W.E.E.P. News
Wireless Electrical and Electromagnetic Pollution News
11 September 2010
After reading W.E.E.P reports about the smart meter in the U.S and Canada, Agnes Fontana decided to find out about the situation in France, here is some interesting info she reports on the French smart meters:
----- Original Message -----
From: FONTANA Agnès
To: Iris Atzmon
Sent: Monday, August 02, 2010 2:35 PM
Subject: Data on the french "smart meter"
The American and Canadian smart meters are sending datas 24 hours a day by wireless radiofrequencies.
I sent a letter to ERDF, the historical power operator in France, in charge with this project. I expressed my worries as an EHS person and asked for precisions.
To my surprise, I was called at home (on my wired phone) by an ERDF employee who informed me that :
- the Canadian and US experience in smart meters had been taken into account ; an important thing is that in north America, meters are outside homes whereas in France they are mainly inside.
- wireless transmission systems for French smart meters had been contemplated, but dismissed
- the chosen solution is CPL (French for courant porteur en ligne – online bearing power, I don't know the correct English term for that and would be glad to learn it – data are transformed into power and sent into the power network). The smart meters will not emit wireless radiofrequencies.
- The frequencies used in this system are very low frequencies.
- The thing attached to the meter, which I had seen on photographs in the press and which looked like a 3G key, is in fact a kind of USB key that the consumer can unplug and read on his own computer to know more about his use of power and finetune it accordingly.
As any EHS person, I know that CPL is not 100% clean – it pollutes regular electricity power and travels in wires that are not designed for that. The best would have been connecting meters to the optic fibre. But I hope ERDF will buy something not too dirty.
The man also told me that the technical executive by ERDF is "very conscious" of electromagnetic problems. Well, he should have a look to ERDF's high power cables and people living under them then – but I did not dare mentioning that.
Anyway this is rather encouraging. French smart meters will be placed for experimentation late 2010 – early 2011 in a country district and in the city of Lyon. Of course we will look closely at it.
Tell me if you need more about my last message – I wrote it juste before going on holiday and the English was frightfull.
Best regards,
Agnes (France).
De : FONTANA Agnès
Envoyé : lundi 2 août 2010 14:19
À : 'Etienne Cendrier - Robin des Toits'; 'Robin des Toits'; 'contact@criirem.org'; 'Alain vérignon'; 'marjo cepp'; 'Calysta Lasolution'
Objet : J'ai des infos sur Linky, le nouveau compteur
Bonjour à tous,
Avant de partir en congés, j'avais envoyé à ERDF la lettre que vous trouverez en pièce jointe. Je nourrissais en effet pas mal d'inquiétudes sur le nouveau compteur qu'ERDF nous faisait miroiter, Linky, sur la base des témoignages alarmants diffusés par WEEP et iris Atzmon sur les expérimentation de « smart meters » aux USA et au Canada (je les ai jointes à ma lettre à ERDF, je ne les remets pas, je pense que vous les avez sinon je vous les transfère sans problèmes) : une catastrophe… des gens qui auparavant supportaient sans problème portables, DECT et wifi étaient devenus EHS suite à l'installation de ces bestioles chez eux… et j'avais vu dans la presse, illustrant les articles annonçant l'arrivée de ces nouveaux compteurs, des photos faisant apparaître ce qui ressemblait étrangement à une clé 3G…
A ma grande et heureuse surprise, j'ai été appelée chez moi par quelqu'un d'ERDF qui a répondu à mes questions. Il ressort que :
- les informations en temps réel sur la consommation seront transmises par Linky à ERDF en CPL et non en « sans-fil ». d'une façon générale Linky ne traite pas d'informations par « sans fil »
- les fréquences utilisées seront de très basses fréquences (le gars m'a donné le chiffre mais malheureusement j'ai oublié).
- les expériences des USA et du Canada ont été prises en compte. La transmission par technologie sans fil a été envisagée mais n'a pas été retenue, essentiellement parce qu'aux USA/Canada les compteurs sont à l'extérieur des habitations et non dedans.
- la clé qu'on voit sur les photos n'est pas une clé 3G mais une sorte de clé USB qui stocke les données, lesquelles pourront être lues par le client sur son ordinateur (il débranche la clé du compteur et la lit sur son ordinateur), pour avoir une connaissance fine de sa consommation et optimiser, soit ses comportements, soit sa formule d'abonnement.
- Linky pourra, certes, être le support de services complémentaires sans fil pour des fonctions plus avancées mais seulement à la demande du client, rien d'imposé (ça, c'est plutôt des perspectives de moyen terme).
Mon interlocuteur m'a précisé au passage que le directeur technique d'ERDF était très conscient des différents problèmes liés à l'électromagnétisme.
Je sais bien, comme tous les EHS, que le CPL n'est pas 100% propre et qu'il aurait mieux valu brancher tout ça sur la fibre optique. Mais gardons l'espoir que ERDF saura mettre en place quelque chose d'à peu près clean.
