UK introduces obligatory Smart Metering via backdoor

UK introduces obligatory Smart Metering via backdoor

• New licensing conditions for Suppliers means “No Backwards Step” once Smart Meters installed
• Conditions will prohibit suppliers from replacing Smart Meters with safer, more secure analogue meters, e.g. when a customer has moved house
• Government has now reneged on repeated commitments that Smart Meters would be “voluntary”
• Customers may be left with no choice but to use provisions of existing Gas & Electricity Acts to outmanoeuvre stealth restriction on free choice

LONDON, ENGLAND (23 May, 2013)   Early last week, Edward Davey’s Parliamentary Undersecretary, Baroness Verma, made an announcement in the House of Lords that the UK’s Smart Meter programme would be delayed by at least “one year”.  The announcement gained much attention and media exposure across the UK, but a crucial component of her announcement was seemingly omitted from all popular reports and commentary.

According to the recordings of the Baroness’s statement in Hansard (the official report of the proceedings in parliament), she revealed a second major shift in Government policy regarding Smart Meters which went unnoticed as admissions regarding delays overtook the media glare.

In a stunning and outrageous Government u-turn, Ministers have decided that from the end of this year, UK energy suppliers will be BLOCKED from fulfilling customer wishes to replace a pre-existing Smart Meter with a more safe and secure analogue alternative.  This change will be enforced through modifications to supplier licensing conditions on 14 July 2013, meaning that from the end of the year, if an energy customer moves house and finds one or more Smart Meters in situ, their supplier will not be allowed to offer analogue replacements.

From Hansard, 13 May 2013, Baroness Verma:

“We have decided that from the end of this year, when a customer switches from a supplier who has provided them with a compliant smart meter, the new supplier cannot replace that smart meter with a dumb meter and must either rent the previous supplier’s meter or install their own new smart meter… We are also proposing for consultation that, when a customer with a compliant smart meter switches supplier,the new supplier must continue to provide remote meter readings.”

If you are left wondering why this generous concession has been made for Big Energy’s Smart Metering programme at your expense, the Baroness – drawing on a newly published Consultation Response document – added the following:

“This will give greater confidence to early movers over their investments… this package of proposals will give consumers and industry the confidence they need for a successful rollout.  Subject to the successful completion of the parliamentary process, the licence conditions will come into force on 14 July 2013.”

This breach of public trust not only reflects a cowardly u-turn on commitments that the Government has made repeatedly that Smart Meters will be ‘voluntary’, but sends a clear message to consumers that free-choice is not compatible with the UK’s Orwellian energy policy.  It also serves to reveal the long-term, ‘war of attrition’-style intentions for Smart Metering and exposes the lie that Smart Metering is primarily aimed at serving consumers.

What’s more is that these new rules for suppliers lay the foundation for ‘ripping-and-replacing’ Smart Meters when changing suppliers – as there will be an obligation on suppliers to either “pay rent” to a competitor or take the decision to rip-and-replace the meter with their own.  In this light, it becomes impossible to resolve the contention that this programme will serve as a means of reducing energy and makes a mockery of Smart Meters making it “easier” to switch suppliers.

What may be of some interest, however, is how two pre-existing pieces of UK legislation might impact on DECC’s attempt to curtail freedom of metering choice.

In 1986 and then in 1989, the UK’s Gas and Electricity Acts were respectively brought into being.  Amongst other provisions, these Acts enshrined into law the right for individuals to have their own gas and electricity meters installed on their property.

To explain specifically in relation to electricity, for example, Schedule 7 of the Electricity Act 1989,ss.1(2) &(2A) outlines the following:

[(2) If the [authorised supplier] agrees, the meter may be provided by the customer [(who may provide a meter which belongs to him or is made available otherwise than in pursuance of arrangements made by the supplier)]; but otherwise it shall be provided by the [authorised supplier] [(who may provide a meter which belongs to him or to any person other than the customer)].
(2A) [An authorised supplier] may refuse to allow one of his customers to provide a meter only if there are reasonable grounds for his refusal.] [You can check the UK Association of Meter Operator’s website for more information.]

Our interpretation of this provision is that, so long as one’s own choice of non-smart/analogue meter complies with regulations and the supplier has no reasonable grounds for saying otherwise, any in situ Smart Meters can be sent back to the supplier.  The only reasonable grounds for the supplier refusing this request that we can envisage would be if the meter is not compliant with safety or accuracy regulation.  The issue of whether your own meter is “smart” or not seems irrelevant, and would certainly appear to have nothing to do with the Government’s “No Backward Step” policy nor its supplier-oriented licensing changes.

Source: http://stopsmartmeters.org.uk/uk-introduces-obligatory-smart-metering-via-backdoor/

The Great Smart Meter Return

CAPITOLA, Calif-- About a dozen SmartMeter opponents lined up to return the controversial device, Wednesday, and when they showed up, PG&E called police.

"This is not a protest," said Joshua Hart, Stopsmartmeter.org. "This was simply returning PG&E's property to them. Property that was not wanted on people's homes."
And about a dozen people did just that at PG&E's pay center at the Capitola Mall. Joshua Hart, who is leading the push against SmartMeters said the digital meters made these people sick and were put on their property illegally, so they took them off.

"When PG&E refused to remove these devices which they never had permission to install in the first place, these people have taken matters into their own hands, hired a professional electrician or contractor to replace the SmartMeter with an analog meter," said Hart.
Bianca Carn was one of PG&E's customers who returned a SmartMeter, Wednesday.

"The bottom line is, they can't come on private property," said Carn. "I own the house, I didn't give them permission and they didn't send me a certified letter, and as you can see, we've been kicked off private property. We're not even allowed to go in there. They wanted us to come out so we did and I just feel like I wish we had the same rights."

When this group went inside to return their SmartMeters, the Capitola Police Department showed up and ordered everyone out. PG&E even closed up shop.

"I think it's disturbing that simply utility customers looking out for the health and safety of their families have to be intimidated in such a way with this turnout of police when people were happy to comply with the request to leave the offices," said Hart.

