Are Fly Sprays Safe?

It’s summer in New Zealand, and although I’ve never had a mosquito problem around my home (camping is another story!), the flies can be annoying. Most of the time, this isn’t a big issue, but when I start cooking—or have the crock pot on all day with a stew or pot roast inside—they always show up.

If you’ve read other articles on this site, you’ll probably guess that I don’t much care for industrial poisons, so the fact I don’t use fly spray in my home won’t surprise anyone. In fact, it concerns me that on tv we’re seeing ads now for automatic fly sprays that send spurts of insecticide into your household air at regular intervals or whenever they detect motion. As if the insects are a greater threat to your health than the toxic chemicals released by these products.

Some years ago, I bought a little sticky flower-shaped bug-killing decal and I put it on the window in the kitchen. It looked and smelled benign enough, and I was curious if it would kill or repel flies. Big flies weren’t bothered by it much, but all summer long, the dead bodies of little flies and other insects gathered in a neat pile below the sticker on the windowsill for me to remove daily. At the end of the summer, I removed the decal and threw it away. For the next three summers—until I moved to another house and so I don’t know what happened after that—little piles of small flies and bugs would continue to accumulate on that corner of the windowsill. Clearly, the residual insecticide from that sticky decal was still killing bugs years after it had been discarded (and the window, of course, cleaned numerous times). Food for thought, isn’t it?

 According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, three quarters of us use commercial pesticides inside our homes, and some 80% of the average person’s exposure to pesticides comes from inside the house[i]. Insecticides, however, are not species-specific. Although insects may be affected more quickly and completely than us humans or our pets—and do note that in the fine print on insecticide cans it says not to use the products in rooms with fish tanks—we are still affected by these toxic chemicals. Common side effects include irritation to eyes, nose, and throat, damage to the central nervous system, kidney damage, and an increased risk of cancer. Some pesticides can also cause headaches, dizziness, muscle twitching, and nausea[ii].

But what about the “natural” plant-based insecticides. Surely they’re safe. Yes? Well, no. Although the folks who make them try hard to convince us they are.

Plant-based insecticides are usually based around Pyrethrin, which comes from feverfew, or Pyrethrum, from chrysanthemums. Permathrin is a synthetic copy of these plant poisons. Like more traditional insecticides, these plant-based compounds can cause (for us humans) sneezing, coughing, wheezing and a runny nose in the short term, and can disrupt the endocrine system in the long term because they mimic estrogen.[iii] They are not recommended in homes where people have asthma or allergies.[iv] They are also carcinogenic, affect the liver and thyroid gland, and basically act as excitatory nerve toxins.[v]

What’s the alternative? Well, a good, old-fashioned fly swatter might not seem very trendy or hygienic, but it does the trick and it won’t affect your liver. I had a Labrador once who loved catching flies. And I’ve known a couple of teenage boys who took great delight in demonstrating their dexterity by catching flies with their bare hands.  If these options aren’t appealing or available to you, you can mix a few drops each of lavender oil and lemongrass essential oil on a soft cloth and wipe your windowsills with it—it smells nice and flies don’t like it. Eucalyptus oil and mint are also natural fly repellents.[vi]

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[i] http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pesticid.html

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] http://www.toxicsinfo.org/pests/Pyrethroids.htm

[iv] http://www.raidautomatic.com.au/faq.html and  http://www.beyondpesticides.org/infoservices/pesticidesandyou/Summer%2005/asthma%20article.pdf

[v] http://www.toxicsinfo.org/pests/Pyrethroids.htm

[vi] http://eartheasy.com/live_natpest_control.htm offers a variety of suggestions for the natural control of a variety of insect pests from flies to ants to cockroaches.

Psychiatric Med Use Continues to Rise

According to Marika Hill’s article in the January 13 Sunday Star Times newspaper[i], prescription numbers for medication to treat depression, anxiety, and insomnia in New Zealand are up by 50% since 2007, with some 800,000 patients being treated. Given our total country population is around 4.4 million, that means roughly 18% of the people in New Zealand were prescribed medication for one or more of these issues last year. 

