by Katherine | 25 Apr, 2018 | Uncategorized
A new NZ-based Facebook group has been set up for people in NZ who are electrosensitive. This is a closed group and is intended as a confidential forum in which people who have developed electrosensitivity can come together and support eachother.
The details for the link are below.
If you are electrosensitive and would like to join the group, please click on the JOIN button on the left hand side of the page and one of the moderators for the group will be in touch with you once you have answered some questions.
Electrosensitive Community NZ on Facebook.
Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/411706965946517/
Website editor’s note: Electrosensitivity (ES) is variously also known as electrohypersensitivity (EHS), electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EMS). People who develop this condition have often been exposed to high levels of electromagnetic fields (for example, from smart meters, living close to cellular phone infrastructure, from using cellular phones etc.)
If you would like to learn more about this condition, the following links of this site have more information:
What is it like to live with electrohypersensitivity (EHS)? One woman’s story
A helpful paper on electromagnetic sensitivity by Dr. Mallery-Blythe
Retired CEO speaks out on electrosensitivity
Electrohypersensitivity – a short film by Time magazine free to watch online
Thank you for visiting the website of Stop Smart Meters NZ. If you are interested in smart meters or electromagnetic radiation and health, please sign up to our free email list at www.stopsmartmeters.org.nz.
We also have a FB page which is below:
https://www.facebook.com/Stop-Smart-Meters-NZ-1211462805538548/
by Katherine | 20 Apr, 2017 | Latest News, Science
New Zealand researcher Mary Redmayne PhD recently presented an electronic poster (an e-poster) at the 2017 World Congress on Public Health in Melbourne.
Dr. Redmayne’s research interests include the effects of electromagnetic radiation and health as well as how the use of wireless devices impacts on educational outcomes.
To learn more about Dr. Redmayne please see this link
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mary_Redmayne2/info
Her e-poster may be accessed through this link:http://wcph2017.paperlessevents.com.au/view-poster/P064
NB: There are many other links on www.stopsmartmeters.org.nz relating to electrohypersensitivity (EHS).
A paper by an Australian physician has linked smart meters to the development of EHS. Please click HERE for more information.
Two links about EHS are below:
What is it like to live with electrohypersensitivity (EHS)? One woman’s story
A helpful paper on electromagnetic sensitivity by Dr. Mallery-Blythe
SOURCE: http://www.naturalmedicine.net.nz/news/nz-researcher-presents-e-poster-electrohypersensitivity-international-public-health-conference/
by Katherine | 25 Aug, 2016 | Latest News
Website editor’s note:
The following text comes from the latest email newsletter produced by the team who produced the award winning smart meter documentary Take Back Your Power.
The text in italics is quoted from the newsletter. The comments in [ ] are notes from the editor of www.stopsmartmeters.org.nz.
As you can see by reading the exchange, it appears that at least one company in the North American telecommunications industry is exposing its workers to illegal and dangerous levels of microwave radiation because the transmitters are not turned off when there are workers in the vicinity.
If any readers work in the telecommunications industry in NZ (or other countries) and are concerned that the practice of exposing workers to illegal levels of microwave radiation may be occurring in your country, you can share your concerns via the Contact Form at this link: https://stopsmartmeters.org.nz/contact-us/
Reports are treated in confidence and information is not posted on the website unless permission is given in writing.
NB: If you would like to keep up with smart meter related (and other EMR related) news in NZ, you may wish to join the email list at www.stopsmartmeters.org.nz
You may also want to check out our new Facebook page at this link https://www.facebook.com/Stop-Smart-Meters-NZ-1211462805538548/
Health of telecommunications industry workers recklessly endangered?
Comment by Travis Burch:
Figured I’d tell this story here about how things are shifting even within the industry…
I saw the AT&T trucks today, the guys were working on the cell towers. I’ve been wanting to talk to them for months but I never get a chance to talk to them.
So I walk over there today and just then a guy comes down and says “Hey”.
So I said “Hey man, do you mind if I ask you some questions about the cell towers?”
He said “Sure thing, go ahead”, real friendly.
I then asked a bunch of technical questions about the design of the towers and stuff, just saying I was fascinated by the technology. He answered them and I learned a bunch of stuff. He mentioned that the round antennas are higher frequency microwaves.
Then he said that the US is soon going to 5G, Korea (I think) is already going to 5G and “they’re ahead of us”, but that “lots of countries are holding off on 5G because of environmental concerns and health concerns”.
I said “really?”
He said, “Yeah, and the head of the FCC recently said ‘We’re not going to let research slow us down.’”
I said “Wow, he said that? That’s really bold.”
He said “Yeah I think so.”
So I said, “Are you interested in the health concerns from this stuff?”
“Yeah, I mean…yeah.”
