From Microwave News: “The U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) is expected to issue a public announcement that cell phone radiation presents a cancer risk for humans. The move comes soon after its recently completed study showed statistically significant increases in cancer among rats that had been exposed to GSM or CDMA signals for two-years.” See Microwave News for full article.
Here is the link for the CPUC decision regarding the Smart Meter Opt out program, which just came into my e-mail http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/SearchRes.aspx?docformat=ALL&DocID=143904205
They are still providing the opt out option. The fees are the same ($75 dollars initial fee to opt out and $10 dollars monthly), but (this is a good) there will be a “cap” (three years) on how long those fees will be charged.
Page 42 of Decision:
“The monthly charges will be collected for three years from the time a residential customer chooses to opt-out of the smart meter program. We find the three year period to be reasonable, as it is a sufficient duration for the utility to recover a portion of the utilities incremental costs in setting up services associated with accommodating the request of the opt-out customer and to integrate the meter reading function in its normal operations in order to further reduce the incremental expense of supporting opt-out service.”
2. SoCalGas.
I’m reading over the SoCalGas section which provides service to parts of LA, Orange and San Diego counties. Southern California Gas was incredibly greedy in their opt out fee proposal. They wanted opt out customers to pay $179 for the initial opt out fee and $24 dollars monthly. They lost that proposal. Their fee will be the same as the other utilities ($75 initial fee, and $10 monthly). Unfortunately, however, for those of us who are both Edison and So Cal Gas customers, we will have to pay double:
Page 47: “For those customers served by two utilities, such as SCE customers who also take gas service from SoCalGas, they will pay opt-out fees and charges to each utility that serves them. As described below, the costs of alternative meter reading practices where one utility reads the meter on behalf of two utilities is likely to increase the overall costs of the opt-out program.”
This just came in my e-mail and I want to post the link. There are two proposed decisions, one by Administrative Law Judge Amy Yip-Kikugawa and the other issued by CPUC Commissioner Peevey which is called an alternate. Here are the links.
http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/SearchRes.aspx?docformat=ALL&docid=131173965
http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/SearchRes.aspx?docformat=ALL&docid=131173964
It looks like they are proposing to maintain the opt out fees for smart meters (75 dollars and then 10 dollars monthly). However, one bone they are throwing (in the alternate proposal) to opt out customers is they say that the fee will expire after three years and any left over costs will be absorbed from general revenue. However, they say all of that would need to be reviewed.
Judge Yip-Kikugawa’s proposal also ruled against local governments having the authority to collectively opt out of the smart meter program as well as those who challenged the opt out fees based on the Americans with Disabilities Act:
“This decision also determines that local governments may not collectively opt out of smart meter programs on behalf of residents in their jurisdiction. Similarly, multi-unit dwellings with homeowner and condominium associations may not collectively opt out of smart meter programs on behalf of individual residents who are members of the association. Finally, this decision determines that charging an opt-out fee does not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act
or Pub. Util. Code § 453(b).”
See EMF Safety Network and Stop Smart Meters! for further information.
by Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D
The Google Glass emits more wireless radiation than most cell phones on the market, but unlike cell phone users, Glass users may be wearing this device on their heads for more than 12 hours a day putting their health at risk.
The Google Glass emits both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radiation. Although the Glass official web site, http://www.google.com/glass/start/, contains information warning consumers about the device’s potential interference with radio or television reception, the site provides no safety information to consumers.
As a body-worn, microwave-emitting device, Google is required by Federal law to test the Specific Absorption Rate or SAR of the Glass. This is a measure of the maximum microwave radiation absorbed by the user in 6 minutes averaged over one gram of tissue. Although Google did not post the SAR information on its web site, the Glass test reports can be found on the FCC’s web site at https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/reports/GenericSearch.cfm by entering “A4R” in the Grantee Code field. The FCC ID for the current version of the Glass is X1.
The official test report indicates that the SAR for the Glass is much higher than the SARs for the iPhone 5, the Samsung Galaxy S5, or most cell phones on the market.
During the last year, Google improved the antenna on the Glass which resulted in an increase in the SAR from 1.11 to 1.42 watts/kilogram (W/kg). In contrast, the Samsung Galaxy S5 has a head and body SAR of 0.57 and 0.64 W/kg, respectively. The Apple iPhone 5 has a head SAR of 1.17 and a body SAR of 1.18 W/kg.
