Ban on smart meters gone in my town, the local hydro installed a "smart" meter...

[THE_REAL_OBLIVION]

Ban on smart meters gone in my town, the local hydro installed a "smart" meter...

Unlike many cities, mine had a ban on smart meters since 2003. When the utilities guy came by, who was an old friend of mine came around to install, what he says are not "real" smart meters and that papers he's given me says that unlike the Hydro-Quebec meters (we have our own in-town hydro company, there's 2 dams for the city here), they are RF meters that don't pulse all the time, they only "wake-up" when an utility truck drives around once a month to collect their data by distance and then the RF shuts back down. Also, that they are 0,25 to 2,2 uW/m2 when active while the Hydro-Quebec ones are much stronger, at 5,6 uW/m2 to 50 uW/m2. Thing is I live in a condo, so for each floor, there's 6, there's 2 condos per floor, so they add-up. But apparently they do not transmit at all except when the utilities truck driver goes around collecting their data, without needing to go by foot to each houses like they used to.

I'm a bit worried, I didn't refuse because he would have given me a 85 dollars bill plus a 2,50 extra on each monthly bill and I knew he wouldn't (knowingly) lie to me, I've hung out with him and my old psychonaut/mdma/methbombs/whatever gang from practically the whole '00s. I was glad to see him and it seemed the same, he had moved away and didn't know he was back here, I'm glad he's found a good job, but I wasn't glad about this. I thought the ban was still on and he was aware many people do not want those, even if they are not really "smart" meters, as in, they don't pulse out all the freaking time/are not the worst case scenario meters plus their RF pulses to the truck are much lower than the provincial electric company.

Should I be worried? I'm also worried about the hacking issue, but if it's like he said, that it is not a permanent wifi signal and that only the technicians in their trucks can wake em up to get their data and then they turn off, so I accepted. The things are all over my condo building now, I guess, everyone else here is 60+, I'm the one who sticks out like a sore thumb, most are retired and from what I know, none of them knows about anything outside their overpaid boomer jobs if they still work, so I assume all of them were changed.

Are these really much less of a worry? I know my friend knew about this, there's a village outside of town that has the ban still on, where people from all over the province settle in because there is no wifi, no cell towers, nothing, and those who get ill from electromagnetism radiation flock over there, went from a 900 people village to 3500 in 3-4 years...so it was in the news every now and then. He assured me that those can't be hacked to get into your fibre internet ONT for example.

I'd like to know what you guys think. It's true that those readings are lower than any other meters elsewhere I've read about browsing around after being awakened by him knocking on my door...but still, I don't need additional worries.

 

[Mafioso]

Personally I don't see what there is to be afraid. The fear of radiofrequencies and electromagnetism isn't based in physics as far as I can tell. There's no provable link between people who claim to be ill and the electromagnetism they blame. I would love to see it if there was one, but all that I have seen is purely anecdotal, and honestly the people usually having these claims generally have little to no real understanding of how things like electricity work. Electricity and magnetism are two properties of the same force, essentially. Anything that produces electricity will also produce magnetic forces, and vice versa. These forces are not newly discovered either, by any means. Science has a pretty good understanding of how radio, magnetic, and electric frequencies affect biology. If these things were really causing illness then there'd be massive disease world wide with heaviest concentrations correlated with concentrations of the "harmful" frequencies, both humans and animals alike as our biology is nothing unique.

And really, you should be far more concerned about you identity being stolen than somebody hacking into your smart meter. No one is hacking smart meters to hack into your network. That'd be the hardest and most backwards way to attempt to hack someone, unless attempting to manipulate the data sent to the utility, which seems pointless for a 3rd party.

I think you are being a bit paranoid my friend.

 

[aihfl]

I am leaving this here for the time being since it is peripherally related to health, but it may be better suited for CEP&S.

 

[THE_REAL_OBLIVION]

Personally I don't see what there is to be afraid. The fear of radiofrequencies and electromagnetism isn't based in physics as far as I can tell. There's no provable link between people who claim to be ill and the electromagnetism they blame. I would love to see it if there was one, but all that I have seen is purely anecdotal, and honestly the people usually having these claims generally have little to no real understanding of how things like electricity work. Electricity and magnetism are two properties of the same force, essentially. Anything that produces electricity will also produce magnetic forces, and vice versa. These forces are not newly discovered either, by any means. Science has a pretty good understanding of how radio, magnetic, and electric frequencies affect biology. If these things were really causing illness then there'd be massive disease world wide with heaviest concentrations correlated with concentrations of the "harmful" frequencies, both humans and animals alike as our biology is nothing unique.

