What if the U.S. government or some other powerful group had some secret program that was sending invisible electromagnetic waves directly into people´s homes which penetrated human bodies and caused genetic damage and increased the risk of cancer and neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s. Sounds like a good thriller or horror movie doesn´t it ? There are a growing number of people, including scientists, who believe this is actually happening with the so-called “smart meters” relating to electricity and water usage that are being installed throughout the country.
The “smart” electric meters send “EMFs” (or electromagnetic fields), which are waves of energy, into your home as they “read” your electricity usage and send those readings via wireless signals to electric company headquarters. These EMFs not only come into your house but penetrate human bodies. You know how when you get an x-ray at a dentist´s office they will put a lead apron on you to block the rays from entering your body. If you want to protect yourself from the smart meters you may have to wear one at home all the time !
Smart meters have been the apparent cause of unusual and severe forms of insomnia, headaches, tinnitus, and heart arrhythmia in thousands of people. The meters have been classified by the World health Organization as a potential class 2B carcinogen. The physicians at the American Academy of Environmental Medicine have issued an “immediate caution on Smart Meter installations due to potentially harmful radio-frequency exposure” and have requested “further independent research regarding the quantum effects of electromagnetic fields and radio-frequency on human health.” 190 scientists from 39 countries around the world have made an appeal to the United Nations to create safety limits for utility meters as well as for cell phones, cell phone towers, and other wireless technologies. (For articles on research showing hazardous effects of smart meters, you can go to www.conradbiologic.com/articles.html)
The town of Silver City has already installed smart water meters for most homes in Silver City. There was almost no opportunity for the public to learn about this ahead of time or influence the decision to install them. Smart water meters may be less of a threat than smart electricity meters which emit thirty times greater emfs into you and your home than smart water meters. The federal Public Regulation Commission is pressuring PNM of New Mexico to begin installing smart electricity meters throughout the state.
Several people have contacted me in my professional role as a lawyer to ask if there was some way to legally block smart meters from being installed on their homes. (I know of at least one Silver City resident who has simply stopped using city water in order to have his smart meter turned off.) The law of trespass seems relevant. Trespass is not only walking on someone else´s property. If you, for example, send water or cattle onto another´s property that is a trespass.
However, courts have said trespass must involve an entry onto someone´s property which is tangible. In cases, for example, where a pig farm is sued for sending noxious odors onto another´s property, courts have declined to call it a trespass. While the law does allow for a claim for “intangible trespass” which is called nuisance, nuisance is generally considered a less serious sort of wrong than trespass. Some courts have ruled that emfs are not a trespass, but a nuisance.
It seems to me that if someone is sending electromagnetic frequencies into my home that penetrate my body and effects my genes or increase the risk of cancer, that is just about as serious a trespass as you can get. The distinction between tangible and intangible becomes rather meaningless when applied to electro-magnetic frequencies. Here is one of the statutory sections in New Mexico regarding trespass:
“Any person who enters upon the lands of another without prior permission and injures, damages or destroys any part of the realty or its improvements, including buildings, structures, trees, shrubs or other natural features, is guilty of a misdemeanor, and he shall be liable to the owner….. for civil damages….”
How about if the entry damages my body itself ? My reading of some caselaw from around the country reveals that judges have been reluctant to give much help to persons suing for injuries from EMFs. Most of these cases involve cell towers and electric power lines not smart meters, which are a relatively new phenomenon, often being installed right on the wall of your home, and have a more severe impact on the human body.The way courts have decided EMF cases may also reflect the fact that most of the research on the physical effects of exposure to EMFs and smart meters have been funded and controlled by the industries that are marketing and deploying them. It also may be just the tendency toward denial of unseen dangers. When plutonium was originally being used, there was little acknowledgment or discussion of its deadly effects.
My conclusion is that the way to stop smart meters is political pressure. I have heard that some regular PNM employees, even while their bosses are publicly making statements about the safety of smart meters, have told people protesting smart meters that they were not in favor of the smart electrical meters. And PNM itself, in its request to the Public Regulations Commissions, has stated that it will back down from its bid to install smart electric meters in New Mexico, if there is enough of a public outcry. They have also said you can opt out from getting a smart meter, but you have to pay an initial fee and $47 a month to have someone come out and read your meter !
Smart meters are not smart and should be stopped before they are already installed and no one wants to admit the huge cost of replacing the current meters was a big mistake. For information on how to stop them, you can write to the Citizen Alliance for Utility Safety (CAUS) at smartmeterfreesilvercity@gmail.com, or you can go to smartmeterfreesilvercity.org.
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