“I cannot sleep… and I am feeling so fatigued and muddle-brained that I can barely think straight and even have trouble standing up straight. I have literally done nothing since [the Smart meters] have been put in and feel achy all over and disoriented, slightly dizzy.”
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“I have been feeling sick since they installed 16 smart meters on a panel 6 feet away from my building. I have developed respiratory problems and insomnia and anxiety and pressure in my head… My husband has also developed asthma, coughing, bloody nose, headaches.”
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“We had a Smart Meter installed on our home. I got sick and two weeks ago had a mini-stroke.”
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“My family recently moved into a new home which has 4 smart meters, we had wifi also initially. I began feeling ill: symptoms included a sensation of electricity coursing through my body, headaches, my blood pressure soared, the sensation of my brain feeling like it was being squeezed, and a sensation of burning on my skin and eyes. I could not find relief anywhere in my home. The symptoms of my three sons are less than my own and more vague: headache, ‘feeling sick upon waking,’ feeling a jolt type feeling sometimes.”
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“[After a Smart meter was installed] our children started to exhibit health symptoms and health signs that alarmed myself and my husband [a doctor]. The children began to have fevers out of nowhere, essentially their bodies were boiling and their fevers would go from 101 to 104 and sometimes to 105… Our children also began to have problems with the inability to control their bodily fluids, our five year old began peeing and pooping herself, our four year began to display the same problems, soon many of the smaller children were all displaying these symptoms and concerns.”
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“We are just miserable here. We can’t sleep at night, are dizzy, have headaches, ear pain, and more.”
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“I managed to have smart meter installation delayed at my house, but suddenly became sick overnight with palpitations, chest pain, insomnia, dizziness, inability to concentrate and memory loss and fainting spells. AFTER becoming sick I found out that the day I became suddenly sick was the day the smart meter roll-out was completed in my area and the smart meters were remotely turned on from base… I can no longer drive, I can’t work (I’m a doctor).”
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“Shortly after the smart meter was installed my health took a terrible downturn. I began having heart palpitations, trouble sleeping, unexplained anxiety attacks, dizzy spells, nausea and fatigue. I have been battling anxiety for months and I had no idea why. I’ve never had these types of symptoms plague me like this before. Then I found out that so many others have had the same reactions to smart meters in their homes and neighborhoods.”
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“I am an engineer. I have used technology my entire adult life – cell phones, smart phones, wi-fi, laptops, you name it. I really enjoyed all of this and had no issues or fears related to technology.
Then, when a bank of smart meters were put next to our apartment, both my wife and I starting experiencing headaches, insomnia, heart palpitations and tinnitus. Within a couple weeks, I could no longer use a cell phone without the same symptoms. Within a month I could feel the microwave radiation from cell towers. I have had to completely change my life because of this.”
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The statements above are among hundreds posted by the EMF Safety Network. Thousands of reports like this can be found online from people whose health was damaged following the installation of a wireless Smart meter. The last quote is from engineer-turned-EMF-educator Jeromy Johnson, who we featured in our article, Smart Meters Coming to a Neighborhood Near You!
As reported in that article, having one of these meters installed at your home or workplace raises multiple concerns. While we provided an overview of many of those concerns, this article focuses specifically on the health issues that can be caused by the high-intensity pulsed microwave radiation from what the utility industry calls Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), or Smart meters.
Common symptoms attributed to Smart meter exposure include:
- Sleep problems (insomnia, difficulty falling asleep, night waking, nightmares)
- Stress, agitation, anxiety, irritability
- Headaches, sharp pain or pressure in the head
- Ringing in the ears, ear pain, high pitched ringing
- Concentration, memory or learning problems
- Fatigue, muscle or physical weakness
- Disorientation, dizziness, or balance problems
- Eye problems, including eye pain, pressure in the eyes,
- Cardiac symptoms, heart palpitations, heart arrhythmias, chest pain
- Leg cramps, or neuropathy
- Arthritis, body pain, sharp, stabbing pains
- Nausea, flu-like symptoms
- Sinus problems, nose bleeds
- Respiratory problems, cough, asthma
- Skin rashes, facial flushing
- Urinary problems
- Endocrine disorders, thyroid problems, diabetes
- High blood pressure
- Changes in menstrual cycle
- Hyperactivity or changes in children’s behavior
- Seizures
- Recurrence of cancer
It is because of health impacts like these that when Smart meters began rolling out in the U.S., utility companies were forced to provide customers with a safer meter option. Requesting a non-transmitting meter is commonly known as an Opt-Out (more on that below).
