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Do Your Research
David Goergen, August 10, 2012 | Posted in Public Works
By David Goergen
Interim Assistant Public Works Director
Like many of you, I read the letter to this week’s Sun-Current urging residents to research Edina’s new water meters. I totally agree that you should educate yourself about as many issues and ideas as possible. To quote Faber College’s motto in “Animal House,” “Knowledge is good.”
Where do we find our information? I’m dating myself here (I’m 38), but when I was a kid we were taught how to use the library. I used reference books: atlases, encyclopedias, dictionaries, scientific journals and almanacs. You could depend on the information in those books to be correct. The information and data had been culled from professional academic papers and research, meticulously critiqued by professors and editors. With the internet, I fear those books are collecting dust.
Ahh, the internet! With a couple of quick keystrokes, we are able to find anything we’d like (and a lot of stuff we don’t). Don’t get me wrong, I use Google and Wikipedia on a daily basis. But as we all know, just because it’s on the internet, doesn’t mean it’s true.
Which brings me to the letter in the Sun-Current. The reader states that “microwave radio frequency has been classified as a 2B carcinogen, according to the American Academy of Environmental Medicine.” First, the water meters the City is installing do use radio frequency, but not in the microwave radio frequency. Regardless, since knowledge is good and I’d never heard of the AAEM, I went to their website and found the paper the reader had referenced. I read their report and found the quote attributed to the World Health Organization (WHO). I have heard of them. I then looked up the footnoted article attributed to WHO. However, it was not from WHO, but from a group named the International Agency for Research on Cancer. I’d never heard of them, so I read that article, too. There was no reference in the article to WHO, but at the very end, someone had placed WHO’s logo.
I decided to go to the horse’s mouth and check what WHO had to say about radio frequency. The WHO notes in Fact Sheet 304:
“To date, the only health effect from radio frequency (RF) fields identified in scientific reviews has been related to an increase in body temperature (>1 degree C) from exposure at a very high field intensity found only in certain industrial facilities, such as RF heaters. The levels of RF exposure from base stations and wireless networks are so low that the temperature increase is insignificant and does not affect human health.”
OK, that’s interesting. Radio is regulated by the government, right? I checked into the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). I’d heard of those guys, too — they get mad if a DJ says a bad word on a morning show. Anyway, turns out the FCC has lots of rules. One of their rules states that “the general population exposure limit set by the FCC for the frequency range utilized by meters/radios and other devices such as cordless phones and baby monitors is 0.6 milliwatts per centimeter squared (mW/cm2) at 902 MHz.” The FCC limits have been endorsed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). I’ve heard of them also.
The R900 device the City is installing emits 0.06 mW/cm2 for less than one minute a day in 7 millisecond increments or approximately 10 times lower than the exposure limit set by the FCC.
So, please do your research as the reader urged. I would recommend checking more than the first site that pops up on your search engine, though. It probably wouldn’t hurt to knock some dust off the old Encyclopedia Britannica, either…
If you are interested in some links to regulatory agencies that you’ve heard of, please feel free to visit our website at www.EdinaMN.gov or send me an email at dgoergen@edinamn.gov.
3 Responses to Do Your Research
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The City of Edina
4801 W. 50th St., Edina, MN 55424
mail@EdinaMN.gov 952-927-8861
Dear Dave,
This letter is written in response to your posted blog entry entitled, Do Your Research from August 10, 2012 .
In your rebuttal I feel you dramatically downplayed the risks of the Neptune r9001 water meters to the consumers.
First, these meters do emit radiofrequency radiation or RF. The United States Department of Labor, and many other sources as well, list the microwave range as being from 300 MHz to 300 GHz. The Neptune meter, which emits low level RF in the 902-928MHz range, falls within the microwave range.
To compare these devices to a radio is misleading. A car or home radio is not always “on” and communicating with the radio station; it only picks-up RF waves, so it is not also a transmitter. The Neptune meter is a transmitter and that transmitter makes it more comparable to a cell tower that emits 24/7. The meter is sending out pulses day and night and may be just a few feet away from where you are sleeping; on the wall of your home, and you cannot turn it off
Another item warranting clarification is the your critique of the use of the World Health Organization (WHO) citation. The actual article was published in The Lancet, a respected peer-reviewed journal; and was authored by a working group of 30 scientists from 14 different countries at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France. The IARC is part of the World Health Organization. So that is why their logo is there. This working group of scientists assessed the carcinogenicity of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF). Their work resulted in RF-EMF being classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” Group 2B. (Additionally, The WHO fact sheet 304 you referenced is from 2006. So this is outdated information).
I also feel that representing the safety of the Neptune meter using a “time averaged approach”, as you did in your response, gives the consumer a false sense of security.
Time average is simply that…an average. It does not show the great number of peaks that occur at higher levels than the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) guidelines allow (and notice I said guidelines, the FCC currently has no standards for safety levels of radiofrequency devices and is based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recommendation from 1996).
Therefore, a water meter can emit pulses that far exceed the upper limit, yet when averaged, will appear to comply with it, even far below it. The Neptune emits energy bursts similar to those seen with a strobe light, very intense millisecond pulses, only these pulses are capable of penetrating into the surface of our bodies.
