San Anselmo votes to ban smart meters in town
In a surprising turn of events, the San Anselmo Town Council voted last night to “demand” a moratorium on the installation of PG&E’s Smart Meters in town. The town also voted to begin drafting an ordinance that would place a temporary moratorium on the meters for one year.

[Citizens cheer as the San Anselmo City Council
takes a stand on ‘SmartMeters’ after presentations by

EON’s Mary Beth Brangan
and Fairfax Councilman Larry Bragman.]

Sebastopol urged to ban SmartMeters
More than a dozen people urged the Sebastopol City Council Tuesday to ban SmartMeters, which they contend may be unsafe, even if there are doubts of what jurisdiction the city has.

Data proves smart meter scheme costing everyone more
Queen’s Park – Andrea Horwath, Leader of Ontario’s New Democrats, says data from Toronto Hydro confirms that Dalton McGuinty’s so-called smart meters have raised rates for 80 per cent of consumers and aren’t producing any conservation gains for Ontario.
…“Dalton McGuinty’s so-called smart meters make eHealth look like a bargain. For a billion and half dollars we have a scheme that leaves 80 per cent of people paying higher rates without shifting usage patterns,” said Horwath. “There’s nothing smart about Dalton McGuinty’s smart meters when it’s hiking people’s hydro bills.”
A Toronto Hydro study looked at ten thousand households in Toronto that have been billed using so-called smart meters since 2009. The study confirmed that after a year of operation:
• On average 80 percent of households have been paying higher rates than before smart meters were installed and there has been little if any shift in household energy consumption.
• In one billing period – from June to September, 2009 – ninety-two per cent of households paid more.
• On average, households seeing an increase were paying anywhere from 2 to 7 per cent more.
• These increases are separate from the added cost to households for the cost of the smart meter itself. Across Ontario, consumers will be paying $1.25 – $4.45 a month for decades to recover these costs.
“The McGuinty Liberals have spent billions on a scheme that leaves people paying more and leaves Ontario falling behind in our conservation goals,” said Horwath.

Feds’ Smart Grid Race Leaves Cybersecurity in the Dust
By Kim Zetter
… “It reflects a strong consensus that cybersecurity and resilience will be critical to the realization of a modernized, reliable, and efficient power grid, so that it will be able to guarantee delivery of electricity to consumers and maintain critical operations, even when malicious cyber attacks occur,” reads the press release.
The only problem is, by the time the research project is completed, most of the nation will have already adopted untested and unsecured technologies.
How do we know they’re insecure?

Disconnect: The Truth about Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family
by Devra Davis
Publisher Comments:
The much-anticipated, explosive expose of how cell phone use damages brain cells, especially in children, by one of the world’s foremost scientific experts in the field.
Devra Davis presents an array of recent and long suppressed research in this timely bombshell. Cell phone radiation is a national emergency. Stunningly, the most popular gadget of our age has now been shown to damage DNA, break down the brain’s defenses, and reduce sperm count while increasing memory loss, the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and even cancer. The growing brains of children make them especially vulnerable. And half of the world’s four billion cell phone used by people under twenty.

Davis, the founding director of the toxicology and environmental studies board at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, takes readers through the dark side of this trillion-dollar industry. Health experts have long been frozen out of policy-making decisions about cell phones; federal regulatory standards are set by the cell phone industry itself. Cell phone manufacturers have borrowed the playbook of the tobacco industry. One secret memo reveals their war plan against reports of cell phone dangers.

Among a host of fascinating characters, Davis introduces Om P. Gandhi, a world expert on how cell phone radiation penetrates the human brain. Once a consultant to major cell phone companies, Gandhi now refuses to work with them. Franz Adlkofer led the multi-lab study that showed once and for all that brain cell DNA is unraveled by cell phone microwave radiation-and, as Davis dramatically portrays, it nearly cost him his career.

As this eye-opening call to action shows, we can make safer cell phones now. Why would we put our children at risk of a devastating epidemic of brain illness in the years to come?

For video testimony and expert interviews with Devra Davis, Cindy Sage, David Carpenter, Martin Blank, Lloyd Morgan and Brazil’s Alvaro deSalles and others on this subject please see our two YouTube playlists: ElectroMagnetic Health Protection and SmartMeters, Dumb Idea . There are more posts on the way.

Could Wireless be the Next Asbestos?
Gloria Vogel
Could radio frequency-producing antennas that are essential for the wireless world be the next asbestos for the insurance industry? They could, writes Gloria Vogel, managing director of New York-based Vogel Capital Management. The insurance industry must reassess its risk management tools and beef up loss control operations—especially its application of risk management to worker safety within the wireless ecosystem to avoid potentially huge claims in the future, she says.
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Could wireless antennas be the next asbestos?
Throughout the years, insurers have been concerned that an issue similar to asbestos would create a new round of endless losses for the industry. Lead paint, toxic mold, silica and other harmful substances have caught the interest of the plaintiffs bar, but nothing has come close to asbestos.
However, an issue that mimics asbestos and is being ignored by insurers could soon hit their pocketbooks. Simply stated, everyone’s favorite form of wireless communication and commerce depends on radio frequency-producing base station antennas, which emit radio waves and microwaves that can harm humans.
…
Based upon data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau, it is estimated that as many as 250,000 workers a year are compelled to work in close proximity and in front of RF transmitting antennas. When combined with the 15 years this issue has been in existence, the pool of potential claimants could be staggering.