PG&E released the following statement: 

"As a matter of personal and public safety, our customers must never tamper with utility equipment. We urge our customers to call us at 1-800-743-5000 if they have questions about their gas and electric service.  We want to prevent our customers from facing the risks associated with SmartMeter removal which could result in serious harm.  Fires, burns and electrocution could occur from attempting to remove a SmartMeter.  In any instance where PG&E equipment has been tampered with or removed PG&E is obligated to end service until the situation is made safe and proper equipment is installed by a PG&E representative."

Smart meter health concerns in Australia

They call them smart meters but a growing number of homeowners disagree. They’re claiming the new power monitoring devices are actually bad for your health.

Body scanners pass company's radiation tests before being eliminated from airports

Airport full-body X-ray scanners underwent more than 700 inspections last year and passed all radiation tests, records show. The machines will be eliminated from U.S. airports by next month.

Controversial full-body X-ray scanners at U.S. airports underwent more than 700 inspections last year with all tests showing radiation levels below standards used by their manufacturer and the Transportation Security Administration, according to a USA TODAY review of the recently released reports.

While the TSA and scanner-maker Rapiscan Systems say the reports offer additional proof of safety, some critics remain unconvinced. Regardless, the TSA is in the final phases of removing the last of Rapiscan's backscatter scanners from airport checkpoints by June. Full-body scanners using a different technology that does not involve ionizing radiation, called millimeter wave, will remain in use to screen passengers.

"We're very pleased with the results of the latest batch of inspection reports," said Peter Kant, Rapiscan's executive vice president. "It's yet another set of test results that show the systems are operating exactly as we said they would, that they are well below safety limits."

The TSA did not respond to interview requests since Tuesday. The agency issued a brief statement Thursday night that said in part: "All scientific testing on this technology thus far has proven to be well within nationally recognized standards and safe for all passengers."

The TSA has said it was privacy concerns — not radiation — that resulted in the agency canceling its contract with Rapiscan in January. Rapiscan, unlike the maker of the millimeter-wave machines, was unable to meet TSA's deadline to develop software to convert the nude-like images produced by their machines into stick-like figures, the agency has said.

The TSA has repeatedly sought to assure the public that the radiation exposures delivered by the machines are tiny, the equivalent to what passengers receive during two minutes of a typical flight. According to the Health Physics Society, passengers on a flight from New York to Los Angeles are exposed to about 4,000 microrem of cosmic radiation and a chest X-ray can deliver 10,000 microrem. The full-body scanners deliver less than 5 microrem of radiation per screening, according to Rapiscan.

Critics have questioned the wisdom of adding to passengers' radiation exposure when other types of scanners are available that don't use X-rays. The governing body of the European Union has banned the use of X-ray body scanners in order "not to risk jeopardizing citizens' health and safety."

USA TODAY reviewed the latest airport X-ray scanner inspection reports, which TSA recently posted on its website and said are a response to a February 2011 Freedom of Information Act request filed by the newspaper. USA TODAY filed the request after the agency refused repeated requests in the fall of 2010 — by the newspaper and members of Congress — to voluntarily release the reports.

The reports involve about 715 inspections and generally covered radiation tests from December 2011 through December 2012. USA TODAY's review found:

• While all reports showed radiation measurements below Rapiscan's standard of 5 microrem, the amount of radiation measured varies by machine. Eleven inspections showed radiation exposures of 1.3 microrem or less; 47 inspections showed radiation exposures at or above 2.6 microrem.
• Three body scanners had radiation readings of 3 microrem or higher. At Pittsburgh's airport a December 2011 inspection of one machine showed 3.9 microrem. In San Antonio, a scanner had radiation readings in February 2012 of 3 and 3.1 microrem. In Columbus, Ohio, tests showed a scanner delivering 3.3 and 3.4 microrem in December 2011.
• Measurements of radiation leakage outside the scanners rarely detected anything during a 10-scan test. In a few cases, tests detected 1 microrem of radiation leakage, below Rapiscan's standard of 2 microrem.

The radiation inspections, performed by Rapiscan employees and contractors, use a device to measure the amount of radiation delivered and whether it is less than the company's standard of 5 microrem. Kant noted that Rapiscan's inspection standard is far less than the 25 microrem per screening dose limit for such devices set by the American National Standards Institute.

Kant said the variations in radiation readings recorded by his firm's inspectors likely reflect how the measurement was taken, such as slight differences in the placement of the measuring device in the scan chamber.

But some scientists have said the device Rapiscan uses in its tests isn't designed to accurately measure the low-level radiation used by the scanners. "Their measurements are probably flawed," John Sedat, a professor emeritus of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, said of the latest inspection reports. Sedat was among a group of scientists who have sent letters of concern to federal officials over the years about the scanners.

The first batch of inspection reports, released by TSA in March 2011, were riddled with what the TSA and Rapiscan said were clerical and math errors that in some cases showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected, USA TODAY reported at that time. The TSA had repeatedly assured the public and lawmakers that the machines had passed all inspections, but USA TODAY found that the agency hadn't reviewed the reports until after the newspaper began calling for their release. The TSA required Rapiscan to retrain its employees and contractors who conduct the radiation inspections.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/2013/05/02/airport-full-body-scanners-pass-radiation-tests/2130529/

Cell phone radiation - a future pandemic?

Did you know your iPhone comes with a health warning?  What?  A health warning?  Yep, it’s true.  It warns the user to hold the handset at least 10mm away from your body.  It also suggests using hands-free options like headphones or the speaker in order to avoid holding the phone to your head and subjecting it to the harmful radiation emitted by the phone.  Shocking right!  Check for yourself, by going to Settings; click on “General;” click on “About;” click on “Legal;” then click on “RF.”

“Nobody reads that warning,” said Devra Davis, founder of the Environmental Health Trust, an organization dedicated to educating people about controllable environmental health risks.

Up until the 1930’s, asbestos had been used as a building material, due to it’s heat resistance, sound absorption and tensile strength.  Oh and it was cheap!  To date more than 100,000 in the USA alone have died of asbestos related illnesses.

Back in the 1950’s, the tobacco industry worked to conceal the harmful effects of smoking from the public.  The World Health Organisation now estimates it to have caused 100 million deaths over the course of the 20th century.

