Login / RegisterLangley resident sick of smart meters
Since the installation of smart meters at her subsidized-housing complex, a 57-year-old former realtor says her health has been so compromised that she’s using a wheelchair. As well, her cat is dying.
“I know for certain now [the additional radio-frequency emissions are responsible], because my cat has gone way downhill in the last six months,” Kathryn Hutchinson told the Straight by phone from her ground-level apartment at Centennial Manor in Langley. “He’s actually gone blind now. It’s really having a big effect on him. I don’t know if I’m going to make it or not. This might kill me. But boy, it [the story] has to get out.”
Hutchinson confirmed that she was hypersensitive to radio frequencies prior to the meters’ installation but said she has never felt as bad as she currently does.
“I am the first apartment next to the meter [bank],” Hutchinson, a widow and mother of two grown daughters, added. “There might be a three-foot hallway in between or whatever, but I am as close as you can get. When I’m sitting at my computer, that would be the closest.”
Jeanette Dagenais, administrator with the Langley Lions Senior Citizens Housing Society, confirmed to the Straight by phone that B.C. Hydro’s private contractor, Corix, installed a meter bank containing 12 smart meters about four metres from the front door of Hutchinson’s suite last November. The rest are on the second floor of the 36-suite building the society administers, Dagenais said.
Hutchinson said she went on permanent disability in 1997, due to multiple symptoms including sciatica, nerve damage, muscle weakness, and what she believes is a sensitivity to electromagnetic frequencies. Her MLA, B.C. Liberal Mary Polak, told the Straight by phone that she is familiar with Hutchinson’s situation.
“What concerns me is when we can’t find a resolution for someone,” Polak said. “I understand that she finds this very upsetting and also that, for her, she believes that she’s experiencing physical challenges as a result. I know we haven’t been able to find a resolution that satisfies her.”
Both Dagenais and her colleague Linda Watson said they would look into transferring Hutchinson to another suite. “We quite often do that with our residents if they do have issues or problems like that,” Watson told the Straight. “This is kind of a new one for us, though.”
According to Citizens for Safe Technology founder Una St. Clair, if Hutchinson stays put, the parts of the suite closest to the meters should be coated with special paint that blocks radiation.
St. Clair, who describes herself as electrohypersensitive, said she recognized “the common dizziness, the nausea, the migraines every day, the shaking, the upset digestive system” that Hutchinson described to her.
When told about Hutchinson’s case, B.C. Hydro’s smart-meter spokesperson, Cindy Verschoor, insisted: “The meters have been confirmed safe by the provincial, the federal, and the international health authorities, and they’ve been independently tested and verified.
“In fact, we’ve just done another study on a bank of 40 meters in a high-density residential complex in Victoria,” she reported.
Verschoor said the upcoming report should be available on B.C. Hydro's website this week.
I am totally against these devices, but for other reasons. Privacy and cost.
Reality: the pulsed radiation of Smart meters was INCLUDED in the category of 2b carcinogens by the WHO.
She should also notify the American Academy of Environmental Medicine telling the many doctors and medical researchers, that their understanding of biology is wrong, because only BC Hydro knows best!
Reality: The American Academy of Environmental Medicine recently re-issued their warnings of smart meter radiation!
Ms. Verschoor, even the Austrian Medical Association has recently also stepped in with warnings!
Do we really have to wait around until we are all irradiated against our will, and as a result suffer permanent biological damage, just like Kathryne Hutchinson and her little cat?
The website of Citizens for Safe Technology gives excellent info regarding these hideous meters and instructions on what to do. Just say NO!
P.S. I am also electronically sensitive and it is ruining my life. I would love to go back to work but since our world has become so irradiated, I am very limited in what I can do. And yes, I do wear a protective hat.
Pippatch: The smart meters are radiating NOW, the only thing not working is the grid network that will cover all communities with a blanket of biologically harmful radiation.
The company installing these meters got a lovely contract from their "friend" gordo.
This insane line about, its enviornmental is "bulltweet". The enviornment was more harmed by the production & use of gas to install them. The old meters were just fine. They also provided 400 jobs which now will be gone. Nice going there liebeals.