Wi-Fi in Schools Debate Heats Up
…
“Because Our School Board’s safety standards are going by thermal effect only, with no regard for the many biological effects that Health Canada confirms can occur from lower levels than allowed by Safety Code 6, I am keeping my daughter home from school and teaching her here until the wifi is turned off and the internet is reconnected via existing wires,” says Klein who is also C0-Chair of the Parent Council at SVE.

Parents Concerned re School Wi-Fi
There is new evidence that suggests the Wi-Fi in our schools may cause serious short and/or long term health problems, and this has some Meaford parents concerned.
What is Wi-Fi? Wi-Fi is a microwave transmitter that is used to connect to the internet without wires. Some concerned parents are beginning to feel that wi-fi might be convenient but not necessary as every school has all of the wiring required still available to plug back into the internet in every room.
Wi-Fi comes with a long list of potential health risks. Wi-Fi or wireless router signals are microwaves just like cell phones. There is growing concern that Wi-Fi is potentially harmful, especially to children. Microwave exposure is associated with infertility, neurological disorders, Leukaemia and Cancer, especially in children.
Each school has a large main antenna in the centre of the school and multiple smaller ones placed in classrooms further away to boost the signal strength as it starts to weaken. It sends signals all day/night and never gets turned off.
Is Wi-Fi safe? According to hundreds of Doctors and Researchers (including Trent University’s Dr. Magda Havas), Canada’s safety guidelines are outdated. Wi-Fi is new technology, while the safety studies are old and based on thermal effects only, meaning that if the internal organs of an adult are not HEATED in less than 6 minutes they consider it to be within the guidelines. There has never been a study done on children’s long term exposure to low level microwave radiation (Wi-Fi) and the biological effects.
Now children starting as early as three years old are exposed to this low level microwave radiation for 6-8 hours each day at school. They will be exposed five days each week for the next 14-20 years.

Thanks to Marti Kheel
Huffman Calls for Study on Health Effects of SmartMeters
Requests California Council of Science & Technology Review FCC Standards for Devices
SAN RAFAEL, CA – Assemblymember Jared Huffman issued a request to the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) to determine whether Federal Communications Commission (FCC) standards for SmartMeters are sufficiently protective of public health—taking into account current exposure levels to radiofrequency and electromagnetic fields, and further to assess whether additional technology specific standards are needed for SmartMeters and other devices that are commonly found in and around homes, to ensure adequate protection from adverse health effects.
The letter is in response to numerous concerns and questions raised by individuals residing in the Assemblymember’s district, as well as the Marin County Board of Supervisors, City of Sebastopol, City of Fairfax, and Marin Association of Realtors, relating to potential negative health effects from SmartMeters, the electronic monitoring devices that Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is installing statewide to continuously measure the electricity output from each household and business.
In the letter to CCST Chair Karl Pistel dated July 30, 2010, Huffman states, “An independent, science-based study by the California Council on Science and Technology would help policy makers and the general public resolve the debate over whether SmartMeters present a significant risk of adverse health effects.”

Security Pros Question Deployment of Smart Meters
The country’s swift deployment of smart-grid technology has security professionals concerned that utilities and smart-meter vendors are repeating the mistakes made in the rollout of the public internet, when security became a priority only after malicious attacks had reached mass levels.
But when it comes to the power grid, the costs of remote hack attacks are potentially more dramatic.
“The cost factor here is what’s turned on its head. We lose control of our grid, that’s far worse than a botnet taking over my home PC,” said Matthew Carpenter, senior security analyst of InGuardian, speaking at a panel at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco this week.
The panel included Seth Bromberger, manager of information security at Pacific Gas and Electric, a San Francisco-based utility company that provides natural gas and electrical services to customers in Central and Northern California and is in the forefront of the smart-meter rollout; and Matt Franz, principal security engineer at Science Applications International Corporation.
Carpenter serves on the AMI-SEC Task Force, a group working on developing security guidelines and best practices for smart-meter infrastructure, and has done penetration testing on smart-meter systems to uncover security issues. He said the most common vulnerability he’s seen so far is susceptibility to “cross-site request forgery” on the control systems.
“That took me by surprise,” he said. “That’s not something that I would have imagined to be one of the greatest vulnerabilities found.”

Russia’s Cyber Security Plans
…A report late last year by the computer security company McAfee–a report based on interviews with third party experts–said that Russia, the United States, China, France, and Israel were all developing the capacity to attack and cripple computer networks including those that run critical infrastructure such as power grids….