Many experts including Devra Davies believe that cell phones makers, like cigarette makers before them, are hiding the dangers of their products and that they could in fact be the next global health pandemic.

“This is worse than cigarettes,” Davis said, “because cigarettes had no value to society. But phones are valuable.”

And they are highly profitable, which may be why the industry is reluctant to admit the phones do pose risks, or to highlight the simple precautions that can reduce those risks.

Cellphones emit low levels of electromagnetic radiation. The risks from carrying them too close to the body, or holding them up to the head for prolonged periods of time, range from reduced male fertility to brain cancer.

Although the USA is reticent to explore this issue, researchers in Isreal have found that one in five cases of a rare tumor in the cheek in now occurring in children under 20 years of age and is correlated to cell phone use in that demographic.

In March, Israeli scientists reported preliminary findings of a possible link between cellphone radiation and thyroid cancer. Thyroid cancer has been on the rise for more than a decade in Israel, corresponding to Israelis’ increase in the use of cellphones. 

Perhaps because of the research, Israel now has “much more aggressive rules,” Davis said. “You can’t sell a cellphone without a headset. And there are warnings from the Israeli Ministry of Health.”

A new Swedish study published just this month indicates that those who began using cellphones regularly before the age of 20 have more than a fourfold increased risk of ipsilateral glioma, a brain tumor formed on the same side of the head on which a person holds his phone.

The research seems to indicate that the younger one is when he begins to use a cellphone, the greater his potential risk. 

A new publication on the EHT website, written by several eminent epidemiologists, concludes that “new studies released since the time the World Health Organization concluded cellphones were a ‘possible human carcinogen’ in 2011 now indicate the cellphone radiation is a ‘probable human carcinogen,’” according to Davis.

Bleeding for her art

Part-time art student and full-time nurse Liz Warrington has combined both of her passions to create a 7ft steel tree which bleeds.

The art project is aimed at highlighting the damage caused by radiation from wifi networks, which the 35-year-old De Montfort University undergraduate says kills flora.

1. ​
   Blood, sweat and fears: De Montfort University student, nurse, and artist Liz Warrington with her Bleeding Tree project

Liz, who works at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, designed and built the tree by hanging hospital IV bags, filled with paint, from a welded metal frame as part of her foundation course at De Montfort University.

She said: "I was quite interested in trees and, while doing research for this project, I found a Dutch study that showed the radiation from wifi is actually killing trees. One of the symptoms is that the tree bleeds.

"My tree has a welded steel frame which is then covered in pvc tubing filled with different-coloured paints.

"I got the idea of using blood bags from work. I searched the hospital for expired IV bags which I've incorporated, including their taps to turn the bleeding on and off."

Research in Holland found that trees planted close to wireless routers suffered from damaged bark and dying leaves.

The study, carried out by Wageningen University, took 20 ash trees and exposed them to varying degrees of radiation – similar to that produced by wifi networks.

The results, which were not published in any academic journals, found that bark bled and hardened in the areas closest to the radiation.

A spokeswoman for the Health and Safety Executive said there is no evidence that wifi signals are harmful to humans.

She said: "When developing a view on wifi safety we consult the Health Protection Agency (HPA), which advises Government on this issue.

"The HPA's current position is that there is no consistent evidence that exposure to wifi adversely affects the health of the general population."

Liz had previously studied A-level art at school and has returned to education – to DMU – to reignite her artistic passion.

She has spent two-years juggling the course around her day job.

The bleeding tree will form part of her coursework and feature in an exhibition of students' creations being held next week. The Foundation Show has been put together to promote the work produced by the Art and Design (Foundations Studie) BTEC Diploma.

It takes place at the university's Fletcher Building, in Newarke Close, on Friday, May 10, from 5.30pm until 7.30pm.

Liz said: "I just saw the DMU course advertised when I was searching for arts courses.

"I have always been interested in art and the variety of workshops at DMU really appealed.

"It has been particularly difficult to fit my course around my full-time job but I have learned a lot, especially how to go about creating and researching projects.

"Before, I didn't know where to start – how to do research for an art project."

Source: http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/Leicester-nurse-artist-creates-7ft-bleeding-tree/story-18889843-detail/story.html#ixzz2TwILBoUg 

UK.gov blows a fuse at smart meter stall, sets new 2020 deadline

Smart meters won't be fully rolled out in the UK until 2020, one year later than planned.

And replacing a smart meter with a dumb one won't be allowed under a new set of rules, which are intended to speed up lagging deployments.

Smart meters, described the other week as "crap computers in a crap box" by an electronic security expert, will be installed in homes to monitor and control the use of gas and electricity. The delay and restrictions were slipped out in a report [PDF] from the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

The document laments the slow rollout of the equipment, so the government has promised to create national infrastructure by the end of 2015, as well as requiring energy companies acquiring new customers to fit smart meters or pay to hire the existing installation - all for the good of the planet, of course.

Companies investing in smart meters need to know they'll make their money back, and that's what the new rules are intended to guarantee.

The smart meter fitted by a supplier belongs to that supplier, and is paid for by them, so a customer who changes suppliers shortly after a smart meter is fitted represents a lost investment. The new supplier could fit a new smart meter, but given the cost of installation it should always be cheaper to pay rental to the old supplier, and this new rule prevents the new supplier slapping a cheapo dumb meter in its place.

The rules apply to gas and 'leccy supplies and come with an admission that the mass deployment won't be completed until 2020, rather than the scheduled date in 2019. That delay means infrastructure companies get until autumn 2015 to commission the requisite data networks, which could be important for some of the more interesting backhaul technologies being developed.

Existing smart meters are using the cellular networks, generally 2G, which isn't ideal. The signalling overheads required by a GSM connection can easily be bigger than the actual data being harvested from an electricity meter, and there's considerable overheads in maintaining a GSM even when it's not being used.

White Space networks could fit well. The radio frequencies used by the devices to communicate, spectrum slots formerly occupied by analogue TV, penetrate brick walls well and the Weightless protocol has been designed with just such applications in mind. White Space legislation, however, is still pending in the UK.

Similar is the 900MHz ISM band, which is soon to be released for UK use, and eagerly awaited by companies such as Silver Spring who are looking forward to running meshed networks in the unlicensed band.