In the U.S. no personal wireless device can have a SAR that exceeds 1.6 W/kg. The SAR standard, however, was developed several decades ago in the U.S. primarily by physicists and engineers to protect users from the acute effects of the heat generated by microwave radiation. The standards do not protect users from the non-thermal effects of cell phone radiation which have been associated with increased brain cancer risk among long-term cell phone users and other health problems in the short term including electrosensitivity, sperm damage and infertility, and reproductive health risks in children.
Just because these devices are legal does not mean they are safe
Although many health researchers, including myself, have questioned the utility of assessing only a device’s SAR, currently that is all governments measure and regulate. Governments want consumers to believe that all legally marketed wireless devices are safe, and that the SAR level does not matter as long as it meets the legal standard. Yet no study has proved that exposure to low-intensity microwave radiation is safe, and thousands of peer-reviewed, published studies have found biologic effects from such exposures. The research suggests that governments need to adopt more stringent, biologically-based, standards to protect consumers’ health.
Medical and public health professionals should call on Google to end this experiment on Glass users or at least fully inform consumers of the potential long-term health risks from wearing this device.
Joel M. Moskowitz, Ph.D.
School of Public Health
University of California, Berkeley
For more information about wireless radiation health risks: http://www.saferemr.com/.
From Eon3Net: “This is a preview of a series of presentations at San Francisco’s prestigious Commonweath Club of California in which Dr. Devra Davis and her medical colleagues show why cell phones and other wireless devices pose serious health risks to you, your ovaries, your sperm, your breasts, your brain and your babies – and suggest science-based precautionary public policy alternatives. Soon to be an informative video series. Stay tuned….” See also Environmental Health Trust, Facebook Page
by Joel Moskowitz
Oct. 24, 2013 – BERKELEY, Calif. — According to the Federal Public Service, beginning in March, 2014, new regulations will apply to the sale of mobile phones in Belgium. Children’s mobile phones will be banned. The specific absorption rate (SAR) for every mobile phone must be listed at the point of sale and the following warning must be provided to customers:
“Think about your health – use your mobile phone moderately, make your calls wearing an earpiece and choose a set with a lower SAR value.”
The Belgian government’s additional recommendations include use of other hands-free methods to keep the phone away from the body such as text messaging, and not making calls when the signal is weak, such as in an elevator or in a moving vehicle.
All cell phones will be labeled with the letter A, B, C, D, or E, corresponding to the phone’s specific absorption rating, or SAR, which is a measure of the maximum amount of energy deposited in an adult user’s brain during a short phone call.
“A” indicates a SAR less than 0.4 watts/kilogram (w/kg), “B” from 0.4 to less than 0.8 w/kg, “C” from 0.8 to less than 1.2 w/kg, “D” from 1.2 to less than 1.6 w/kg, and “E” more than 1.6 w/kg.
Although phones sold in the U.S. cannot currently exceed 1.6 w/kg and are measured in a different manner than in Europe, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering weakening the U.S. standard and adopting the European or international standard which was developed by a private organization called ICNIRP. The multinational Telecom Industry has lobbied to weaken our protections in the interest of global “harmonization.” Continue reading
The FCC is reviewing RF safety standards and has set the final deadline for public comments this Tuesday, September 3, 2013. To read the comments already submitted, see this FCC website page. See this page for information on how to file comments.
The current standards do not protect health. They were set up (as Joel Moskowitz writes) by “engineers and physical scientists” from industry groups and are outdated. When they were set up, the FCC ignored recommendations from its own health agencies. For example, in the case of cell phones, they approved the industry backed cell phone power density of 1.6 rather than the health agencies’ recommendations that it be 1.0. The FCC also, Moskowitz writes, in its current testing of radiation absorption rates for users of cell phones “failed to enforce its [own] guideline,” which says that devices need to be tested as they are used, and instead allowed tests to be done with the phone held an inch from one’s head, which is not how most people talk on a phone.
I’m not sure how good a job the FCC will do in setting standards to protect public health. They seem to go out of their way to accommodate industry, even going so far as to reclassify the ear as an “extremity,” which will then allow for higher radiation exposure levels to the head. Also the nomination of Thomas Wheeler, an industry insider, to head the FCC is not encouraging. They may even raise the exposure levels.
Here are additional directions from Arthur Firstenberg about how to submit comments:
“Comments sent by U.S. mail must be postmarked by September 3, 2013, the day after Labor Day. Title your submission, “Comments on Notice of Inquiry, ET Docket No. 13-84.” Send the original and one copy to:
Office of the Secretary
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th St. SW, Washington, DC 20554
Comments sent electronically should be sent by September 3, 2013 on this webpage: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs. (Click on “Submit a Filing” if the filing page does not immediately open). Type in “13-84” in the box for “Proceeding Number.” Write “Comments on Notice of Inquiry, ET Docket No. 13-84″ at the top of your attached comments. You can attach Word, PDF, or Excel files.