The most commonly prescribed antidepressant in 2011/12 in New Zealand, according to the article, is citalopram, with lorazepam the top anti-anxiety med, and zopliclone and triazolam[ii] most commonly prescribed for sleep. Although Hill assumes these prescriptions were for diagnosed “mental illness,” I suspect many folks prescribed these drugs would not consider themselves mentally ill, but the drugs themselves are considered psychiatric medications. 

The sad thing is, none of these medications are cures for any condition. At best, they may ease an uncomfortable symptom of distress or dis-ease, most often because of their placebo effect[iii]. But regular users of these drugs often develop dependencies (aka “addiction”) and may suffer a variety of side effects ranging from relatively benign dry mouth[iv] to more dangerous suicidal tendancies.[v]

So if the drugs are barely effective and come with side effects and dependency risks, and we know this, why are prescription rates rising? It really comes down to time and money—and the fact we live in a quick-fix society. As one doctor in Hill’s article observed, “If a GP can give you some Prozac in a 15-minute consultation...it’s a really cheap option. It’s much cheaper than sorting out someone’s marriage. Let’s be honest, mental health treatment is time consuming, and time is money.”[vi]

There’s another side to the money issue as well. Pharmaceuticals are big business. Pharmaceutical companies WANT their customers to continue to need and buy their drugs because that’s good for company profits. They don’t want to cure you, they want to create long-term maintenance users. So they create and sell medications, often funded by government healthcare programs or insurance companies (so you, the consumer, don’t even have to think too much about the cost), that are quick to prescribe, easy to use, and hard to discontinue. It’s the perfect product from a marketing standpoint.

But there’s an even more worrisome side to this story. In 2010, Robert Whitaker published a landmark book called Anatomy of an Epidemic[vii], where he builds a strong case showing how psychiatric prescribing has actually increased the incidence of mental illness and generated long-term debilitation. He builds the case so thoroughly, you couldn’t even call it controversial. In this video, he’s interviewed about the book and his research.

The antidepressant story has been an important one for me personally. Determined to find out the truth about antidepressants, and most especially issues regarding dependency, I went back to university to do a master’s degree in psychology as a “mature student”, and in 2010 published my thesis on antidepressant withdrawal, which concluded “...antidepressants are not an adequate intervention to create positive well-being in patients, and their use comes with a substantial risk of unpleasant side effects, dependency, and the potential for residual post-drug health complications.”[viii] It seems that little has changed since then, other than prescription numbers rising.

Depression, anxiety, and sleeplessness are not diseases in themselves but symptoms of underlying problems. Pills alter brain and body chemistry and create changes, and can sometimes be helpful in acute cases, but they don’t fix the problem. For more on this theme, see my article on anxiety and depression, posted on my website. If you are bothered by stress (which causes anxiety and sleeplessness) or depression—and often these three symptoms come together—a good therapist or coach can help you resolve old issues or change long-standing habitual patterns that no longer serve you, and often it takes less time than you might imagine. You CAN fix the problem rather than mask it, avoiding the risk of dependency and side effects, and it needn't take years (or even months) or cost thousands of dollars, if you WANT to fix it. 

For more information on psychiatric drugs and alternative ways to understand and resolve mental dis-ease (as in, lack of ease) see my new book Reframing Mental Illness.

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[i] http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/8168147/Kiwis-popping-pills-at-alarming-rates is the on-line version of the article. The print version was similar but not the same.

[ii] If you are taking any of these drugs, or thinking about doing so, I recommend you do a google search and read up about them from several sites. You’ll find information provided by pharmaceutical companies, doctors, and user forums. Keep in mind that pharmaceutical companies want you to buy the product, most doctors have no experience using the product, and forum posters have experience with using the drug.

[iii] Kirsch and colleagues found 80% of response to antidepressant medication was duplicated in placebo arms of clinical trials. See http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/pre/5/1/23a/ and similar papers.

[iv] Not necessarily so benign, if the drugs are taken over a long period of time. Ask any dentist what happens to patients’ teeth with long-term use of drugs that cause “dry mouth”.