Existing backhaul networks hardly justify the estimated £11.7bn cost of the scheme, which is supposed to pay for itself through the reducing of costs via accurate billing and the lowering of energy use. The oft-repeated premise is that once we can see live charts of our energy consumption we will rush about turning stuff off, as the ruinous cost of electricity at the moment clearly isn't motivation enough.

Smart meters are also supposed to drive down energy costs by making it easier for us to change suppliers. That is, so long as those suppliers are happy to rent the smart meter fitted by our last supplier; otherwise, they'll have to fit a new meter, with the associated costs.

So the cost of smart metering won't appear in the government budget because it will be met by suppliers. They'll pass those costs on in higher energy prices to us, so perhaps smart meters will drive down consumption after all.

Source: 

Cell Phone Use Associated with Increased Risk of Acoustic Neuroma

U.K. Study of 790,000 Women: Cell Phone Use Associated with Increased Risk of Acoustic Neuroma and Cancer of the Pituitary Gland

Pituitary tumor

Cell phone use was associated with increased risk of two types of brain tumors in a new study of 790,000 women. 

Cell phone use was associated with increased risk of acoustic neuroma and cancer of the pituitary gland in a prospective study of more than 790,000 women in the United Kingdom.

Acoustic neuroma is a rare, non-malignant tumor that develops on the main nerve leading from the inner ear to the brain. The pituitary gland is an organ that produces hormones which regulate important functions of the body and is located in the middle of the base of the brain.

Women who used cell phones for ten or more years were two-and- a-half times more likely to develop an acoustic neuroma. Their risk of acoustic neuroma increased with the number of years they used cell phones.

The results for acoustic neuroma re-affirm one of the two major conclusions by the World Health Organization (WHO) in its recent monograph about radiofrequency electromagnetic fields and form the basis for classification of cell phone radiation as "possibly carcinogenic" to humans:

“Positive associations have been observed between exposure to radiofrequency radiation from wireless phones and glioma, and acoustic neuroma.” (p. 421) (2)

The risk of cancer of the pituitary gland more was more than twice as high among women who used a cell phone for less than five years as compared to never users. Although the risk was elevated for women who used a cell phone for ten or more years (about 60% greater than never users), this effect was not significant. Since this may be the first study to find an association between cell phone use and pituitary cancer, further research on this cancer is necessary.

The women reported their cell phone use in 2005 to 2009 and again in 2009 and were followed through 2011 to see whether they developed tumors. The analyses controlled for other factors associated with tumor risk.

The study had numerous weaknesses which may explain why the research failed to replicate the increased risk of glioma associated with cell phone use of ten or more years found in several previous studies. Although this was a prospective study, the assessment of cell phone use was poor. Cell phone use was measured only at two time points and in a crude manner. The authors considered anyone who used a cell phone at least a minute per week to be a cell phone user. Although the authors measured the amount of cell phone use per week at follow-up, they did not report these results.The study did not assess cordless phone use or other microwave radiation exposures that are similar to cell phone emissions. If the never-cell phone users were cordless phone users, the effect of cell phone use on brain tumor risk would have been underestimated.

Since brain tumors can take decades to develop, the study underestimates the long term risk due to cell phone use as the average follow-up period for cell phone users was only seven years. Few women (about 8%) in this study used cell phones for ten or more years. Moreover, the women in this study may have used their cell phones much less than women do today.

The study was published online in the International Journal of Epidemiology on May 8, 2013. The authors are affiliated with the University of Oxford and the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Joel M. Moskowitz, Ph.D.
School of Public Health
University of California, Berkeley
For more information about electromagnetic radiation safety, see http://saferemr.com

Source: http://microwavenews.com/uk-study-points-acoustic-neuroma

Further evidence of cell phones as a possible human carcinogen

With 5.9 billion reported users, mobile phones constitute a new, ubiquitous and rapidly growing exposure worldwide. Mobile phones are two-way microwave radios that also emit low levels of electromagnetic radiation.

Inconsistent results have been published on potential risks of brain tumors tied with mobile phone use as a result of important methodological differences in study design and statistical power.

Some studies have examined mobile phone users for periods of time that are too short to detect an increased risk of brain cancer, while others have misclassified exposures by placing those with exposures to microwave radiation from cordless phones in the control group, or failing to attribute such exposures in the cases.

In 2011, the World Health Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) advised that electromagnetic radiation from mobile phone and other wireless devices constitutes a "possible human carcinogen," 2B.

Recent analyses not considered in the IARC review that take into account these methodological shortcomings from a number of authors find that brain tumor risk is significantly elevated for those who have used mobile phones for at least a decade.

Studies carried out in Sweden indicate that those who begin using either cordless or mobile phones regularly before age 20 have greater than a fourfold increased risk of ipsilateral glioma.

Given that treatment for a single case of brain cancer can cost between $100,000 for radiation therapy alone and up to $1 million depending on drug costs, resources to address this illness are already in short supply and not universally available in either developing or developed countries.

Significant additional shortages in oncology services are expected at the current growth of cancer.

No other environmental carcinogen has produced evidence of an increased risk in just one decade. 

Empirical data have shown a difference in the dielectric properties of tissues as a function of age, mostly due to the higher water content in children's tissues.
High resolution computerized models based on human imaging data suggest that children are indeed more susceptible to the effects of EMF exposure at microwave frequencies. 

If the increased brain cancer risk found in young users in these recent studies does apply at the global level, the gap between supply and demand for oncology services will continue to widen.

Many nations, phone manufacturers, and expert groups, advise prevention in light of these concerns by taking the simple precaution of "distance" to minimize exposures to the brain and body.

We note than brain cancer is the proverbial "tip of the iceberg"; the rest of the body is also showing effects other than cancers.

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23664410
also : http://www.emfacts.com/2013/05/swedish-review-strengthens-grounds-for-concluding-that-radiation-from-cellular-and-cordless-phone-s-is-a-probable-human-carcinogen/

India Gov’t Set Up Lab to Test Cell Phone Radiation Levels

The government of India is taking seriously the potential dangers posed by mobile phone radiation. Not only do the phone manufacturers have to comply with new rules, their heretofore self-certified phones will now need to be audited by a government set-up laboratory to ensure and enforce compliance.