It is well-established that we are bioelectrical beings and that exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and radio frequencies (RFs) can have profound impacts on our biology. It is estimated that 3% to 10% of the population are so vulnerable to these fields — electrosensitive — that they struggle to live in the electromagnetic soup of our modern world.
Following publication of our last article, a reader challenged the assertion that electrosensitivity (aka electromagnetic hypersensitivity) is a valid medical disability. She asserted that EMFs and RFs — like the microwave radiation from Smart meters — do not impact a person’s health, that reports like those cited above stem from mental illness or are psychosomatic. The problem, she said, could be summed up in four words: “These people are crackpots.”
An obvious argument disproving that these health impacts are “all in their heads” is that when their symptoms first manifest people are often unaware that a Smart meter had been installed. Silicon Valley engineer and tech enthusiast Jeromy Johnson describes his unexpected “Wireless Wake-Up Call” in this TED Talk:
“If anyone had told me that wireless technology could have health effects, I would have thought they were crazy. But this all changed for me over the period of about one week. I started experiencing headaches, ringing in my ears, insomnia, fatigue, and a brain fog that I’d never experienced before. And I shared this with a colleague at work, and she said, you know the exact same thing happened to her husband when a wireless Smart meter was installed in their home. So I went home that evening and I checked downstairs, and sure enough we’d had a bank of wireless Smart meters installed right below our bedroom in San Francisco.”
Bank of Smart meters shown in Jeromy Johnson’s TED Talk.
Stories like these are common, following this typical pattern: “I — or my husband/wife, child, friend, co-worker — started having terrible headaches, feeling dizzy, couldn’t sleep, lost cognitive function… and then days or weeks later discovered that a Smart meter had been installed the day the problems began.”
But beyond the anecdotal evidence, there are now literally thousands of studies and scientific papers demonstrating the negative impacts of EMFs/RFs on people’s health.
The Science
A decade ago, an international consortium of 29 doctors and scientists produced the 650+-page BioInitiative Report 2012. They explain:
“Human beings are bioelectrical systems. Our hearts and brains are regulated by internal bioelectrical signals. Environmental exposures to artificial EMFs can interact with fundamental biological processes in the human body. In some cases, this may cause discomfort, or sleep disruption, or loss of wellbeing (impaired mental functioning and impaired metabolism) or sometimes, maybe it is a dread disease like cancer or Alzheimer’s disease.
It may be interfering with ones’ ability to become pregnant, or carry a child to full term, or result in brain development changes that are bad for the child. It may be these exposures play a role in causing long-term impairments to normal growth and development of children, tipping the scales away from becoming productive adults.
We have good evidence these exposures can damage our health, or that of children of the future who will be born to parents now immersed in wireless exposures.”
Their report presents evidence of genetic damage, immune impairment, neurological injury, effects on the blood-brain barrier, childhood leukemia, breast and other cancers, fetal effects, brain tumors, fertility damage and much more. Updates to the report just this year include coverage of RF and EMF studies from the genetic and neurological literature, studies of free radicals (oxidative damage), and electrohypersensitivity.
In 2015, 220 EMF scientists from 41 nations who had published in peer-reviewed journals signed the International EMF Scientists Appeal. Their warnings included cell phones, Wi-Fi, and ‘smart’ meter/grid technology.
“It is our opinion that adverse health consequences of chronic and involuntary exposure of people to non-ionizing electromagnetic field sources are being ignored by national and international health organizations despite our repeated inquiries as well as inquiries made by many other concerned scientists, medical doctors and advocates.”
According to these experts, public safety limits for electromagnetic and radiofrequency fields are thousands of times higher than exposure levels shown to be associated with serious health impacts.
