There is a recent movement called “Stop Smart Meters”. As technology has been advancing, electromechanical gas and electric meters have been replaced with smart meters on the outside walls of many homes, apartment buildings, condos, and more. The point of this movement is to show awareness of the so-called dangers of the EMF radiation emitted from electric and gas meters.
On the outside walls of apartment buildings and condos, there are usually these large clusters of electric and gas meters. The largeness of these clusters depends on how many apartment units are in each building. Do people who live in apartments and condos experience any health hazards like headaches and cancer from the radiation of these clusters?? Should they be concerned at all? Or is this all just a bunch of pseudoscience?
It’s not even pseudoscience. It’s utter bullshit.
There’s probably more radiation from their TV, computer monitor and electrical wiring that they’re exposed to at much closer range.
Haha, well I’ve got many, many miles of rock and iron shielding me from those evil rays right now in my timezone. Phew, finally the tinfoil hat can come off.
“Radiation” as most people use the term means ionizing radiation. Electromagnetic radiation doesn’t become ionizing until you are part way through the ultraviolet part of the electromagnetic spectrum. High frequency ultraviolet, X-rays, gamma rays, etc. are all ionizing, meaning that they are high enough in frequency to strip the electrons off of atoms and create ions (hence, “ionizing” radiation). Ionizing radiation is what causes cell damage and cancer, and it’s the ionizing ultraviolet part of the spectrum in sunlight that causes most of the fading you see in plastics and such that are left out in the sunlight.
Lower frequency radiation, like visible light, infra-red, and radio waves, is all non-ionizing. If you get enough of it concentrated into a small area you can cook things. That’s how you can use visible light to fry an ant with a magnifying glass, and it’s how a microwave oven works (big radio transmitter with an enclosed box in place of its antenna). At lower power levels, visible light and radio waves are harmless.
The next time someone talks about how dangerous the radiation from smart meters is, point out that if they go outside and look at the meter, their bodies are receiving significantly more damage from the sunlight than they are from the meter. Meters don’t cause skin cancer. Sunlight does. If they don’t believe you, tell them to put a piece of plastic directly on top of the meter, then cover that with something so that the sunlight can’t touch it, then put an identical piece of plastic out where the sunlight will shine on it during the day, then compare the plastics for damage after a month or two has passed.
The smart meters emit exactly the same kind of radiation as cell phones, at similar power. Except they only emit it a few seconds at a time, several times a day, if I remember correctly.
Well also the frequency of the radiation is supposed to be relative to the energy per photon. IR, which you bathe in all the time, is higher frequency than RF. Getting exposed to RF signals in principle is the same as being gently warmed by a weak heater that your body and everything around you is doing much more strongly.
With all that said, there is some empirical evidence that RF causes problems in lab animals. But it’s weak.
And yeah your TV signals and wifi and any smart gadgets and everything else bathe you in tons more RF than a meter outside that sends a burst a few times a day.
The amount of power used for signalling is very small for smartmeters. A small fraction of a watt, like mobile phones and wifi. It is all very small potatoes compared to typical domestic devices the light your home, cook your dinner, keep food cool.
During the daytime we are bathed in radiation from the Sun. All very natural and far, far stronger that a fraction of watt.
That does depend on where your are in the world, but between all the man made high power electromagnetic radiation created by man made devices and natural sources like the Sun, the tiny amount used for communication devices is insignificant.
People tend to conflate health issues with other fears about privacy and anxiety about the man made world in general.
There are a lot of issues to discuss about smart meters, but being harmed by the small amounts of radio they emit is not something to worry about.:dubious:
Pic 3 are just a bunch of “dumb” gas meters. No electricity used at all. No EMF produced.
Pic 2 is not clear if the type of meter. Appears to be same as one in Pic 1.
Pic 1. Two meters, one claimed to be a “smart” meter. Not at all clear just by looking at it if it is. It is digital, rather than analog.
Tons of stuff emit radio waves. In terms of cell phone frequencies the die hard “Cell phones cause brain cancer!” people have had several decades to come up with something convincing and haven’t. At best 1 or 2 “maybe” studies. If they really were so scary that exclamation marks are needed, it would have been proven by now.
Note that the concern is due to holding the phone next to your ear. Something that many cell phone users rarely do anymore.
I doubt seriously that there are people holding their heads next to these “smart” meters for hours a day. So even the “Brain cancer!” people are safe.
One essential part is privacy issues. Smart meters are part of the trend of businesses using tracking through apps, websites and social media to gather increasingly detailed information about us, the consumers, and using this to influence us. This is a valid concern, but can easily lead to nonsense conspiracy beliefs such as “they’ll be able to tell what TV show you’re watching and sell that data to the cable companies”.
This then leads the more conspiracy minded to merge it with another conspiracy theory, that of radio frequency radiation being a grave danger.
To justify fear of this very minor radio source they will then rave about transmission patterns and the businesses lying about how frequently data is being transmitted and at what wattage.
You’re screwed. We’re almost to a “supermoon” that STILL reflects more radiation than a smart meter gives off, so you may as well update your will now.