Comments without attachments may be sent on this webpage: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/hotdocket/list. Clicking on “13-84” will take you to a simplified filing page.”
Today, the Senate will hold hearings to formally approve President Obama’s nomination of Thomas Wheeler to head the FCC. Tom Wheeler ran the CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association) at a time when the mobile phone industry, according to Devra Davis, was “war-gaming” to block research which showed deleterious effects of cell phone radiation. Wheeler has been called the “mastermind” (Davis) of this war gaming as well as an “industry crony” (Levitt).
See this excerpt from an interview Davis gave to Brad Jacobson for his article, You Really Are Addicted to Your Cell Phone:
“Devra Davis: The example in the 1990s, which is documented in my book, was that [University of Washington researchers] Henry Lai and Narendra N.P. Singh found significant evidence of DNA damage caused by cellphone light radiation comparable almost to the damage you would get from X-rays, which is ionizing. At the time, it was generally believed by some people that non-ionizing radiation, which comes from a cellphone, could not possibly be physically damaging because it was so weak. . . .
So the industry understood this could be of enormous consequences, so they did three things. First, they wrote to the university and tried to get the scientists fired for violating the rules of the contract that they were working under at the time. They then wrote to NIH [National Institutes of Health]—and . . .. they accused the scientists of fraud for misusing funds to do the study. Then, when that didn’t work they actually had somebody meet with the journal editors to try to get the article accepted for publication unaccepted.
After those three things didn’t work, they also hired a scientist named Jerry Phillips to try to show they could not replicate their work. Fortunately for history, Phillips was an honest person. He replicated their work and when he insisted on publishing his work both he and Lai effectively stopped working in this field. They were no longer funded to do any more work in the field.
In case all of that wasn’t enough, as the coup de grace, a memo was written from Motorola to its PR firm saying we think we sufficiently “war-gamed” the science. . . .
Where it gets really interesting now is that President Obama just nominated the guy who ran the CTIA [Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association] at the time this was going on to become the head of the Federal Communications Commission. His name is Tom Wheeler. He’s been a huge fundraiser for Democrats and Republicans, more Democrats than Republicans. And under his leadership at the CTIA (which has been written about by [research scientist] George Carlo in his book about this industry) a $27 million joint program was run to study health effects of cellphones. And that study, according George Carlo, was shut down when they started to produce positive results.”
To give your feedback about Wheeler’s appointment, please call your senators:
For California: Senator Barbara Boxer 202-224-3553; Dianne Feinstein 202-224-3841 Other States: Phones numbers can be found here
Did you know that the FCC now considers your outer ear to be an extremity?
On June 4, 2013, the FCC issued a ruling classifying the outer ear (referred to as “pinna”) where people place their mobile (cell and cordless) phones as an extremity, similar to one’s “hands, wrists, feet and ankles.”
“The Commission. . .amends its rules to subject the pinnae to the same RF exposure limit currently applicable to hands, wrists, feet and ankles.”
This reclassification of one of our body parts will officially go into effect, August 15, 2013. The public has 30 days in which to submit comments.
By making this reclassification for your ear (they wrote they relied on the expert opinion of the FDA and the IEEE, an industry trade group), it will allow the outer ear to fall under a more loose (“less stringent”) RF radiation exposure standard from the rest of your head. The FCC says their ruling will not result in increased radiation exposure even though it legally allows the mobile phone industry to expose our ears, which happen to be attached to our heads, to higher levels of radiation.
The outer ear is within centimeters of our brains and necks. RF exposure has led to increased incidence of brain cancer, thyroid and salivary tumors, among others. Recently published studies, for example, show “that long term use of a cell phone increases the risk of developing [an] acoustic neuroma,” which is a non malignant form of cancer. The acoustic nerve runs from the middle ear to the brain and a “neuroma” is a benign tumor. But though an acoustic neuroma is benign, “it’s, [according to a pathologist I interviewed] in a very sensitive location. It’s very difficult to get out. When you have a neuroma in an arm or leg [a real extremity] it is easy to get to. Not with the head. You have to open up the skull. It’s in a very bad location although it’s benign. You can have partial or total hearing loss.”
An article just published in The Telegraph about cell phone dangers also discusses a patient who had an acoustic neuroma and lost hearing in one ear after using a cell phone, which can be read here.