Why haven’t our regulatory agencies and government protected us? Industry capture of the FCC and other agencies puts industry profit over public safety. “Just Don’t Bring Up Health” is one of the opening chapters of Harvard University Center for Ethics’ exposé, “Captured Agency: How the Federal Communications Commission Is Dominated by the Industries It Presumably Regulates.“
As with so many of our public agencies, we cannot trust the FCC or any other “official” guidelines. The authors of the BioInitiative Report counter these corrupt regulators:
“The great strength of the BioInitiative Report is that it has been done independent of governments, existing bodies and industry professional societies that have clung to old standards. Precisely because of this, the BioInitiative Report presents a solid scientific and public health policy assessment that is evidence-based.”
Will a Smart Meter Harm YOU?
As noted earlier, we are swimming in invisible frequencies in today’s world, commonly called electrosmog. Chances are you already have Wi-Fi in your home, carry a cell phone, use a computer wirelessly, maybe even have a cell tower in proximity. All of this wireless technology creates oxidative stress, opens your blood-brain barrier allowing toxins to enter your brain, causes DNA damage, and alters your cellular function.
How much of these pervasive EMFs and RFs our bodies can withstand varies. Some people may be so electrosensitive that their ability to function is compromised by the slightest exposure to these frequencies.
Sebastian (Seb) Eggert, nearing completion of his ElectroMagnetic Radiation Specialist (EMRS) certification with the Building Biology Institute, says, “I have personally interacted with over fifty people who are greatly or severely affected by the various forms of electromagnetic radiation, and at least a dozen of them live here in Jefferson County.” That was before the rollout of Smart meters.
Eggert expands on some of the people he has seen challenged by wireless technologies:
“One client was unable to have deep and restful sleep in her home until she turned off her computer, wifi, printer, portable phone and cellular phone. Another client is so sensitive she can sense when someone enters the room with a cell phone in their pocket or when a ship with a strong radar signal passes by. The only place she can escape from her splitting headaches is deep in the Olympics where the radiation is extremely low, or in rural Alaska.
Another who is a medical professional has removed all the EMFs from his office for the comfort of his patients. A naturopathic physician thought she had eliminated all RF devices from her office and treatment areas until a survey revealed that her computer was still sending a contact signal to the hard-wired modem.”
Then there are individuals like Jeromy Johnson, immersed for years in wireless tech, who don’t notice a problem until a Smart meter is installed.
Broadcasting RF frequencies every few seconds or even faster all day and night, these devices emit up to 190,000 bursts of pulsed microwave radiation in a 24-hour period. Reports show that adding that stress to an already-toxic wireless environment often causes a tipping point, pushing people over the edge to electrosensitivity. And once that threshold is breached, as Johnson learned, tech that once seemed harmless is suddenly no longer bearable.
Additional factors come into play. Eggert explains:
“Often the signs of EMF sensitivity are masked by other influences, such as multiple chemical sensitivities, mold and fungus exposure, medical interventions and deep trauma. All these things together contribute to poor health.”
Proximity to the meter(s) and levels of exposure are also significant factors in whether you will be harmed by a Smart meter.
How close is the meter to your living environment? Smart meters near bedrooms are especially dangerous. Since they operate 24/7, one of the most ubiquitous symptoms following their installation is loss of sleep. The critical downtime for the body’s rest and repair is interfered with by the constant pulsing of the RF.
Multiple Smart meters transmitting RFs multiply the danger. That’s especially true where there are banks of meters. Meter utility rooms for apartments, condos and commercial complexes massively increase the radiation levels, as Jeromy Johnson learned. Even though the room of meters for his apartment building was on a lower story, that ground-level bank of Smart meters proved to be too much for him and his wife. In that type of scenario, even those who opt out can still suffer health issues because the vast majority of other meters in their building are all broadcasting high-intensity microwave radiation.
Opting Out in Jefferson County is Easy
Jefferson PUD’s Opt-Out Program offers non-transmitting analog and digital meters that are read on-site monthly by a meter reader. We recommend the analog meter as the safest option since digital meters generate some high frequency voltage transients, also known as ‘dirty electricity’, which can also have negative health impacts.