Me: Me too
Him: Really? Lots of us in this line of work are getting leukemia and cancer. [NB: Recent research has shown a link between exposure to microwave radiation and cancer – see this link for details.]
Me: I’ve been interested in it for a while because I work here, so close to two towers.
Him: They used to turn off the transmitters when we worked on them. Now they refuse to turn off the transmitters while we work on them and they don’t let us carry around a RF meter anymore. They’ve got transmitters on top of buildings now. . .
Me: Yeah I’ve seen them!
Him: Yeah! You know the M****** H****** Hotel? I was just up there. And you just walk right up to them.
Me: Really? Man you’re right in front of those things!
Him: Yeah, and they’re not turning them off anymore. I’m just getting blasted.
Me: I’ve got a meter and I get readings at this school of 10-20 mW/cm2 per channel. And a cell tower has like 70 channels right?
Him: You have a RF meter? (He couldn’t believe it).
Me: Yeah! I drive around town and see what the levels are like.
Him: No way, eBay? Amazon?
Me: Amazon.
Him: How much was it?
Me: Like… $190. [Note: You can order via the TBYP website here & support the producer of Take Back Your Power ]
Him: No way… Like I said, they forbid us from having them now.
Me: So I just looked up the federal limits on Saturday. It says the federal limit is 10 mW/cm2. On this playground I’ve gotten a reading of 15 mW/cm2 on one channel… but the cell tower puts out 70 something channels, does that mean it’s putting out roughly 15×70 mW/cm2?
Him: Most likely, yeah. Yeah all of us are worried about it. It’s high enough levels to heat things up. My face burns whenever I use a cellphone. [This symptom suggests that the telecommunications worker has become sensitised to microwave radiation and could be on his way to developing electrohypersensitivity (EHS). Some case histories of people who develop EHS suggest that exposure to high levels of microwave radiation may be a causative factor. So-called “smart” electricity meters are suspected of causing EHS in some people. More information about EHS may be found below.]
Me: Everybody at the school is always hot, even when the air is cold.
(Note: radiant heat [long wave light] heats up a body without heating up air).
Him: Really? The industry people are actually worried that 5G is going to have a really big, even more noticeable thermal presence because the high frequencies have so much more power in them.
(His phone started ringing).
Me: Great talking to you!
Him: You too! See ya!
Ed note: This link has useful information for employers and/or managers of organisations that may be exposing staff, students or customers to wireless radiation: http://en.geovital.com/risks-regulations-and-liability-around-exposing-people-and-students-to-wireless-technology-emf-radiation-part1/
Links to further information about electrohypersensitivity (EHS)
What is it like to live with electrohypersensitivity (EHS)? One woman’s story
Prostituting Science: A must-read book about “environmental illness”
A helpful paper on electromagnetic sensitivity by Dr. Mallery-Blythe
Retired CEO speaks out on electrosensitivity
Electrohypersensitivity – a short film by Time magazine free to watch online
by Katherine | 18 Feb, 2015 | Events, Latest News, Science, Uncategorized
An Environmental Sensitivities Symposium is coming up in 2015. The Symposium is designed to help people with a variety of illnesses, including those who have electromagnetic sensitivity (also known as electrosensitivity or electrohypersensitivity), multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), food allergies and other conditions such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Lyme disease.
The Symposium features international experts such as:
Michael Bevington is the chair of Trustees of the charity ElectroSensitivity UK (See
http://es-uk.info/)
and
Prof Olle Johansson, associate professor, head of the Experimental Dermatology Unit, Department of Neuroscience, at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, is a world-leading authority in the field of EMF radiation and health effects.
Other speakers include:
Martin Pall, PhD, Dr Christabelle Yeoh and Lucinda Curran.
Basic access to the online Symposium is FREE while there are upgrades available for modest fees. (A book option is available for people who have severe electrosensitivity issues and cannot use a computer.)
The Symposium website is below:
NB: Please let colleagues, friends and family know about this event as public education about conditions such as electrosensitivity and multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) is badly needed to help improve the lives of people who have these conditions easier. (The current lack of knowledge among the general public about electrosensitivity, MCS etc. makes life harder than it should be for people who have developed these conditions as neighbours may inadvertently cause harm, by for example, allowing the installation of a smart meter close to the home of some who has electrosensitivity, or by using toxic garden chemicals etc. etc.)
by Katherine | 7 Jun, 2014 | Latest News, Users Feedback
Brian Stein, who was the CEO of the largest frozen and chilled food product company in great Britain before he retired, has spoken out about electrosensitivity and the problems with the standards for non-ionsing radiation developed by International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), which he says are designed to protect the mobile phone industry, not human health.