With all of these vulnerable areas cell and cordless phone radiation is zapping, it’s nice to know that the FCC is doing such a thorough job that it is making this distinction between our outer ears and the rest of our heads, but I think it will be the mobile phone industry, rather than our bodies, which will benefit.
Although Dr. Davis is mainly talking about smart phones in this interview, the warnings apply to all mobile phones, including cordless. The cordless phone base also emits an extremely high level of electromagnetic radiation 24/7, whether a person is using the phone or not. It is like bringing a cell tower into your home.
In Counterpunch article, “Another Industry Crony,” writer B. Blake Levitt gives “12 good reasons why the US Senate should reject” President Obama’s nomination of Tom Wheeler to head the FCC. She writes in her article (reason number 4) that “Wheeler would increase radiofrequency radiation exposures” and that “Wheeler, as director of CTIA, oversaw a $25 million research debacle that ended in more – not less – controversy, with virtually no research produced. The project was widely considered in the press to have been a “manufactured doubt” program, intended to contaminate the database with negative studies, prevent clearer understanding and therefore better regulation.” See full article here.
Also, please sign this EMF Safety Network petition to the US Senate urging they reject Wheeler’s nomination.
Last night I attended a CPUC Public Participation Hearing in Costa Mesa regarding San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant which has been off line for the past year because of defective steam generators. It is a rare opportunity to have a CPUC meeting in Orange County. CPUC Commissioner Mike Florio presided, and (with Administrative Law Judge Melanie Darling) sat patiently listening to various speakers.
Even though San Onofre’s been temporarily shut down for safety reasons, the ratepayers are still being charged for a non-existent service. Mindy Spatt, a representative from TURN (The Utility Reform Network) who was also at the meeting, said, “The CPUC allowed Edison to begin charging customers for replacing the old steam generators with the new, defective ones that cost $665 million.”
The main issue for California residents, of course, is safety. The activists who gave public comments said that San Onofre has the worst safety record of all the 104 nuclear plants. They called it a “creaky, leaky, rusty thing.” They talked about a letter that Senator Boxer wrote which said that Edison knew four years ago, before they installed some steam generator tubes, that they were defective. There is also Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE
University at Albany, Rensselaer, New York
A new report by the BioInitiative Working Group 2012 says that evidence for risks to health has substantially increased since 2007 from electromagnetic fields and wireless technologies (radiofrequency radiation). The Report reviews over 1800 new scientific studies. Cell phone users, parents-to-be, young children and pregnant women are at particular risk.
There is a consistent pattern of increased risk for glioma (a malignant brain tumor) and acoustic neuroma with use of mobile and cordless phones” says Lennart Hardell, MD at Orebro University, Sweden. “Epidemiological evidence shows that radiofrequency should be classified as a human carcinogen. The existing FCC/IEE and ICNIRP public safety limits and reference levels are not adequate to protect public health.”
A dozen new studies link cell phone radiation to sperm damage. Even a cell phone in the pocket or on a belt may harm sperm DNA, result in misshapen sperm, and impair fertility in men. Laptop computers with wireless internet connections can damage DNA in sperm. Continue reading
Dr. Blank gives a dynamic, very clear presentation (which is helpful for non science majors) about how electromagnetic fields affect cells and can cause DNA damage. We need our DNA to be healthy our entire lives, he says, not just when we’re of childbearing age. He explains:
“DNA is not an ordinary kind of molecule. It’s the molecule that contains the genetic information that we have to keep us functioning. Most people think it’s only about passing on the information on to future generations. But the DNA is not like we were taught when we were in high school—that the DNA is kept in the nucleus, very secure, locked in and it’s hard to damage, it’s chemically inert. No, that’s not true. This molecule is in business, and it’s constantly doing things because it makes the proteins that are needed for the business of life.”
He also talks about how EMF affects cells:
“so the stress protein is an indication by the cell in its own language that it has come into contact with something that is bad for it–that is potentially harmful and what it’s telling us is that when we know that the cell reacts to EMF in the environment it is telling you that the cell feels it is potentially harmful.The cell has told us. You can do the experiment yourself. It will make stress proteins and it only makes the stress proteins when it is a potentially harmful environment and it makes it with EMF. . . ” (Dr. Martin Blank, Commonwealth Club, 11/18/10)
The California Public Utilities Commission will be holding public hearings in December about the Smart Meter Opt Out Program. This is an opportunity for the public to speak to the administrative law judge about the many proposals the utility companies and their lawyers are making to increase fees which will, in effect, kill the opt out program.
Examples: SoCal Gas wants to charge its customers (who already pay opt out fees to Southern California Edison) an additional opt out fee, which would Continue reading
Stop Smart Meters Irvine 