While those of us against our PUD’s adoption of Smart meter technology argued for no-cost opt-outs as established in both New Hampshire and Vermont, there is a $5 monthly fee added to your bill here. That is lower than many utilities charge. Some utilities set punitive fees to intentionally discourage opt-outs, with a significant one-time charge for initial installation and exorbitant recurring monthly charges.
According to a 2019 article from the National Conference of State Legislatures:
“The fees can vary considerably. A utility in Rhode Island charges a one-time fee of $27, while a Texas utility’s one-time fee is $171. The monthly fees range from around $9 to $32.”
California’s state policy established a one-time fee of $75 and a monthly fee of $10, however for income-qualified customers the one-time fee drops to $10, with a $5 monthly fee.
Jefferson PUD has clearly avoided punitive charges. With all meters needing replacement in the county, our utility has waived the one-time installation fee, adding only a $5 monthly surcharge to offset the cost of a meter reader coming to your property every month to manually read your power usage. In addition to providing you with a safe meter, your $5 is supporting local jobs that are being eliminated by wireless tech.
This RF Transmitting Meter Opt-Out Application is on the last page of the PUD packet here. For more information on the Smart meter rollout in progress in Jefferson County and for additional details on our PUD’s Opt-Out Program, see Smart Meters Coming to a Neighborhood Near You!
Arriving in Port Townsend in 1975 in Sherpa, her Ford van, Ana Wolpin has watched a sweetly funky, diverse and tolerant community increasingly gentrify, polarize and lose its soul. After almost half a century engaged in local business, city politics, county organizations and community projects, she joined with fellow editors to revive the Free Press and bear witness to extraordinary times. For a short sketch of Ana’s history in Jefferson County, see “About the Free Press.”
The more I read about it, the more I’m convinced. So, it has to be true. All kinds of electronic devices do this. For years, we Chevy owners suspected that Ford vehicles emit a signal to disrupt their owner’s thought process.
The Smart Meters’ EMFs effecting, in deleterious ways, our “body electric”….5G millimeter waves effecting our bodies and being able to track everything we do in and out of our homes……mRNA vaccines that have no long range testing rewriting our human genome and those vaccines are currently killing and maiming and now the mRNA gene molecule being transferred to infants through mother’s milk……a proxy war being fought in Ukraine that could pose a possible threat to all life on this planet……..mainstream news that hides the truth and promotes a well scripted government narrative….. a food supply that has been manipulated to starve millions this winter…..weather that is being manipulated to justify a crisis in the environment……our air, water and food overflowing with unregulated forever chemicals.
All of this is being legislated and caused by government. In fact, can you name one problem that we citizens have faced over the last few decades that hasn’t been caused by government? And yet, many look to government to solve the problems government has caused only to see that their government efforts usually just compound the problem. It makes one realize just how far we have been led down the path to changing this once beautiful blue planet from its pristine original nature to a maze of exploitation and destruction. Believe it or not…many still think that all of this is just a virus.
The solution: when we the people, finally come to our senses and SEE the lies, manipulation and control we are living under, then we will no longer merely follow, but we will finally and definitely say “basta”.
Thank you for this well written explanation about the adverse health effects of emf radiation and smart meters. People only are concerned when it affects them personally, and the majority usually attribute their suboptimal health to more easily recognizable stressors. Until a much larger consensus develops about the risks of wireless technology, mitigation strategies should include using Ethernet cables in the home instead of WiFi, keeping phones on airplane mode when not using, opting out of ‘smart’ meters, and asking close neighbors to lower the power settings on their WiFi routers. The challenge is to preserve the benefits of technology while reducing the negative health effects.