[v] This seems to be a fairly concise assessment of value vs. risk: http://www.helpguide.org/mental/anxiety_medication_drugs_treatment.htm

[vi] Psychiatrist Dr Siale Foliaki, quoted in Hill’s article, http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/8168147/Kiwis-popping-pills-at-alarming-rates

[vii] Link to the book and reviews at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Epidemic-Bullets-Psychiatric-Astonishing/dp/0307452425/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358566128&sr=8-1&keywords=Anatomy+of+an+Epidemic  A really worthwhile, paradigm-shifting read.

[viii] http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/handle/10063/1501

The Memory of Water

Water is pretty interesting stuff.  It’s made up of two gas molecules that, when combined, become a liquid. When “condensed” into a crystalline solid, it takes up more space than it does as a liquid. Our bodies are made up of something like 70% water. And some folks reckon water is able to encode a sort of “memory”.

I’m currently reading Lynne McTaggert’s book The Field—a landmark book, by the way—and have just finished Chapter 4 in which she talks about how water seems to have the unexpected and remarkable property of “remembering.”  She tells the extraordinary story of Frenchman Jacques Benveniste and his team and their discovery that even when allergy antibodies were diluted down in water to solutions ranging from 1 x 10² up to 1 x 10³⁶, so dilute that no molecules of the antibodies were likely to be in the water at all, the subsequent product still produced positive reactions.  The conclusion that Benveniste and his team came to is that the water must somehow retain a sort of “memory” of the active substance.

His research was published in the science journal Nature in 1988[i] and—no surprises here, given it wildly defies conventional belief—was rubbished within days, putting the good name of the journal under question. Nature sent in a team to their laboratory to—in Benveniste’s words—prove the work fraudulent. On the 3-man team: fraud-buster Walter Stuart, magician and paranormal skeptic James Randi, and the then-editor of Nature John Maddox.  Not, it is interesting to note, any other researchers. It’s an extraordinary story, worthy of Hollywood.

Here’s a 10-minute clip of Benveniste talking about his experiments and the subsesquent Nature investigation.

Although they continue to be debunked by orthodox science and medicine, homeopathic treatments—which use curing agents diluted down to these sorts of nothing-left-of-the-active-agent doses—have been used for about two centuries as an alternative to orthodox medicine and continue to be popular with many people. 

A few years after the Nature debacle, inspired by magician James Randi’s offer of a million dollars to anyone who could prove that homeopathy works, the BBC program Horizon took on the challenge of replicating Benveniste’s results and establishing scientific credibility for the concept of memory in water.  Here’s the excellent documentary they made, which explains pretty clearly what homeopathy is and how it works, documents their experiment, and reveals their results.

SPOILER AHEAD:  Although their scientific team was unable to score the million dollars, the puzzle of why water titrated down to the point it likely has no molecules of the active substance left  yet still seems to have an active effect on the recipient remains. Some scientists put it down to the placebo effect, but that doesn’t account for its popularity and apparent success with veterinarians, farmers, and pet owners. Cows, after all, can’t logically be affected by placebos.

In spite of two trial “failures”, I think the jury is still out on homeopathy. Perhaps the double blind trials where the technicians’ lack of awareness of which water samples had come from the homeopathic origins and which were of just distilled water made a difference. If consciousness affects results—the idea that the observer cannot help but affect the results is a well-accepted principle of quantum physics—then perhaps simply “knowing” that an active substance has been in contact with the water does the trick. Or perhaps, as McTaggart hints at in her book and based on Benveniste’s later studies, there was someone associated with the research that “scrambled” the memory signals through personal electromagnetic radiation. Randi, for example, was associated with both of the double blind studies that failed to produce significant results.