You also misconstrued that the only significant health effect from RF is an increase in body temperature (thermal effect). You stated this occurs only from high frequency industrial facilities. Yes, this effect is well noted in scientific reviews. But since there are no safety standards, just FCC guidelines; and these guidelines only deal with the “thermal effect”, then there is no threshold for safety from the chronic diseases such as cancer, infertility, auto immune issues, etc which occur from long-term, cumulative exposure to radiofrequency radiation. Government regulation, as usual, is a long way behind the science.
Do these meters meet the FCC standards? Yes, because the FCC standard is farcically unprotective and is not even a health standard. Does the smart meter meet Food and Drug Association( FDA) standards? Yes and no depending on how you want to twist the answer, because the FDA has jurisdiction for setting radiation standards for cell phones, cell towers, cordless phones, smart meters, etc and has failed to set any standard. So, the Neptune meters meet FDA standards because FDA has set no standards. The only device that FDA has set standards for is the microwave oven and that standard is ridiculously lax, just good enough to keep you from getting cooked.
In summary, there is plenty of data, (around 10000-15,000 studies), to show the biological effects of low levels of RF. The question for the governmental agencies, and for the city of Edina, is that given that uncertainty, shouldn’t we err on the side of safety and take precautionary measures? Not conclusively proven does not mean safe.
These meters should not be imposed on the citizens and full disclosure of the possible risks should be given to the public.
Sincerely,
Dear Dave,
This letter is written in response to your posted blog entry entitled, Do Your Research from August 10, 2012 .
In your rebuttal I feel you dramatically downplayed the risks of the Neptune r9001 water meters to the consumers.
First, these meters do emit radiofrequency radiation or RF. The United States Department of Labor, and many other sources as well, list the microwave range as being from 300 MHz to 300 GHz. The Neptune meter, which emits low level RF in the 902-928MHz range, falls within the microwave range.
To compare these devices to a radio is misleading. A car or home radio is not always “on” and communicating with the radio station; it only picks-up RF waves, so it is not also a transmitter. The Neptune meter is a transmitter and that transmitter makes it more comparable to a cell tower that emits 24/7. The meter is sending out pulses day and night and may be just a few feet away from where you are sleeping; on the wall of your home, and you cannot turn it off.
Another item warranting clarification is the your critique of the use of the World Health Organization (WHO) citation. The actual article was published in The Lancet, a respected peer-reviewed journal; and was authored by a working group of 30 scientists from 14 different countries at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France. The IARC is part of the World Health Organization. So that is why their logo is there. This working group of scientists assessed the carcinogenicity of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF). Their work resulted in RF-EMF being classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” Group 2B. (Additionally, The WHO fact sheet 304 you referenced is from 2006. So this is outdated information).
I also feel that representing the safety of the Neptune meter using a “time averaged approach”, as you did in your response, gives the consumer a false sense of security.
Time average is simply that…an average. It does not show the great number of peaks that occur at higher levels than the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) guidelines allow (and notice I said guidelines, the FCC currently has no standards for safety levels of radiofrequency devices and is based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recommendation from 1996).
Therefore, a water meter can emit pulses that far exceed the upper limit, yet when averaged, will appear to comply with it, even far below it. The Neptune emits energy bursts similar to those seen with a strobe light, very intense millisecond pulses, only these pulses are capable of penetrating into the surface of our bodies.
You also misconstrued that the only significant health effect from RF is an increase in body temperature (thermal effect). You stated this occurs only from high frequency industrial facilities. Yes, this effect is well noted in scientific reviews. But since there are no safety standards, just FCC guidelines; and these guidelines only deal with the “thermal effect”, then there is no threshold for safety from the chronic diseases such as cancer, infertility, auto immune issues, etc which occur from long-term, cumulative exposure to radiofrequency radiation. Government regulation, as usual, is a long way behind the science.
Do these meters meet the FCC standards? Yes, because the FCC standard is farcically unprotective and is not even a health standard. Does the smart meter meet Food and Drug Association( FDA) standards? Yes and no depending on how you want to twist the answer, because the FDA has jurisdiction for setting radiation standards for cell phones, cell towers, cordless phones, smart meters, etc and has failed to set any standard. So, the Neptune meters meet FDA standards because FDA has set no standards. The only device that FDA has set standards for is the microwave oven and that standard is ridiculously lax, just good enough to keep you from getting cooked.
In summary, there is plenty of data, (around 10000-15,000 studies), to show the biological effects of low levels of RF. The question for the governmental agencies, and for the city of Edina, is that given that uncertainty, shouldn’t we err on the side of safety and take precautionary measures? Not conclusively proven does not mean safe.
These meters should not be imposed on the citizens and full disclosure of the possible risks should be given to the public.
Sincerely,
Erin Angelats
Dave, I have not seen a response to Erin’s rebuttal but I have researched smart meters and there are questions as to their safety, as certain individuals react differently to RF radiation levels. Much of the feedback on their safety is from California where the power company was installing RF electical meters. Maybe one water meter won’t be problematic; who knows? But what if the next thing is to replace our electrical meter with an RF meter and then the gas meter. Before you know it, there are 3 meters in your house that are all emitting RF radiation.
Since the touch pad water meter is an alternative, what is the impact and also what is the cost difference?