Tin foil blocks Radio Frequency radiation, RF, so does aluminum window screen. Many youtube videos of people testing these materials, proven or not by an EMF meter. Beware of the many unscientific products and scams being marketed, that special rocks, little metal clips, stickers, copper coils, etc, all somehow “deactivate” or protect you from radiation. Think of it like this: radiation of any type is just a form of the light we can see. So imagine a smart meter being like a bright light bulb that shines in all directions. Holding a little stone or copper coil in front of you on the beach doesn’t block the sun and it won’t block the electromagnetic radiation from a smart meter, cell phone or other device, either. There are many meters available online, usually costing 2 or 3 hundred dollars. But they may not be sensitive enough to pick up and measure radiation from a distance. Such as smart meters on the outside of your house or a neighbors. More sophisticated meters that can pick up cell phone towers can cost a thousand dollars or more. Research carefully.
Metal screen does block some RF, depending on the frequency of the signal. The higher the frequency, the smaller the opening must be to block the signal. Cell towers can be detected by fairly inexpensive meters, between $200 and $375. Similarly priced instruments can be used to detect high frequency voltage transients and electric fields, and an AM transistor radio is terrific at finding magnetic fields. Try driving around with your car radio on AM, tuned to 540, and see how the static changes as you pass under power lines.
AMI “smart” electric service meters produce radiofrequency radiation (RF) and high frequency voltage transients, or “dirty electricity” (DE). There are two other types of electromagnetic fields (EMF) that affect our environment. Electric fields radiate up to eight feet from any unshielded conductors that carry voltage, and magnetic fields are found along high voltage transmission lines and can also be caused by wiring code violations in home circuits. All these forms of radiation can be deleterious to the health of the occupants and their pets. This radiation can be detected by consumer priced instruments, but more expensive meters provide more detail and accuracy. Building Biologists consider chips, stickers and pendants “subtle energy devices” and do not recommend them, because they do not change the measurements in an area whether they are there or not. They can have a placebo effect for some people, but we prefer to measure before mitigation and after to show a change in the environment.
For more information about the health effects of EMF, consider the “EUROPAEM EMF Guideline 2016 for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of EMF-related health problems and illnesses” at this link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27454111/
And please explore the site of ES-UK, for all people sensitized by electromagnetic fields and radiation: https://www.es-uk.info/
and there’s this:
“The internet information platform EMF-Portal of the RWTH Aachen University summarizes systematically scientific research data on the effects of electromagnetic fields (EMF). All information is made available in both English and German. The core of the EMF-Portal is an extensive literature database with an inventory of 36,636 publications and 6,969 summaries of individual scientific studies on the effects of electromagnetic fields.”
For example, if you are curious about a possible link between a medical condition such as leukemia or cancer and EMF, type that condition into the search bar and a section of relevant articles will appear. https://www.emf-portal.org/en
And here I thought it was the local police or some murderous SSecurity company frying me at night 😉
Jefferson healthcare X-ray gunners got me good today. Walked right into that one 🙁 I feel like Matt Damon on that movie Elysium.
Earlier, I posted (don’t see it here anymore) that worries over EMF were unwarranted. But, I retract that now to say “Maybe” after this article by Dr. Robert Malone: https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/well-being-dangers-of-5g
I don’t know if the alarms over smart meters, cellphones, wifi, etc are of concern, but 5g might be.
And for the naysayers that attacked me, I don’t have an iron in this fire. I simply share what I know/read. So, if I am wrong, I will be the first to acknowledge it. Just sayin’.
QWayle. your comments challenging the effects of EMFs on the body are all under the previous article on smart meters; none of them were removed. Glad to see that you were open to Malone’s article on 5G. He reiterates the work of scientists and doctors who have been sounding the alarm on these issues for more than a decade. As described in the above article, the 650+ page BioInitiative Report contains a wealth of scientific data on this subject.
Q. Wayle, kindly direct me to the attacks against you. I’m not seeing any attacks in the comment section.
If you’re that concerned about harm from that RF meter outside your house, I’d say you better get rid of that cell phone against your brain or that laptop first and foremost, no?