The country’s first laboratory for testing and measuring mobile phone radiation was formally commissioned at the Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC) in New Delhi on Monday.

The government has said that new mobile phones manufactured in the country or imported should start following the stricter radiation norms by September 1. The radiation level should be displayed on such handsets. TEC’s Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) laboratories, which would measure the level of radiation emitted by mobile handsets, has been set up at a cost of Rs.2.5 crore. Currently, cell phone makers either self-certify the level or get it certified from international accredited labs.

SAR is related to electric field strengths produced inside body tissues while making calls. Department of Telecommunications (DoT) officials said that its Telecom Enforcement Research and Monitoring (TERM) cells will be responsible for conducting audit on self-certification furnished by the service providers.

Telecom minister Kapil Sibal, while commissioning the SAR laboratory, said, “We have set up a lab in the country so that mobile phones can be tested here for electromagnetic radiations. More such labs will be set up across the country starting with Mumbai.”

The new laboratory can take SAR measurements for CDMA, GSM 2G and 3G mobile handsets in the frequency band of 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz and 2,100 MHz. The laboratory can also take measurements of SAR value against the International Commission on non-Ionising Radio Protection (ICNIRP) limit of 2 watts per kg measured over 10 gramme of tissue as well as the recently adopted 1.6 watt per kg measured over 1 gramme of tissue.

Sibal also commissioned a Next Generation Network laboratory at TEC which serves the objectives of testing and certification as well as network-related study for any Internet protocol-based equipment.

According to new radiation rules, the radio frequency exposure limit must be lowered to 1/10th of the existing level. It will also become mandatory for SAR to be embossed and displayed on the mobile handset by the manufacturer. SAR level for mobile handsets will also be restricted to 1.6 watt/kg, averaged over a mass of 1 gramme of tissue. 

Source: 

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/mobile-phone-radiation-level-tec-telecom-ministry-sar-dot/1/247072.html

Are cell phones killing bees?

By now most everyone has heard or read about the mysterious disappearance of bees, in what is known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). While some scientists suggest that cell phone radiation may have something to do with it, it is all highly speculative and doesn’t answer a lot of questions, the main one being: Why only now when cell phones and cell phone towers have been around for years?

Still, experts like Dr. Carlo is “…convinced the possibility is real.” The radiation from the mobile phones could disrupt the bees’ navigational system. In a small study conducted by Landau University’s Prof. Jochen Kuhn, GSM cell phone radiation from handsets placed near hives in the frequency range 900 MHz – 1800 MHz caused the bees to avoid the hive. German research has also long shown that the behavior of bees changes near power lines.

Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees, and without it the United States alone oculd lose 30 percent of its food supply. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”. So this situation is causing quite a concern.

However, whether or not the cell phones have anything to do with the collapse of the bee colonies, there are enough reports on the media over the years with regards to mobile phones and their effects on human health. Until the wireless industry wises up and ensures safety of its products, we are left on our own to employ precautions.

The MRET technology, used in the GIA Cell Guard, superimposes a low-frequency ‘noise field’ on the electromagnetic radiation to make it compatible with the naturally occurring electromagnetic signals of our own cells. Could something as simple as this, adopted industry-wide and built into every cell phone and wireless device, be in our future? That’s certainly something to hope for.

Source: http://blog.cellphone-health.com/category/cellphoneradiationnews/

Escaping EMF

A life without cell phones, iPads or WiFi may seem a daunting prospect to many of us, but in the town of Green Bank, West Virginia, where every electronic device is banned, the residents like it that way.

The remote town of just 147 people in the Allegheny Mountains falls in the National Radio Quiet Zone, where wireless is banned across 13,000 square miles.

The ban is in place to minimize disturbance next to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, home to the world's largest steerable radio telescope.

While it may seem like an undesirable destination for today's tech-savvy citizens, many people are moving to the area as they believe it is better for their health.

Silence: Residents living near the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the National Radio Quiet Zone in Green Bank, West Virginia are banned from using phones or wireless devices to lower interference

Diane Schou is just one of the residents who believes she suffers from electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or EHS, which leaves her in pain whenever she is exposed to radio frequencies.

Schou explained to Slate that before she and her husband escaped to Green Bank in 2007, she lived in Cedar Falls, Iowa, where she suffered headaches, twitching muscles and chronic pain.

She first noticed the pains in 2002 when a wireless provider put up a tower near their farm.

'I was extremely tired, but I couldn't sleep at night,' she told Slate. 'I got a rash, I had hair loss, my skin was wrinkled, and I just thought it was something I ate, or getting older.'

She soon began to connect the pains with triggers - mobile phones, driving past signal towers - but the phone company dismissed her claims, even though she has no doubt of the cause.

'I'll say, "Oh, I have a headache," and then someone's cellphone will ring,' she said.

Relief: Diane Schou, pictured with her husband Bert, said that whenever she is exposed to radio frequencies she suffers headaches, twitching muscles and chronic pain, but these have eased in Green Bank

They found out about the Radio Quiet Zone in 2007 and when they visited, she immediately began to feel better - so they sold half of their farmland and made the move.

In their new home, they use a landline and an Internet-connected computer which does not have WiFi. They have struggled to find a refrigerator with low enough emissions, so fill up on ice instead.

Enlarge 

Zone: The area is 13,000 square miles and 147 people live in the town of Green Bank

'Life isn't perfect here,' she said. 'There's no grocery store, no restaurants, no hospital nearby. But here, at least, I'm healthy. I can do things. I'm not in bed with a headache all the time.'

While she is not alone - she believes 36 others like her have moved to the area to escape electronics - the condition is not recognized by the World Health Organization.

Around five per cent of Americans believe they have EHS, but the WHO has not connected the symptoms with exposure - and there is only brittle scientific evidence.

'EHS has no clear diagnostic criteria and there is no scientific basis to link EHS symptoms to EMF (electromagnetic field) exposure,' the WHO states. 'Further, EHS is not a medical diagnosis, nor is it clear that it represents a single medical problem.'