L'expérimentation commence fin 2010 début 2011, d'une part à Lyon, d'autre part dans des communes rurales d'Indre et Loire. Il faudra surveiller tout cela.
Mais d'une façon générale j'ai été plutôt heureusement surprise de la réponse d'ERDF à la fois sur la forme et sur le fond.
Bien à vous tous,
Agnes Fontana.
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Wifi in Schools and the Dangers of non-ionizing radiation: crazed anti-science parents, or a Cold War failure of Normal Science?
September 9, 2010 by northernsong
http://northernsong.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/wifi-in-schools-and-the-dangers-of-non-ionizing-radiation-crazed-anti-science-parents-or-a-cold-war-failure-of-normal-science/
The CBC has run stories on parents groups who are concerned about the possible health effects of WIFI in elementary schools. Individual reports of increased heart rate and headaches, from parents and from the children themselves, are are concerning – but intuitively one wishes to trust Health Canada who dismiss the complaints as subjective. The peer reviewed literature, according to Health Canada, overwhelmingly confirms that the thermal effects of WIFI are negligible, and that no causal relation has been found between those thermal effects and any health problems.
The fact that scientists remain opposed to a scientific consensus is not a reason to distrust the consensus - if this were true, the presence of a single reputable climate denier in the peer reviewed literature would be a reason to refrain from belief in global warming. However, there are two reasons why the wifi case is different from climate denial. First: the precautionary principle runs in the opposite direction – whereas a slight doubt that human Co2 output will threaten the survival of the species is not a good reason to take action to stop Co2 emissions, a significant doubt that wifi causes health problems in children is not a good reason to take cheap and easy action to limit children's exposure to wifi. Second, there is a structural bias behind Health Canada's appraisal of the research into the effects of small levels of microwave radiation.
This surprising claim comes from a study by Leo P. Inglis, surveyed here by Magda Havas, surveying the literature on microwave radiation's health effects:
"In the U.S., the thermal effects are generally believed to be the only ones of significance; other contentions are usually dismissed as lacking a provable basis. In the USSR, non-thermal effects are considered the most significant and are overwhelmingly the ones most studied."
"In the U.S., the thermal effects are generally believed to be the only ones of significance; other contentions are usually dismissed as lacking a provable basis. In the USSR, non-thermal effects are considered the most significant and are overwhelmingly the ones most studied."
This indicates a structural difference between scientific assumptions in US and USSR have swayed the directions of research, determined which studies got funding, what students took interest in, etc… This claim undercuts Health Canada's statements which concern only the thermal effects of microwave radiation – if non thermal effects exist, Health Canada is not even looking for them.
Significant differences in the direction of scientific research between closed off communities are expected by constructivists like Kuhn, who believes that the basic assumptions of a scientific community are determined by the appearance of fruitfulness in future research rather than through normal scientific inquiry itself. In the past I have taken interest in Scientific research done under the Nazi regime, and research done in secrecy for the US military during the cold war. Such research programs demonstrate the power of dollars over freedom – how a research program, even when the researchers are cut off from their peers – can make tremendous strides if given a set of goals and unlimited resources. This gulf between Soviet and American research is an example of the opposite, and much less controversial hypothesis: that a lack of democracy is harmful for scientific research. The lack of proper collaboration between American and Soviet researchers into the effects of microwave radiation allowed Soviet research to ignore the importance of thermal effects, whereas the converse allowed US scientists and regulators to ignore the importance of non-thermal effects.
So, while the Bio-Initiative report is rejected by Health Canada as not being in conformity with the scientific consensus, it might not be rejected by Health Moscow.
For example, whereas in 2008 and 2009 Health Canada continued to hold that there was no evidence that cell phone use could have any health effects, the Russian Naitonal Committee on non-ionizing ratiation protection made this statement about risks posed to children's health by cell phone radiation (similar to WIFI, but much stronger).
Potential risk for the children's health is very high:
─ the absorption of the electromagnetic energy in a child's head is considerably higher than that in
the head of an adult (children's brain has higher conductivity, smaller size, thin skull bones,
smaller distance from the antenna etc.);
─ children's organism has more sensitivity to the EMF, than the adult's;
─ children's brain has higher sensitivity to the accumulation of the adverse effects under
conditions of chronic exposure to the EMF;
─ EMF affects the formation of the process of the higher nervous activity;
─ today's children will spend essentially longer time using mobile phones, than today's adults will.
Potential risk for the children's health is very high:
─ the absorption of the electromagnetic energy in a child's head is considerably higher than that in
the head of an adult (children's brain has higher conductivity, smaller size, thin skull bones,
smaller distance from the antenna etc.);
─ children's organism has more sensitivity to the EMF, than the adult's;
─ children's brain has higher sensitivity to the accumulation of the adverse effects under
conditions of chronic exposure to the EMF;
─ EMF affects the formation of the process of the higher nervous activity;
─ today's children will spend essentially longer time using mobile phones, than today's adults will.