Brian Stein suffers from electrohypersensitivity and discusses his own experiences of how he developed EHS during his fifiteenth year of using a mobile phone on his job…he continued to use the phone until his symptoms became so severe, he could not use a cell phone for even one second without excrutiating pain. Even worse, he began to suffer from similar symptoms when using other technologies…
You can see him lecture at this link:
http://vimeo.com/24505286
For more information about electrosensitivity please see these links: www.stopsmartmeters.org.nz/health-issues/ and
www.stopsmartmeters.org.nz/latest-news/electrohypersensitivity-a-short-film-by-time-magazine-free-to-watch-online/
https://stopsmartmeters.org.nz/latest-news/what-is-it-like-to-live-with-electrohypersensitivity-ehs-one-womans-story/
by Katherine | 3 May, 2014 | Government and Electricity Industry Positions, Latest News, Smart water meters, Uncategorized
On Thursday or Friday (April 24 or 25, 2014) I put in a request under the Official Information Act to the Thames-Coromandel District Council for information about the trail of “smart” water meters planned for the town of Tairua on the Coromandel Peninsula during May 2014. I addressed the request to Mr Bruce Hinson, who is the Thames Coromandel Council Infrastructure Manager.
On Wednesday (April 30), I received an email from a member of the engineering team stating that the Council could answer my questions, but it would cost me $114 – and payment was required before they would action the request. (Under the Official Information Act (OIA) councils and other government agencies are allowed to charge for time to prepare answers to OIA requests, but they do not usually do so.) The tone of the email was friendly, so I decided to phone the respondent to discuss the matter, so that is what I did on May 2, 2014.
I spoke at length to a very personable young man who recently graduated from university with a degree in civil and environmental engineering who is working on the “smart” water meter trial. He explained that the Council’s objective in trialing the “smart” water meters was to better manage water for Tairua.
Rationale for the trial of “smart” water meters in Tairua
Water for the town of Tairua is drawn from a river, which naturally carries lower water volumes during summer when demand for water peaks due to an influx of people arriving for summer holidays in their baches. (People “go crazy” washing things, he said, during the two weeks of the year that they live in their holiday homes.) The Thames-Coromandel Council had an obligation under its resource consent for drawing water from the river not to create an excessive impact on the river system, he said, the implication being that “smart” water meters could help achieve this. Currently there are no water meters in Tairua, he said. “Smart” water meters were considered by the team to be a better option than conventional meters because there was no need to physically access the meter box (such as by prying up the meter box cover) to get a reading, and the potential for human error in reading meters was eliminated by the wireless transmission of data.
We did not discuss what other measures, if any, the Council has trialled to reduce or better manage water demand at the peak time of year, such, as for example, public education campaigns to promote water conservation and/or promotion of installation of rain water tanks to supplement the town water supply for some applications. (This was an oversight on my part.)
Technical aspects of the “smart” water meters being trialled in Tairua
The young engineer was excited by the results of the trial so far, in which an initial test had shown that the signal from one of the “smart” water meters could be detected 600 metres from the “smart” meter, despite buildings and trees being in the way between the water meter and receiver.
The “smart” meter chosen by the Council for Tairua is the Sappel Altair Concentric V3 meter supplied in NZ by Hynds. The Council has chosen to use the 434MHz option for the transmission frequency (which presumably means that the Council engineering team has chosen to team up the meters with the Diehl IZAR RC radio transmitter.) 434 MHz is a public frequency also utilised by some common gadgets such as automatic garage door openers. However, the manufacturer of the IZAR RC radio transmitter designed to be compatible with Sappel modular meter states that its transmission range is “500 metres, depending on the environment”, so it is obviously much more powerful than a garage door opening gizmo. (In practice, as above, the transmission range may be longer than the manufacturer’s specifications.)
According to the engineer, the “‘smart” meters chosen will be transmitting every eight seconds. (The battery life of the for the transmitter is claimed by the manufacturer to be 15 years, without any sort of guarantee that this will actually be the case.) The Council is exploring different ideas for reading the meters, I was told. The trial is using a handheld or drive-by system in which a portable device is used to collect the data from the “smart” water meters as they transmit. The transmitters on the meters are unidirectional. One option the Council team is considering for the ongoing collection of data is to have a receiver mounted in the rubbish trucks which make weekly rounds of the towns to collect garbage, thereby eliminating the need for a separate vehicle (or person on foot) to patrol the streets to collect the data. This is considered an attractive option because it would reduce the cost associated with gathering data from the “smart” meters.