Leaving that story aside, you may have heard of Masaru Emoto, the Japanese researcher who photographed water crystals and observed that water from different places crystallized into different forms.  Further experiments showed that crystals formed in the presence of music varied with the music, and that even words could alter the form the crystals would take: words of peace and affirmation produced “beautiful” crystals, while words of anger and hatred produced deformed crystals. He believes that “damaged” water can be “healed” with prayer and meditation. For a quick summary of Emoto’s work and a selection of his water crystal photos, click here. It follows on from his work that if music, words, thoughts, and intentions can influence water’s coherence, then the implications for us as humans—with our random mishmash of uncontrolled emotions—is that we have not only may have the power to heal, but are capable of inadvertent harm. Remember, something like 70% of each of us is water.

I’d like to end this blog entry with another youtube find regarding water and memory. This one is just a couple of minutes long, and provides more food for thought on water, whether water has “memory”, and how our quantum universe might be working.

And a last thought, on a purely biological level:  If water is so sensitive to substances, and if the stuff that goes into water “imprints” itself, what sort of messy water are we creating with our effluent?

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[i] http://bioresonans.ru/downloads/nature333-30-1988.pdf

Are We at the Tipping Point with Health Care?

Not so very long ago, it was simply assumed that your doctor knew even better than you did what is best for your health, that pills and surgery were the best option to fix your medical problems, and that anything approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was government approved and therefore obviously safe for people to consume. Now these old assumptions are coming under closer scrutiny, and more often than not, they come up wanting. What’s going on?

For a really good summary of many facets of this issue, take a look at the excellent documentary film Doctored, written and directed by Bobby Sheehan and released this year. The trailer:

At the moment, Dr Mercola is offering a free link to the entire film here. Although ostensibly about the conflict between chiropractic and orthodox (i.e., go see your properly-trained medical doctor, not some quack) health care, the film really profiles the battle between the medical behemoth that has become the leading industry in the world (if you include as part of that package pharmaceuticals, primary care, medical insurance, etc.) and “alternative” health care practitioners in general. It’s a modern David and Goliath story.

Our modern world is driven by economics, and most orthodox medicine today is underlined by monetary motives. Basic marketing means identifying/finding/creating your markets and customers, creating products, and selling as much of your product as you possibly can to as many people as possible for the highest possible price and for as long as possible. It’s easy to see how this model is used, for example, in the pharmaceutical industry. Drug companies create a condition and a market, offer a potion to “treat” that condition, charge as much as they can for the drugs (and by running that through a third party, your insurer, they know you won’t be counting your pennies to see if you can afford it or looking elsewhere for a better deal). Then they encourage doctors to have their patients stay on the treatment for as long as possible, ideally indefinitely (think hypertension drugs, statins, anti-depressants). In short, there’s little in the way of “cure” offered by drug companies for chronic conditions, just ongoing maintenance at an ongoing cost, which is really good for business. Sweet as.

One of the hottest cash cows at the moment is the vaccine industry. In spite of numerous studies suggesting that flu vaccines, for example, are of little real value and come with some [small] risk of complications[i], if manufacturers can convince large segments of the population (and their governments and insurance companies) that they really need to get a yearly jab, it keeps the money flowing in. The HPV vaccine (Gardisil) is another one, being pushed hard onto the rapidly-expanding youth market—mostly aimed at girls, but now boys as well—in spite of growing concerns about its safety[ii].

Crossing my desk this morning is an article that typifies the pharmaceutical company money-gouging case in point: When physicians at the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York stood up and said “no” to paying over US$11,000/month for the new cancer drug Zaltrap, pharmaceutical company Sanofi offered to cut the price by half. See the story here.

It’s easy to become cynical.  It’s not that orthodox medicine doesn’t have a place. For emergency treatment and acute conditions, it usually offers the most effective treatment option by far. But for long-term, chronic conditions where the best orthodox medicine can offer is “I don’t know, try this” or “let’s increase your meds and see if that helps,” then alternative medicine offers other avenues of treatment that are often not only significantly more effective and less harmful than vague druggery, but sometimes offer surprisingly outright cures.