If people were truly interested in their enviornment & their personal impact on it they would stop purchasing new cell phones, t.v., electronic equipment everytime something new hit the market. They would keep their cars for 10 yrs. & mantain them. People would keep their appliances until they were worn out & not keep having granite counter tops installed. they have to take that granite out of the earth & it destroyes a lot of land & wastes a lot of energy getting it.
Being enviornmental is hard work. it is so much easier to just babble a few words & feel good. In the meantime plse pass me a plastic bag.
That means there could be up to 11 wireless networks and cordless phones all running on the same 2.4GHz band in her apartment block running continuously 24 hours a day. Yet it is the smart meters specifically that is causing her illness, not the continual numerous wireless radii around her.
Cats get cataracts, people get sick, often very quickly. Smart meters aren't going to kill you any more than the WiFi networks and cordless phones, you ninnies.
This is why RussiaToday is more credible than the Georgia Straight.
I birthed this condition by exploiting the relevant facts written in Mr. Burrows's most interesting story here about a 57 year old ex-realtor living on disability for over 10 years with numerous pre-existing health conditions on a 1st floor suite that's next to a utility room in a Langley social housing complex along with her blind cat of undetermined age where a Seniors Administrator, her said colleague, a Citizen Safety Founder, The Loco MLA and even the BC Hydro spokesbabe all chime in about how Smartmeters are disturbing the ether.
You should all be ashamed!
Hypochondria is a helluva drug. And no, I'm not being insensitive; just realistic. There is no mechanism by which RF can cause the symptoms she claims—none. This sort of reporting is just irresponsible fear-mongering masquerading as journalism. It's a disgrace, not a service.
http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/994377/toronto-hospital-is-first-to-reco...
Also last week, a smart meter burnt down two homes, three vehicles, and displaced a widowed mother and her children. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9TcTIqipPw
There is nothing good about these rotten things.
Typically, there is the 900 mhz signal used for 2-way communication between the home and the utility. All these have been activated throughout neighborhoods using the Smart Meter and other relay devices.
The second is a 2.4 Ghz signal that is forced into the home to create a Home Area Network (HAN) similar to wifi and will be the basis of communications between the Smart Meter and the Zigbee chipped appliances and devices. In Southern California, where I am from, this radiofrequency has not yet been turned on, but is in test mode in some areas.
Many people are experiencing interference with medical devices (pacemakers), recording equipment, security systems, wifi, and other electrical devices inside their homes.
Many people are experiencing a decline in health since the Smart Meter was installed. Low level microwave radiation causes heart palpitations, "headache, fatigue, perspiring, dizziness, menstrual disorders, irritability, agitation, tension, drowsiness, sleeplessness, depression, anxiety, forgetfulness, and lack of concentration." These effects are well documented in US Defense Intelligence Agency, DST-1810-074-76, March 1976
http://www.bccdc.ca/NR/rdonlyres/43EF885D-8211-4BCF-8FA9-0B34076CE364/0/...
That is the BC CDC report on the smart meters. It makes no judgement on the issue, just a result of their tests. The power output comparisons were made between a baby monitor, a cell phone, a microwave. Comparable devices operating within the same frequency ranges.
Maureen mentioned 900Mhz and 2.4Ghz but i couldn't find those specific references to the 2.4Ghz (the CDC report tested 902-928Mhz). Regardless, those frequencies are constantly used all around us.
900Mhz is a common GSM cellular band, available on all bi- and tri-mode phones
2.4Ghz is an open frequency used by wireless home phones, wireless internet, etc etc.
These radio frequencies are used very heavily all around us. Have been for decades. If something is affecting both the woman and the cat, they should look for the real culprit. 1watt pulses added to an already saturated spectrum is not the answer, but the anti-Smart meter crowd would certainly love you to believe so. If only people were as motivated to fight ignorance as zealously as they fight these meters...
Corban, many people know that exposure to RF frequencies affect them so they do all they can to avoid them. They have moved to places far from cell transmitters and public Wifi, don't have cell phones or cordless phones. Then Hydro comes along and puts a mini-cell transmitter on their homes. The estimate is that 2-6% of the populations is severely sensitive and do avoid RF, often having to change the way they live. Sadly, scientists are warning that this percentage will increase thanks to this additional layer of radiation. These people are the canaries in the mine and we should pay attention to them.
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