discrepancy has not been fully explained, but the weight of the evidence demonstrates that the increase was not caused by any actions of the complainants. Based upon the historical level of their billing, we will grant their request for a $1,400 adjustment.”
Dr. Carpenter states,“We have evidence…that exposure to radiofrequency radiation…increases the risk of cancer, increases damage to the nervous system, causes electrosensitivity, has adverse reproductive effects and a variety of other effects on different organ systems. There is no justification for the statement that Smart Meters have no adverse health effects. “
Dr. Carpenter further advises, “An informed person should demand that they be allowed to keep their analog meter”
(For those of you already Smart Metered, demand to have the analog meter restored, call your your utility and your state public utility commission)
BIG THANKS to Dr. Carpenter and to Maine’s Smart Meter Safety Coalition who “recently caught up with Dr. David Carpenter, a Harvard Medical School-trained physician who headed up the New York State Dept. of Public Health for 18 years before becoming Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Albany, where he currently directs the Institute for Health and the Environment” (www.smartmetersafety.com)
Good Morning Mr. Peevey. George Orwell had you and the industry you purport to regulate beat by 62 years. His book Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in 1949. If you haven’t read it, you really should. If you read it in high school or college, you may want to pick it up and read it again. It told of the future you are creating for yourself and us, your wife, your children and their children. You are leaving behind a legacy of terror Mr. Peevey.
The decisions you’re making now are probably the most crucial decisions you’ve ever made when it comes to how they will affect the lives of not only this generation, but the lives of generations to come. Albert Einstein said “It has become appalling obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” Such is the case here and I’d like you to take a hard look at that irrespective of the expectations of an industry to which you’ve become Godfather.
Besides being President of the CPUC, you’re a husband and father of three children and a grandfather and I’m sure that means a lot to you. I’m not prying but I am curious to learn a little about the man behind the desk.
I’m speaking to Michael Peevey the father and Grandpa. I’d like you to consider what kind of world you’re leaving behind for those you love. It’s hard to believe that in your heart of hearts given what you know and the facts that surround you, that you would commit your loved ones and the good people of California, indeed the fine people of this country to a faulted technology fraught with hazards.
According to medical reports such as the physician’s peer review of the California Council on Science and Technology on the health impacts of Smart Meters, these devices have been found to cause brain tumors, tinnitus, acoustic neuromas, childhood leukemia, neurodegenerative diseases, DNA damage and cognitive impairment. Smart Meter radiation slows motor skills, reduces learning ability, heats body tissue, lowers the immune system and does damage to the blood-brain barrier that prevents toxins from entering the brain. Even if only half of this were true, what kind of a Grandpa would protect an industry that shows such little regard for public health and safety?
At the CPUC meeting March 24th, PG&E and their attorneys took over 75 pages to say Show Me the Money. Oh they said it in legalize, the language of champions but let’s be completely honest Mr. Peevey. It’s about the money. Money is driving this; the agenda, this rollout, this rush to deploy. This skullduggery. It’s about money and greed and power.
Not green power but the power that’s wielded over a citizenry stripped of its rights and that you would see buried to meet deadlines and increase corporate profits while leaving us in the rubble of PG&E’s twisted machinations. It’s about how our money finds its way in to a utility company’s pockets which should come as no surprise to anyone because what isn’t about money these days whether it’s lobbying money or laundered money or campaign funding or pork barrels or bailouts? It is and always has been about the money.
It’s hard to believe that you would defend an industry that pretends to be green but is green only as in the color of money. Is there anything that you, the Smart Grid Industry, the CPUC and PG&E would NOT do for money Mr. Peevey?
Any good salesman or politician can tell you that if you want to sell something, give it a good name like Smart and make it the “green” thing to do. Don’t get me wrong. I’m as environmentally conscious as the next one but the Smart Grid movement is not about going green or conserving energy or reducing greenhouse gas emissions or saving Polar Bears. It’s about raising rates, increasing profits and selling the data it collects. The utility companies aren’t doing this for your health or for the environment.
We hear a lot of talk these days about the need for transparency as if it’s so hard to see through what’s going on so I’ll just come right to the bottom line. Mr. Peevey this is your chance of a lifetime if you take it to be a real hero for your children and their children, for California and for America. You will either be remembered as the man who set fire to our freedom and watched it burn or who ran in to the burning building and carried us out.
April 25,2011. Today the EMF Safety Network filed a CPUC protest to PG&E’s Smart Meter opt-out proposal. In addition Network is requesting reassignment of the Administrative Law Judge , Timothy Sullivan. Sullivan was the judge who parroted PG&E’s unsubstantiated safety claims and proposed dismissing our original CPUC application.
From the Protest Conclusion:
“PG&E’s application is an inadequate solution to serious Smart Meter problems that the Commission and California utilities have failed to address. It is wrong to require ratepayers to pay to escape from threats to their health and ensure safety in their own homes. PG&E’s proposed charges will be an unfair burden and will harm ratepayers.
The Commission should first order a Smart Meter moratorium, then modify PG&E’s requested relief to provide ratepayers safe and reliable utility service at reasonable rates. The Commission should schedule evidentiary hearings on contested issues. Network intends to participate in the hearings. The Commission should order PG&E to allow ratepayers to keep their analog meters or restore analog meters at no additional cost. Ratepayers should not have to bear the financial burden for the failure of the Smart Meter program.
In a recent Federal Communications Commission(FCC) letter to Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, Julias Knapp, the FCC Chief of Office of Engineering and Technology, responds to an inquiry from the EMF Safety Network. The letter downplays the need for FCC oversight and regulation of their own installation RF safety conditions stating, “The grants of equipment authorization routinely list the four conditions cited by EMF [Safety Network] for the broad class of transmitters that include most Smart Meters….adherence to those conditions is not necessarily required for Smart Meters to achieve compliance with our RF exposure guidelines….the utility is responsible for ensuring compliance with any installation conditions listed on the grant of equipment authorization .”
In addition the FCC falsely claims, “the devices normally transmit for less than one second a few times a day and consumers are normally tens of feet or more from the meter face…”
See the following video about Smart Meter radiation. Listen to the clicks to see how often the meters are transmitting, and compare that to the FCC claims.
PG&E admits billing errors alleging a defect in their Smart Meters and states they will offer full refunds, averaging $40 to approximately 1600 customers.