Most alternative health modalities are “natural” approaches to health that don’t involve the ingestion of unnatural chemicals or invasive cutting of tissues, so they are less likely to have a downside than orthodox medical care. They are based on the concept that good health is natural, provided we take proper care of our bodies, and that illness is a sign that something (physically, energetically, emotionally, sometimes spiritually) is out of balance. Approaches to achieving that balance vary, of course, with the practitioner. A chiropractor, for example, is likely to focus on spinal alignment, alleviating everything from chronic back pain to frozen shoulder, and sometimes conditions such as chronic fatigue and MS, without the use of drugs (see the aforementioned film Doctored). Other alternative health practitioners may specialise in body energy work, or assist with lifestyle changes, or facilitate the resolution of troubling emotional or spiritual issues. All things are connected. See my reviews of The Living Matrix and The Cure Is..., two other recent documentary films that examine a variety of alternative approaches to health and the new science that backs them up. (Doctored also looks at a great deal more than just chiropractic, including an excellent segment on the extraordinary alternative cancer treatment offered by Stanislaw Burzynski[iii].)

Ultimately, it falls on each of us individually to take responsibility for our own healthcare. If you seek treatment for a chronic condition from anyone, orthodox or not, I believe it is worthwhile to keep an open mind and do your own research so you can make intelligent decisions about your own health rather than delegating that responsibility to others and letting them make those decisions for you.

Times, they are a’changin. More and more people are beginning to recognize that much of orthodox health care is based more on an underlying fiscal foundation than it is on a genuine desire to improve our health and well-being; that the FDA  don’t always have our best interests at heart (not only re: pharmaceuticals but also GMOs); and that throwing more money at the problem or taking more pills isn’t the ideal route to better health care. At one point in Doctored, the observation is made that starting with a non-invasive natural therapy to relieve dis-ease rather than relegating it to a "last resort" option when all else has failed seems reasonable. 

Whether we have reached a tipping point yet remains to be seen, but I think we are on the edge—to use another cliché—of a healthcare watershed.

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[i] See my previous articles Flu Shots—Are They Worth it? and Why We Believe theHype About Flu Shots.

[ii] I haven’t done a bog entry on Gardisil, but here’s a starter if you’re interested in that theme: medical professionals in Spain are calling for a moratorium on the vaccine, and several deaths have been linked to the drug, caused by fatal auto-immune responses.  Read more here.

[iii] And if you are interested in the extraordinary Burzynski story, see the documentary film on him and the battle to have his antineoplastin treatment "officially" accepted here.

The Cure Is... Documentary (A Review)

Last month I posted a review of the film The Living Matrix. This month a similar documentary film, The Cure Is..., created by first-time filmmaker David Scharps, is being released. Here’s the trailer: 

In this post I summarize some of the key concepts presented in the film and share my thoughts.

Much of modern medical treatment is based on “majority use.” That is, what works for the majority of people becomes the standard, accepted treatment for the dis-ease[i]. People who experience seemingly miraculous recoveries are often overlooked as models for what could be because their recoveries defy rational, medical explanation. In this film, several individuals who experienced miraculous recoveries far beyond anything modern medicine could even posit as a possibility share what worked for them.

Interspersed with these personal stories, several prominent authors, doctors, and scientists—most notably Bruce Lipton, Gregg Braden, Bernie Siegel, Maryanne Williamson, and Joel Fuhrman--explore a variety of ways dis-ease can manifest and how health can be restored. The role of the subconscious (think “habit mind, belief mind, auto-response mind”) is important because a person’s thoughts, beliefs and habits affect the neuro-chemicals that flood the body’s cells and impact upon the health of that individual. The power of love and forgiveness and their roles in creating health (and how anger and resentment damage health) are also explored. And last—but certainly not least—we are reminded that a healthy diet (emphasis on chemical-free vegetables and fruit), regular exercise, and meditation are important for your body’s health.

Waiting to get seriously ill before implementing these helpful changes in your life is like waiting for the horses to bolt before shutting the gate. It’s not that serious illness cannot be helped by changing the things in your life that are hurting you, but if those changes are made before disease sets in, you may not need to battle with disease at all.