Possible implications for privacy if the trial is considered successful
The IZAR transmitters that are compatible with the Sappel meters used in the Tairua trial have the capacity to be used with a fixed “IZAR RECEIVER GPRS/LAN” system which is capable of collecting all the data from “smart” water meters, storing it and then transferring it to a central computer system. If the Thames-Coromandel District Council were happy with the results of the Tairua trial and chose this option for collection of data from “smart” water meters, this potentially raises privacy concerns, since if the meters transmit data every eight seconds, it should be theoretically possible to use the data to work out patterns of activity in a household, based on patterns of water consumption, in a similar way in which patterns of activity in a household can be inferred from electricity use. (See the graphic at this link http://www.smartmeterpowerstruggle.wordpress.com/ for an example of how electricity “smart meters” can compromise privacy, and for a discussion of privacy and home security issues please see these links: https://stopsmartmeters.org.nz/government-and-electricity-industry-positions/network-tasman-there-are-no-privacy-concerns-with-smart-meters-yeah-right/ and www.stopsmartmeters.org.nz/latest-news/how-smart-meters-can-help-burglars/.)
Health implications
About 25% of households and businesses in Tairua have been selected by the Council to participate the in trial. (The properties chosen have been selected on the basis of ensuring that they represent different types of properties (i.e. permanent residential, holiday homes and business) and different areas of the town.) By contrast, the trial of “smart” water meters in Tauranga was limited to one suburb. (See this link for a discussion of the trial of “smart” water meters in Tauranga: https://stopsmartmeters.org.nz/latest-news/smart-water-meters-in-nz-the-situation-so-far/.)
Considering that each “smart” water meter used in the Tairua trial will transmit every eight seconds around the clock for a distance of up to half a kilometre (or possibly more) at the 434MHZ frequency, the “smart” water meter trial in Tairua may represent an experiment in exposure of an entire town to this particular frequency at levels that are unique in the history of NZ.
People who have electrohypersensitivity (EHS)** may be adversely affected by this trial. Overseas, concern has been raised that exposure to the non-ionising radiation produced by “smart” meters used to measure electricity consumption appears to act as a trigger for the development of EHS in some people. (See: http://skyvisionsolutions.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/aaem-wireless-smart-meter-case-studies.pdf ) In NZ, many of the “smart” meters being introduced for electricity are designed to transmit for longer distances (“a few kilometres”), according to the PDF “Smart-Meter-FAQ-Aug11.pdf” on the website of the Electricity Authority, so electricity “smart” meters are obviously more powerful than are “smart” water meters. Moreover, as the strength of the signal from any “smart” meter declines with distance, “smart” electricity meters which are typically mounted on the wall of a home probably pose more of a risk than “smart” water meters on council property. (Presumably these will be installed in the footpath, as are the conventional “water” meters in Auckland.) However, the possibility that “smart” water meters may trigger EHS cannot be ruled out and the longer term effects of living in an area where “smart” waters meters transmit every eight seconds twenty four hours a day must be considered an unknown.
Possible outcome of the trial
If the trial is successful, conceivably the Thames-Tairua District Council may choose to introduce “smart” water meters in other towns in its region.
Pe0ple in Tairua (or elsewhere in the area administered by the Thames-Tairua District Council) who are not happy with the idea of being exposed to additional electromagnetic radiation from “smart” water meters may wish to notify the Council that they do not consent to the installation of a “smart” water meter to measure water consumption at their home or business. A template that can be personalised may be downloaded from the link below:
FORMAL NOTICE OF NON CONSENT FOR SMART WATER METER
Please share this post with family and friends in this area.
More information on smart water meters in NZ may be found at this post: www.stopsmartmeters.org.nz/latest-news/smart-water-meters-in-nz-the-situation-so-far/
**Information on electrohypersensitivity may be found at this link: http://www.es-uk.info/
For a personal story which illustrates how difficult a condition EHS is for sufferers to live with, please see this link: https://stopsmartmeters.org.nz/latest-news/what-is-it-like-to-live-with-electrohypersensitivity-ehs-one-womans-story/
Health professionals may want to read this link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/87308119/Guideline-of-the-Austrian-Medical-Association-for-the-diagnosis-and-treatment-of-EMF-related-health-problems-and-illnesses-EMF-syndrome
by Katherine | 25 Mar, 2013 | Uncategorized
A story about electrohypersensitivity (EHS) (also known as electrosensitivity or ES) recently featured on the UK’s BBC Television South region.
On 25th February 2013, The BBC covered the impact of electromagnetic radiation, Wi-Fi and mobile phones on health and the prevalence of electrosensitivity (ES or EHS) – a condition in which exposure to electromagnetic radiation can cause severe pain and other debilitating symptoms. The programme featured former electronics expert and latterly, EMF Refugee, Phil Inkley in his caravan in remote and uninhabited part of rural Hampshire.
ES-UK Trustees, Professor Denis Henshaw, and medical doctor Andrew Tresidder contributed to the story to helpng viewers understand aspects of EHS, the possible source of their headaches, tinnitus, sleeplessness and heart rhythm variability.
The story may be viewed at the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Hin3QRdwOY
Editor’s note: The website of ES-UK (an organisation that offers information about electrosensitivity is http://www.es-uk.info/
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