James Rubin, a psychologist at King's College London, added that he has carried out extensive studies but found sufferers could not always tell when there were blasted with electromagnetic frequencies compared to harmless ones.

'It is definitely the case that some people experience symptoms that they attribute to electromagnetic frequencies,' he told Slate. 'But is it really these frequencies causing the symptoms? At the moment, we can say that there simply isn't any robust evidence to support that.'

Rural: Schou said that other residents were not very welcoming to EHS sufferers but she has no choice

Other residents of Green Bank are also skeptical of those who say they have EHS, Schou said. They are reluctant to rent out their homes to them in case they ask for special treatment.

She added that after she asked the town to remove florescent lights at the community center, she has had packages stolen from her porch and was told: 'We don't want your kind here.'

Although she said she sometimes feels discriminated against, she said she has no plans to move.

'I can be outdoors. I can go to church, I can attend some celebrations, I can be with people,' she said. 'Living here allows me to be more of a normal person.'

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2308193/The-cell-phone-free-town-West-Virginia-sees-influx-residents-allergic-electronic-devices.html#ixzz2RNc9xx4L 

Refugees of the Modern World

You can turn your phone on in Green Bank, W.Va., but you won’t get a trace of a signal. If you hit scan on your car’s radio, it’ll cycle through the dial endlessly, never pausing on a station. This remote mountainous town is inside the U.S. National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000–square-mile area where most types of electromagnetic radiation on the radio spectrum (which includes radio and TV broadcasts, Wi-Fi networks, cell signals, Bluetooth, and the signals used by virtually every other wireless device) are banned to minimize disturbance around the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, home to the world’s largest steerable radio telescope.

For most people, this restriction is a nuisance. But a few dozen people have moved to Green Bank (population: 147) specifically because of it. They say they suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or EHS—a disease not recognized by the scientific community in which these frequencies can trigger acute symptoms like dizziness, nausea, rashes, irregular heartbeat, weakness, and chest pains. Diane Schou came here with her husband in 2007 because radio-frequency exposure anywhere else she went gave her constant headaches. “Life isn’t perfect here. There’s no grocery store, no restaurants, no hospital nearby,” she told me when I visited her house last month. “But here, at least, I'm healthy. I can do things. I'm not in bed with a headache all the time.”

The idea that radio frequencies can cause harm to the human body isn’t entirely absurd. Some research has suggested that long-term exposure to power lines and cellphones is associated with an increased chance of cancer, although most evidence says otherwise. But what these people claim—that exposure to electromagnetic frequencies can immediately cause pain and ill health—is relatively novel, has little medical research to support it, and is treated with deep skepticism by the scientific mainstream.

That hasn’t stopped them from seeking to publicize the dangers of wireless technology. One of the most prominent activists in the field, Arthur Firstenberg, gained notoriety in 2010 for suing his Santa Fe neighbor for the effects of her Wi-Fi network. But he began organizing EHS-sufferers way back in 1996—when digital cellular networks were initially installed across the country—forming the Cellular Phone Task Force and publishingMicrowaving Our Planet, one of the first books on the topic. In the years since, a fringe movement has grown around the idea, with some 30 support groups worldwide for those affected by radiation. The purported “epidemic” is particularly concentrated in the United Kingdom and Sweden, where surveys have found that 1 to 4 percent of the population believes they’re affected.

Here in the United States, West Virginia’s Radio Quiet Zone has become a gathering place for the hypersensitive since the mid-2000s, when they first began arriving. Most find out about the area through EHS groups, at conferences, or by reading about it in the handful of news reportspublished over the last few years. Diane Schou estimates that, so far, 36 people like her have settled in and around the tiny town to escape radiation.

When you walk in the Schous’ two-story brick house, 4 miles up a forested road from the Green Bank post office, the first item you see might be a radiation meter they keep in their living room. She and her husband, Bert, moved here from Cedar Falls, Iowa, because they believe Diane is sensitive to very specific radio frequencies. She first began noticing her sensitivity in 2002, she says, when U.S. Cellular, a wireless provider based in the Midwest, built a tower near their farm. “I was extremely tired, but I couldn't sleep at night,” she said. “I got a rash, I had hair loss, my skin was wrinkled, and I just thought it was something I ate, or getting older." After she started getting severe headaches, she heard about EHS from a friend and did some reading online, and eventually came to believe the tower had triggered her latent sensitivity. She went for a consultation at the Mayo Clinic, but doctors refused to consider the possibility, and when she wrote to the FCC complaining about the tower, they simply replied by saying it was safe.

Over the next four years, she repeatedly left the farm to search for a safe place, traveling through Scandinavia (where their son was studying abroad) and logging more than 75,000 miles driving across the United States in their RV. She’d find relatively safe spots but still got pounding headaches and chest pains from a range of triggers: if someone nearby turned on his phone, if she drove past a signal tower, if a neighbor next door used a coffee maker. “It would be like a sledgehammer on top of my head,” she said. Initially, only U.S. Cellular phones had harmed her, but eventually, being near any electrical device was a risk. (Virtually all devices that use electricity, even if they don’t rely on wireless signals, emit a low level of radiation.)

Then, in 2007, she learned about the Radio Quiet Zone. When she visited, she finally started to feel better. She and Bert sold half of their Iowa farmland and bought the house in West Virginia, unfinished, and have since installed wiring with thick insulation to reduce radiation. (Bert—who gets much milder symptoms of EHS, including tinnitus—still goes back to their farm every summer to conduct corn research.) Over time, living without exposure reduced Diane’s sensitivity, and she can now tolerate many devices without pain. The Schous use a landline and an Internet-connected computer (without Wi-Fi). But they still haven’t found a refrigerator with low enough radiation emissions, so Diane manually fills an icebox with ice each day. Even now, if she leaves the Radio Quiet Zone, exposure can set her off: “I'll say, ‘Oh, I have a headache,’ and then someone's cellphone will ring,” she said. “This happens time and time again.”