RF emissions in microwatts per square centimeter (µW/cm2)
FM radio or TV broadcast station signal: 0.005
Digital meter at 10 feet: 0.1
At a coffee shop with Wi-Fi: 10-20
Using a laptop computer: 10-20
Talking on a cell phone (held to head): 30-10,000
Microwave oven, two inches from door: 5,000
Hi Mike, I’m not the one to discuss the frequency levels of different devices (maybe we can get Seb to comment on that), but I do know that one of the worst things you can do is hold a cell phone to your head. There’s substantial research over decades showing brain cancers, the tumors always corresponding the side of the head where a person holds their phone. Hard to stay out of the pervasive electromagnetic soup in today’s world, but personally, I don’t use a cell phone, or a microwave oven, keep the laptop OFF my lap. It’s advised that if you do use a cell phone, you should always use it on speakerphone or else use an earbud with airtubes which prevent the frequencies from traveling to your head.
Hi Mike,
Thanks so much for reading and contributing to the PTFP in general and this discussion in particular. Measuring the radiation levels of different devices is rarely done correctly, accurately, and with calibrated scientific instruments. You are correct that the concerns are often misplaced.
I’ve surveyed residences where the occupants were worried about a cell tower a half a mile away but still insisted on using their cell phones and wifi. One thing that the research is showing is that long term exposure to all the various forms of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) is harmful to some individuals. Transmissions from the “smart” meters are very short in duration but very high power and occur many thousands of times in a 24 hour period. They are picked up by the wires in the meter socket and are traceable inside the house because the wiring is very much like an antenna. Some very sensitive people are negatively affected by the radiation, as they are by the electric fields, magnetic fields and high frequency voltage transients, also known as dirty electricity.
It is also pretty well known that the effects of EMR are amplified by other levels of sensitivity, as in exposures to mold, toxins in clothing and building materials, and household chemicals. Very sensitive people really have a difficult time of it in our built environment, and EMR exposure is just one more component that contributes to our civilization’s ill health. And also consider the bees; they and many other insects are having a tough time of it. It’s not just us that are being harmed gradually, it’s every living thing. There are viable alternatives that enable the use of these technologies without much inconvenience, but people just don’t seem to care until they or their loved ones get sick. And in my consultation work I’ve met quite a few.
Here is a fascinating article from Nov. 2022 regarding latest research focused on Low-level EMF effects on wildlife and plants:
“Contrary to popular opinion, we know a great deal about how non-ionizing electromagnetic fields (EMF) affect non-human species because we have been using animal and plant models in research going back at least to the 1930’s (1). Such research may have been conducted with humans in mind but can also be extrapolated to non-human species protection if we choose to apply it that way.
Mice and rats have been the primary animal species used in research, but also rabbits, dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, non-human primates, amphibians, insects, nematodes, various microbes, yeast cells, plants, and others. Effects have been seen in all taxa, in various frequencies, intensities, and exposure parameters. To non-human species, these are highly biologically active exposures, often functioning as stressors. This includes non-ionizing EMF in the static, extremely low frequency (ELF; 0–300 Hz) through the radiofrequency (RF) ranges used in all modern technology between 3 kHz and 300 GHz.
Extrapolations to wildlife from carefully controlled laboratory conditions, however, are difficult to quantify due to myriad variables such as: genetic variation and mobility, weather/climate change, site/region-specific environmental aspects, duration of exposure and variations in movements across habitats, species specialized physical characteristics, animal size, and orientation toward the field source—all of which can confound precise data assessment. Sometimes controlled studies correlate with patterns seen in wildlife, e.g., genetic, behavioral, reproductive, and other effects. Where this is the case, more confidence is possible. But often effects to wildlife manifest in the negative—species simply disappear. Nevertheless, increasing evidence has found effects to different species near communication structures in studies where extrapolations to field exposure have been made (2–9).
It is clear that non-human species experience EMF as environmental stressors and biological effects can occur at anthropogenic levels in our present environment. This largely unrecognized variable can conceivably alter delicate ecosystems, arguably including the biosphere where all living organisms are located—and may, in fact, be doing so. Traditionally, other than in small localized situations, e.g., near powerline corridors or broadcast antennas, ELF/RFR-EMF environmental effects have not been of serious concern to regulating authorities. But this subject now requires immediate attention with 5G on the horizon, as well as a reexamination of chronic rising ambient levels across all non-ionizing electromagnetic frequency ranges today.”