Thomas A. Edison once said, “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.” It has taken a long time for Edison’s prediction to come true, and that time is not yet here, but slowly, slowly, we are coming to realise that we are personally responsible for the care of our minds and bodies, and that there is much we can do ourselves to enhance and even restore our health and well-being.

Dis-ease rarely comes totally out of the blue. It’s usually a product created by one’s life choices, beliefs, habits, awareness, and environment. Sometimes genetics has a role. Many are yet to accept that one’s thoughts and perceptions can cause illness but the idea is catching on, and that idea is explored convincingly here. This documentary is less profound than the trailer might lead one to believe, but it seems to me the advice is very sound, and the film presents a coherent explanation of an emerging—and I think empoweringly important—paradigm in health.

If you'd like to watch The Cure Is.., here's the website. 

If you found this article of interest, check out

my review of the documentary film The Living Matrix
my post Are We on the Tipping Point of Healthcare? with a review of the film Doctored.

my review of Bruce Lipton’s book The Biology of Belief

my review of Gregg Braden’s’ book The Spontaneous Healing ofBelief

my tribute to the anti-cancer man Dr David Servan-Schreiber

Also, at my mindwork website you’ll find several articles on how emotional blocks that may have hampered you for years, impacting your health, can be resolved.

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[i]  I’ve taken to writing the word “disease” broken down into its two components because I think this better explains what dis-ease is—a lack of ease. I think it’s too easy to get caught in the trap of thinking that a “disease” is a thing, rather than a state of being.

Genetically Modified Animal Feeds Used in New Zealand

Although New Zealand presents itself to the world as basically GM-Free (see my earlier post Genetic Modification (GM) in NewZealand), and progressive enough to label the GM content of foods, unidentified genetically modified foods continue to subversively infiltrate into our food chain. 

Sandra Finnie’s recent article in Straight Furrow highlights the use of imported GM feed in supplements used by dairy farmers to encourage peak milk production. Although Federated Farmers chairman Willy Leferink refused to comment on how much stock feed is actually imported, citing that information as “commercially sensitive”, recent large shipments of GM cottonseed meal and soybean meal—at least 100,000 tonnes of the latter annually, according to the article—suggest this is a common and significant practice.

In a response to that article, genetics professor Jack Heinemann of Canterbury University points out that when it came to the public attention that GM feeds were used for chicken production by New Zealand’s Ingham foods in 2009, the Commerce Commission ruled that animals feed on a GM diet are different from those raise on non-GM feed. In the UK and much of Europe, only non-GM feed can be used for animals (meat, fish) and animal products (milk, cheese, eggs) destined and identified  for retail sale as non-GM. New Zealand, it seems to me, risks alienating key overseas markets if our animal and animal product foods cannot be truly claimed as GM-free.

Regarding the Ingham chicken story, it seems the Commerce Commission wasn’t concerned about the use of GM-soy and corn in the chicken feed, just about the labelling of these chickens in the marketplace as GM-free. If you buy your chicken at a local NZ supermarket today, you’re likely to see labels claiming it is “hormone free” and “no artificial colours, flavours, or preservatives” and sometimes  “no antibiotics” and even “free range,” but you have to go to “organic” chicken to find chicken that you can be pretty sure has not been fed ANY GM-corn or soy.

Given that GM-feeds are used in New Zealand’s dairy industry and poultry industry, I got to wondering about New Zealand salmon industry. On the NZ Ministry for Primary Industries aquaculture website, we are told that NZ farmed salmon are fed “an artificial diet, high in protein and fat...with vitamins and minerals added”. They go on to say that NZ salmon are not given “antibiotics, vaccines steroids, or other growth enhancers.” They do not say exactly what they DO feed salmon (animal, vegetable, or mineral?) or anything about GM feeds, and I’d consider that omission ominously significant.

I recently posted an article on the GM/Roundup study done in France which found aggressive and abnormal tumour growth in rats fed even a small portion of GM corn, GM corn that had been sprayed with Roundup (which is why it is genetically modified in the first place, so they can spray the crop and kill the weeds without killing the food plant), or were given low to moderate levels of Roundup in their drinking water. Most chickens and dairy cows aren’t allowed to live out a normal lifespan, so disease caused by a partial GM diet might not be so evident, but that doesn’t mean the animals aren’t sick. 

