Symptom development from exposure to radio frequency fields from wireless smart meters in Victoria, Australia
In 2006 the government in Victoria, Australia, mandated the roll-out of electricity smart meters across the state which effectively forced more high-frequency non-ionizing radiation exposure on the population. This avoidable increase of man-made radiation may very well constitute an unprecedented public health challenge for Victoria.
As many people had smart meters installed in a relatively short period of time, the resulting health effects / symptoms that arose in some individuals did not go unnoticed. Quite quickly, action groups were formed to inform the population about the health effects caused by smart meters and their EMF radiation which saw the awareness of EMF radiation being raised to new heights. Efforts were made to avoid installation, to refuse the forced installation of a smart meter with even a political party formed to reverse the rollout of the smart meters across Victoria.
By August 2013, 142 people had reported adverse health effects from wireless smart meters by submitting information on an Australian public website using its health and legal registers.
On the basis of the collated information, a case study was commenced that evaluated the information in these registers to determine the types of symptoms that Victorian residents were developing from exposure to wireless smart meters.
To ensure completeness and accuracy for this case study, the website managers eliminated those cases that did not clearly identify the people providing information by name, surname, postal address, and / or e-mail to ensure that they were evaluating the information from genuine registrants. They then obtained consent from participants to have their de-identified data used to compile the data for the case study. As this study was only to reference those residing in Victoria, all individuals from outside the state were removed from the reference material. This then left 92 validated residents from Victoria to be evaluated.
The collated data was then grouped by symptoms into medically and clinically relevant clusters (e.g. pain in the head was grouped with headache, tinnitus was grouped with ringing in the ears etc). The evaluators then calculated total numbers and percentages for each identified symptom cluster, with percentages rounded to the nearest whole number.
The most frequently reported symptoms from exposure to smart meters were identified as follows: |
---|
1. Insomnia, |
2. Headaches, |
3. Tinnitus, |
4. Fatigue, |
5. Cognitive disturbances, |
6. Dysesthesias (abnormal sensation), |
7. Dizziness. |
There was a significant effect of these symptoms on individuals lives.
Review of key studies, both recent and conducted as far back as 1971, reveals that the participants’ symptoms were the same as those reported by people exposed to radiofrequency fields emitted by devices other than smart meters. Interestingly, the vast majority of Victorian cases did not state that they had been sufferers of electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome (EHS) prior to exposure to the wireless meters. This could point to the possibility that smart meters may have unique characteristics that lower individuals thresholds for symptom development. It could also be a simply case of ‘the straw that breaks the camel’s back’ as our exposure to high frequency EMF radiation from transmitters has been consistently increasing for many years and this accelerated smart meter installation program simply saw so many being exposed by ‘yet another’ source of EMF radiation.
Read the report written by F Lamech; dated November 2014 published by the US National Library of Medicine & National Institutes of Health.
LINKS
- GEOVITAL home consultations in UK | USA | Australia | New Zealand | Germany | Austria | Switzerland | Other countries
We have just refused to have a smart meter installed to the annoyance of the power company.