The Schous often host EHS-sufferers who want to test out Green Bank. One person who relies on their hospitality is Deborah Cooney, a singer, pianist, and voice coach from San Diego. Her problems began in 2010, she told me, when a smart electricity meter was installed on her house; she believes this triggered her boyfriend’s heart issues, led to her own hypersensitivity, and even caused her cat to start panting, pacing, and shaking her paws. Over time, Cooney’s symptoms intensified—they included fatigue, numbness, circulation problems, and intense jolts of pain in her heart—and she impulsively moved out one night in October 2011. “I got so sick that I felt my life was in serious jeopardy, and if I didn't leave that minute, I didn't know if I'd survive,” she said. She drove cross-country to the one friend she had who didn’t get any cell service (he lived elsewhere in West Virginia) and learned about the Radio Quiet Zone soon after she arrived.

Currently, she lives without running water or electricity in a simple one-room cabin the Schous built at the foot of their driveway, because simply sleeping in a wired building makes her sick. During the day, she shares a nearby apartment with another hypersensitive person, where she cooks, bathes, and occasionally uses a computer. Because she has trouble finding work, she’s having money problems. Recently, she traveled to Texas and Florida to perform, sleeping in her car every night of the monthlong trip because of the devices and Wi-Fi networks in hotel rooms. “This is a tough place to live,” she says. “I really don’t know how I’m going to be able to support myself.”

Some residents of Green Bank, along with the nearby town of Marlinton—also in the Radio Quiet Zone—apparently aren’t thrilled about this influx.* According to Schou, many locals are reluctant to rent housing to people with EHS, perhaps a result of the fact that in a remote area with few job opportunities, any new arrivals only heighten competition—and maybe because they’re likely to ask for special treatment. Schou told me that since she requested to have the fluorescent lights shut off at the community center, she’s faced intense discrimination: Packages have been stolen from her porch, and she once found a dead groundhog in her mailbox. “I’ve been told, ‘We don’t want your kind of people here,’ ” she said. Cooney was banned from the radio observatory for bringing up radiation issues at a town meeting held there and says her tires have been punctured in the night more than once. (I tried to talk to some locals about their new neighbors—but it’s hard to do a man-on-the-street interview in an area with so few streets or proverbial men.)

Cooney, like many with EHS, is particularly angry about the rollout of smart meters by electric utilities in many parts of the country. In some places, the backlash has been fierce, in part because of the belief that their wireless signals (used to monitor electricity consumption in real time) are dangerous. In Maine, consumers successfully demanded opt-outs for those who don’t want smart meters installed, while one utility in Hawaiiswitched to an opt-in program. But Cooney says this doesn’t go far enough: “Those options doesn’t let me opt out of the smart meter on my neighbor’s house, 10 feet outside my door, or the bank of 100 smart meters on the apartment building behind by house. And radiation doesn’t respect property rights.” She’s currently suing California’s Public Utilities Commission for $120 million in damages and wants a decision that bans smart meters entirely. Cooney also believes the telecommunications industry has been actively concealing the dangers of radio frequencies for some time. “They just want to keep profits high,” she said. “They want to keep injuring people because they don't want to pay the money it would take to correct the problem.”

It’s clear that Cooney, Schou, and the others are suffering. But the question remains: What exactly is “the problem”?

Even a skeptical thinker can be briefly entranced by the notion that researchers may have simply failed, so far, to uncover a real disease—as Carl Sagan was fond of saying, “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” It’s especially tempting when talking to someone like Nicols Fox, who reported for the Economist on food safety issues for more than a decade and wrote three books before moving to the nearby town of Renick, W.V., in 2008 in an attempt to control her EHS. A science-minded person who probably would have once scoffed at the idea of hypersensitivity, she gradually came to believe that her shooting pains, unpredictably plunging heart rates, and difficulty speaking were a result of years in front of a computer. “I got more and more sensitive, and eventually there was a day when my body just screamed when I touched the keyboard,” she said.

Now, she lives simply in a little two-bedroom house on a forested ridge and does her writing on a typewriter (she's working on a novel), mirroring the Luddite tradition she once wrote a book about. At night, she wears a shirt woven with silver fibers to reduce her radio frequency exposure, and though her house has electricity, she shuts it off and uses gas lamps whenever possible. During our conversation, her voice would occasionally get cracked and raspy if I got too close with my audio recorder. In the five years since she’s moved to the Radio Quiet Zone, she hasn't left once.

Fox’s position on the dangers of radio frequency seems to make sense at first glance. “It’s completely artificial, we've invented it, and it’s never been on this planet before, so nothing—not animals or humans—is adapted to it,” she told me. Of course, this kind of thinking (that a natural state is inherently better than an unnatural one) is a logical fallacy, and can’t replace actual evidence in proving the existence of EHS. Nevertheless, Fox and others who believe they suffer from it often compare wireless devices to tobacco—a dangerous addiction that many of us sign up for before fully understanding the risks.

Unlike many people who believe they suffer from EHS, Fox doesn’t seem particularly worried about proving it. “I don't care if there's research or not,” she said. “I've done my research. Meaning, I’ve sat in the doctor’s office and seen my heart range drop to 36 beats per minute when they turn the equipment on.” As she points out, there’s no reason why she’d turn her life upside-down—abandoning her career and selling her house on Maine’s Mount Desert Island—to fake a disease.

But “faking it” isn’t the right way to discuss EHS—both because it alienates sufferers by making them defensive and because, more importantly, that doesn’t seem to be the case. According to research, these people’s symptoms may be real. But—and this is the important part—radiation isn’t to blame. A 2010 meta-analysis of 46 studies concluded that “repeated experiments have been unable to replicate this phenomenon under controlled conditions,” while the World Health Organization simply says that “well controlled and conducted double-blind studies have shown that symptoms were not correlated with EMF exposure.”

The primary way of testing is a provocation study, in which a purported EHS-sufferer is exposed to either an electromagnetic field or a sham field and asked to identify which is which. James Rubin, a psychologist at King’s College London who studies psychogenic illnesses, has analyzed the literature on provocation studies and conducted some at his own lab. His most recent meta-analysis—which covered 1,175 participants in 46 studies—found no rigorous, replicable experiment in which radio frequencies were identified at rates greater than chance. “It is definitely the case that some people experience symptoms that they attribute to electromagnetic frequencies,” he told me. “But is it really these frequencies causing the symptoms? At the moment, we can say that there simply isn't any robust evidence to support that.”