We know that milk reflects not only the food consumed by the person or animal producing it (see my article on toxic breast milk) but also its environment. I don’t know if anyone has done a study on the GM-safety of milk produced by cows that consume GM feed, and I doubt any agri-chemical or agricultural company wants to fund one any time soon, but I’d be surprised if GM-fed dairy cows produce a truly “safe” product. And I don’t really fancy eating chicken or fish that’s been fed GM foods either.

New Zealand certainly isn’t GM-free, it’s just that we don’t produce GM field crops. On a final note on a GM and farming-in-New Zealand theme, I surely must mention Daisy the calf, born earlier this year in New Zealand. She has raised a bit of a storm because she is genetically modified (and cloned) to produce milk without the BLG protein that causes allergic reactions in some people. She also—inexplicably—doesn’t have a tail.

[Added October, 2014: Please see my latest post Cows, Swedes and Dodgy Seeds.) 

Smart Meters may not be so Smart

Last week my local electric company, Contact, came and installed a smart meter to replace the old traditional electricity meter that hung on the outside of my house. At a glance, it doesn’t look all that different, just an electronic digital readout instead of the old turning wheel and mechanical digital numbers.

About that same time, I started to experience the same fizzy, fuzzy discomfort and stuffy-ear feeling that I experienced when I [briefly!] installed a wireless modem. (For that story, see here—my wireless-internet-at-home experience didn’t last but a day because I couldn’t stand it!) At first I wondered if there was something playing up with my wired internet connection. And then this morning I realised that my discomfort began about the same time we got the smart meter. And I wondered what was going on. So I hit the net.

A smart meter allows your electric company to monitor your electric usage without visiting your house, which saves them money and ensures your readings are always accurate. To do this, a wifi message is broadcast to the company about your electricity usage from your meter at regular intervals during the day. The way I understand it, your smart meter is basically acting like a wifi transmitter that is on all the time.

While industry may be excited about this new technology and trying hard to put a positive spin on it for consumers, home owners should be worried. Yes, we live in an increasingly wireless world. No, you are not holding your smart meter to your ear like you do your cell phone, and you’re probably not sitting next to it either, but it is yet another device in our homes that is broadcasting electromagnetic energy into our bodies.

A Swedish study mentioned in the following you tube lecture by engineer Bob States found that some 3% of the population is severely affected by electromagnetic radiation (electro-hyper-sensitive) and another estimated 30% shows some sensitivity. In this video, States gives a presentation to the Tesla Foundation in San Francisco, and although the video makes for fairly “dry” viewing, even if you don’t watch it all, States’ explanation and discussion of the slide that he puts up at 13:35 (minutes) and continuing on into the next slide in the video is sobering and worth watching.

The roll out of smart meters seems to be a fait accompli in many parts of the world, including here in Lower Hutt. Supporting the industry in New Zealand, Canterbury University have declared smart meters “safe”, with spokesperson Bill Heffernan saying “It is much more likely that we would spend an hour a day talking on the mobile phone or working within one meter of our wireless router,”[i] suggesting, I guess, either that those are also “safe” but controversial activities, or that doing more of the same won’t have a cumulative effect.  On the other hand, California radiation expert Daniel Hirsch informs us that “one smart meter can provide up to the full body radiation exposure of 160 cell phones”. Read his report here and check out his chart of comparative devices below.

The impact on those of us who are sensitive to electromagnetic radiation is distressing. I can choose to not have a wifi modem in my house, and I can choose to only use my mobile phone occasionally and briefly (the old-fashioned phone on my desk has a cord and attaches to the wall), but I suspect I cannot choose to not have a smart meter, even if it bothers me. I have just emailed Contact and will report their response in the comments box when it comes.

As Joseph Heller once said, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” Food for thought.

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[i] http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-mail/6945255/Smart-meters-safe-University Ahem, I don’t do either.