And really, you should be far more concerned about you identity being stolen than somebody hacking into your smart meter. No one is hacking smart meters to hack into your network. That'd be the hardest and most backwards way to attempt to hack someone, unless attempting to manipulate the data sent to the utility, which seems pointless for a 3rd party.

I think you are being a bit paranoid my friend.

It seems all the videos of plants not growing fruit on the side facing the smart meter, although I bet those are the way too powerful constantly reporting to the central every 15 seconds basically spying on you that do this, same with insects shunning them, which is hard in an urban environment, so large lowered levels of birds/insects/animals. I've only had to take a few classes in that field in college since they were ancilliary to my study field, but they always throw in extra work, anybody who ever went to University knows that.

Anyways, after knowing what model they use and their actual very low RF radiation due to their method collection...I'm not worried. If RF radiation wasn't an issue, Austria wouldn't have done what they've done (they have a limit of 10mW/meter square for any appliance over there, finding that info is very easy, the first graph I saw showing multiple bodies regulations regarding this issue shows Austria's Health Ministry or such being the most stringent, WHO levels being laughable regarding anything.

I don't base my fear out of ignorance, but out of actual scientists who don't swallow every new technology as "amazing". This guy knows his stuff : https://smartgridawareness.org/2015/09/30/smart-meters-not-necessary-to-modernize-electric-grid/

I thought this could be in either Health or the Computer/Science forums, I picked this because after all, my city had banned changing the meters in 2003, ahead of almost everyone by their own chief electricians back then.

 

[JessFR]

EDIT: Ok so heads up, I'm sorry for how long this post is, but this question touches on a complex phenomenon about human perception. If you don't want to read all of it. Please at least read up to the bold asterisk.

There is absolutely no reason you should be worried about the rf emissions of such devices.

I could go on at length about the physics, how they don't have enough energy to do you any harm, but I think there's a more powerful point to be made here.

Cell phones, wifi base stations, TV signals, all of these technologies operate through electromagnetic radiation, just like smart meters. The only difference is the energy of the transmissions.

ALL the technologies I just mentioned including smart meters aren't even close to the energy level of ordinary visible light that you use to see every day. They don't become powerful enough to become dangerous until they reach the point where ordinary visible light reaches ultra violet. The kind of light the sun gives off. And sure enough, that kind of light can increase your risk of skin cancer.

Any level of energy below that isn't powerful enough to be dangerous. Ordinary light isn't, and all radio technologies are substantially less powerful.

If there were other dangers posed, the evidence would be overwhelming and unquestionable. People would be being affected everywhere.

This is nothing more than fear of the unknown. People had it with microwaves, then they got used to them and stopped worrying. Then again with cell phones. Now with smart meters.

When the first books were created, there were people who feared it would damage people's memory from insufficient use. That people would be unable to remember anything without checking what had been written. Sounds absurd now, but so too will these fears one day.

All the same fears were around with cell phones. Yet society has used them to a truly astonishing extent without any real evidence of harm.

I understand why you might be concerned, but I absolutely 100% assure you your fears of health concerns from the signals smart meters emit are warrented.

*

Yes there are people who'd honestly swear they are experiencing health problems from smart meters. But by and large those symptoms are caused by those fears. It's like placebo. I've heard of people installing Faraday cages that have entirely blocked the signal, yet they still swear it's affecting their health.

Because it's not the signal that's the cause. If it were blocking it would stop it. But their feelings aren't objective. People aren't objective.

As they say there's nothing to fear but fear itself. You are far more likely to experience apparent symptoms of something wrong if you believe that's what you're going to experience. It's been shown again and again with absolutely anything and everything.

As for videos of plants not growing right, I haven't seen such videos, but I can promise you it's not the smart meters signals doing it. There's another explanation. There always is. I've seen so many similar such videos advocating all sorts of concepts that science doesn't support, and in every instance once you really look into it there's another explanation.

I've seen flat earther videos pointing out obvious compression and digital signal artifacts in videos of astronauts on the international space station. Saying it's proof of video tampering. I know the real reason for what they're seeing, you can repeat the artifacts yourself. They prove nothing.

I don't know what the explanation is for videos of say, a plant not growing near a smart meter, but there is going to be an explanation and it's not going to be the smart meters signal. It's not going to be that because if that could happen, no plant anywhere would be growing. We are surrounded by electromagnetic radiation everywhere.

You've been surrounded by radio frequencies your whole life that are no different. I'm not judging you for your concern, as I said, it's a normal human reaction. People spend years learning scientific method in order to try and overcome our natural subjective fallibilities. And even that still means knowing you can't trust anything but hard, repeatable data, that's been obtained by observers blind to what's being tested. And checking the odds of the results compared to the odds of getting the same result by random chance.