Some EHS-sufferers criticize provocation studies, saying that holding them in a lab means spillover radiation from equipment and nearby buildings even in the sham condition. They also argue that the experiments don’t necessarily use the correct radiation frequency. (“The scientist is pretending to be God, knowing what frequency that person will react to,” Diane Schou said to me.) But Rubin points out that many provocation studies start with an unblinded stage, where the participants are truthfully told whether the electromagnetic field is on. “They almost always report symptoms when they know it is on, and not when they know it is off,” Rubin said. “In the second stage, when the experiment is repeated double-blind, they report symptoms to the same extent in both conditions.” When the participants know whether the field is on, in other words, contaminant radiation and frequency specificity suddenly aren’t such big problems.

As such, the best predictor for whether a hypersensitive person will experience symptoms isn’t the presence of radio frequency—it’s the belief that a device is turned on nearby. An elegant demonstration of this on a much larger scale took place in 2010, when residents of the town of Fourways, South Africa, successfully petitioned for a cell signal tower to be taken down because of the sickness caused by its radiation—even though it was later revealed that it hadn’t been switched on during the time of their complaints.

The idea of EHS is also undermined by our basic understanding of electromagnetic radiation. The full spectrum of electromagnetic radiation is divided into ionizing and non-ionizing frequencies. The former category, which includes X-rays and nuclear fallout, is energetic enough to tear electrons off our body’s atoms and cause radiation sickness; thelatter isn’t. While the frequencies in this latter group (which includes visible light, cell signals, Wi-Fi, and the radiation from power lines) can burn biological tissue at extremely high intensities, our devices operate at levels well below anything considered harmful. The alluring idea that life hasn’t evolved to withstand non-ionizing radiation becomes silly when you consider that the main source of it on planet Earth is sunlight.

As Fox and others note, there is research supporting the idea that EHS is real—but scientists largely dismiss it as pseudoscience. Most well-known is the BioInitiative Report(a non–peer-reviewed publication authored by 29 self-described “scientists, researchers and public health policy professionals”), which has been widely criticized for selectively using favorable studies and data. The European Commission noted that, contrary to its claims, the report was a post facto assembly of many different papers and studies, not the consensus of a working group, and that it often ignored the conclusions of the researchers themselves in interpreting the data. A recent article in the Guardian cited a 2011 study by a team of LSU neurologists that purported to find that electromagnetic frequencies caused headaches and muscle twitching, but the study involved only one subject—and even she wasn’t able to identify if a field was turned on at rates better than chance.

Given the data, the long-hidden danger of tobacco isn’t an apt parallel for the supposed harm of radio frequency radiation. But other episodes from history are. Technology historian Genevieve Bell says that in the early days of rail travel, experts warned that if a woman traveled faster than 50 miles per hour, her uterus could suddenly fly out of her body. Bell has charged the many instances throughout history in which new technologies triggered unfounded, irrational “moral panics." She theorizes that innovations which change our relationship to time, space, and other people are the most likely to incite fear. It’s hard to imagine technologies that hit all three of these all comprehensively as smartphones and the mobile Web.

You could also view EHS as a mass psychogenic illness, in which very real symptoms arise from a socially contagious belief in a nonexistent disease. In 1962, for example, after a June bug infestation at the Montana Mills textile factory in North Carolina, workers began getting sick: They broke out in rashes, experienced nausea, and in some cases fainted and required hospitalization. A total of 62 workers exhibited symptoms, but doctors and entomologists couldn’t find any explanation. In a seminal 1968 study, a pair of psychologists who had interviewed the staff concluded that their physical symptoms had been triggered by the belief that they were at risk, reinforced by local news stories about the infestation and resulting contagion. Interestingly, those with close friends who’d gotten sick first were more likely to develop symptoms, as were those more stressed and dissatisfied with their jobs. Other episodes attributed to mass psychogenic illness includea supposed post-9/11 chemical attack at a Maryland Metro station (in which window cleaner somehow caused 35 people to develop headaches, nausea, and sore throats), and last year’s mysterious outbreak of twitching among female high school students in Le Roy, New York.

As The New Yorker recently pointed out in a blog post, EHS, along with these types of episodes, hint at the bizarre power of the nocebo effect: the flip-side of the placebo effect, in which inert substances or the suggestion of harm brings about real physical symptoms. In many studies of the nocebo effect, simply explaining to patients that a pill might trigger side effects has been enough to cause everything from back pain to erectile dysfunction. “If you believe that a substance, compound, or phenomena harms you, and you start experiencing symptoms, there's confirmation for your belief right there, and then it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Brian Dunning, a prominent skeptic who hosts the Skeptoid podcast and frequently takes on pseudoscientific claims, told me. “You see that your phone has a signal or that there’s a Wi-Fi router in the room, it further increases your stress level, and you have very real and very distressing physical symptoms. Once you have this confirming experience, it becomes really difficult to sit there and be told otherwise.”

Our brains’ expectations, it turns out, have a surprisingly potent effect on the functioning of our bodies. If the people who moved to Green Bank truly suffer from piercing headaches, nausea, and dizziness when they are around wireless signals, the nocebo effect (and previous instances of mass psychogenic diseases) is as good an explanation of anything we have so far.

But what does this mean for people who believe they suffer from EHS? Probably not much. Science might say that they can’t possibly be allergic to cellular networks, but as long as they are certain they are, the Radio Quiet Zone is the one place they can get relief.

So, for now, most of them plan to stay in Green Bank, and more arrive all the time. In just the week before I visited, Bert Schou told me, they’d gotten calls from people in New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Virginia asking whether they could come stay. Diane wants to raise money to build a resource center for the hypersensitive nearby, where they can be medically evaluated in a radiation-free setting and stay overnight when necessary.

Above all, they want to spread the message that electromagnetic radiation is dangerous—and that the only solution is getting away from this invisible form of pollution. "You might find a friend or someone in your workplace who's not feeling well,” Bert said to me as I stood in his driveway, getting ready to head out before it got dark. “Bring them here, and they might feel better, too."

This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/04/green_bank_w_v_where_the_electrosensitive_can_escape_the_modern_world.2.html