My point is, I understand how convincing videos on YouTube spreading paranoia can be. And I can't make you believe anything you don't want too. But I can assure you that in as much as anything can be known for sure in this world, we can know that the kind of signals smart meters use are safe.

I hope any of this has helped.

 

[THE_REAL_OBLIVION]

It did help. I don't think, especially since those I had installed are not the smart meters a lot of scientists and plain old observers, the first start, fear the most. It could affect a small percentage of the population when it comes to this (or weaponized ELF/VLF by militaries around the world, that should affect everybody, like Russia's declared satellite that can target a region of people that gives them instant headaches...look it for yourself, not "false news".) I'm convinced some people are very sensitive to electromagnetism that keeps increasing in our world, but I'm not one of them, just wasn't happy about the ban on smart meters being removed and having a hard time saying no to the hydro guy who happened to be an old friend, didn't want to tell him to get lost and have to give him a cheque for 85 dollars on top of that.

It's settled, I'm not worried about those wake-up for a second RF signals meters we got in the end, I'll see what happens in our garden in the yard behind the condo building, we're allowed to grow food on our lawn in the back and on the sides, so we're making good use of it.

 

[JessFR]

I'm glad you're not worried.

Yes there is some evidence that suggests cause for concern with ELF waves of extremely high amplitude, but no ordinary electronic appliance, including smart meters, generate anything like that. The waves they generate are among the most prolific in our environment, because they are the ones with properties that are most effective for this kind of radio communication. Likewise they are the ones with the least reason to believe there could be any associated harms. Because if there were the health effects would be enormous and undeniable.

Besides, antenna size is connected to the wavelength of the emitted signal, as a result, generating ELF requires antennas so large they'd never fit in an ordinary electrical appliance. Also, we are exposed to background elf everywhere. The mains electrical power oscillates at elf frequencies, and the delivery wires themselves act as a poor, but nevertheless workable antenna for at least very mild exposure. Again if there were a real problem though, it would be unquestionable given the numbers of people effected.

 

[THE_REAL_OBLIVION]

Yeah, it's not like those 5G cells they're starting to put everywhere in the US. Here in Canada they're only having a potential test Google zone in Toronto. The fact they need to be placed everywhere and making things look shittier in our skies like the many many things on phone poles these days. But I bet you'd objects about 5G, so yeah, the only bad thing that happened when they changed the boxes was that they took down my FTTH's ONT in the house, weakening the signal and causing reboots on the router constantly happening and TV service fail. It was really a noisy job, the walls were banging shaking the whole house, so they managed to play with the FTTH cable, great job guys...For a month neither me or the ISP could figure out why they could log into the router but kept saying the signal weak, even computers connected directly to the router through ethernet, so all of em except the laptop at times when my gf takes the screen off and uses it as a tablet, I had problems reaching the UI.

I knew city utilities guys even if old friends could somehow caused some issues, inherently!

 

[JessFR]

For the time being I have no reason to feel concern about 5g.

First off, all the concerns about it all sound like exactly the kind of nebulous concerns and symptoms that people start imagining around piles of new technologies they don't understand.

And second, just like with previous technologies people have worried about, nobody can seem to explain to me why 5g should be dangerous. As in what reason in a physics sense.

It's still way way way below the energy a flashlight gives off.

Why should electromagnetic radiation be not dangerous at this particular frequency range, but not substantially higher?

Then you've got how low in transmission power the energy actually is.

All 5g is is a name for increasing the frequency so we can send more data over it. Something we've done many times before. Why should it suddenly be dangerous now, loooong before the ionizing threshold of UV?

I mean there is of course the issue that 300ghz waves have a harder time getting through objects, so we have to increase the density of cell towers to have full coverage.

But honestly, I notice cell towers making the world less "beautiful" so little already, especially by comparison to ordinary power lines. And there are ways to make them blend in better, I'd rather see us make more efforts with that than just hold off in building them at all.

 

[THE_REAL_OBLIVION]

Fibre optics can take care of most of what 5g is being called so amazing. Techdirt's articles about the subject, which they did way before the discussion became mainstream demonstrates that at the very least, it's just to push something "new" and "better" and make money out of something that wasn't there, because fibre optics cancel most uses of 5g, not all, such as the shitty thought of self-driving cars, we're already pampered enough by the nanny state here, I want to drive and drive manual!

 

[JessFR]

Uhh.... a LOT of us make significant use of GSM data technology. And so I for one think we should continue to improve it.