Mount Alexander Council has passed a motion last week calling for the roll-out of wireless smart meters in the Shire to be made voluntary until a public statement can be provided, guaranteeing safety from non-thermal chronic exposure to RF radiation from smart meters. The motion calls for the Council to write to the Minister for Energy and Resources, the Honourable Michael O’Brien, requesting this guarantee in the light of concerns regarding the potential ill health effects of smart meters. The response from the Minister is to be brought to a future Council Meeting.
In addition, the motion calls for the Council to ask the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) to put forward a Notice of Motion at the next State Council requesting the MAV to investigate possible health problems associated with smart meters and, based on the outcome, to take appropriate action.
Stop Smart Meters Australia applauds Mount Alexander Shire Councillors on this initiative. We look forward to more Councils lobbying the MAV!
Mount Alexander Shire councillors have shown that they truly are listening to residents’ concerns regarding the health safety of wireless smart meters. We await the response from the Minister for Energy and Resources to their motion!
Click here to read a copy of the motion that was passed: Mount Alexander Motion 14.08.12
Stop Smart Meters Australia 
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I am writing from Cambridge, Ontario. I was shocked to read in the article above “potential ill health effects of smart meters”. When so may people in British Columbia, Ontario, and across the United States, became deathly sick immediately after the wireless smart meter was installed on their homes, there is nothing “potential” about it. My family suffered 2 deaths and a case of instant dementia, and now my daughter and I have been left to deal with the ravages of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS).
Our symptoms include severe pressure headaches, pressure pain across the front of the head, extreme dizziness (sometimes listing to one side or bumping into things), burning in the head, sharp pain and noise in the ears accompanied by white noise or rumbling sounds, pain up the side of the neck, chest pain, heart palpitations, severe joint pain, severe insomnia, irritability, eye pain, tingling, burning or heated skin, rash, shortness of breath, fatigue, trouble concentrating, anxiety, severe memory loss, erratic blood pressure readings (even though my normal blood pressure has always been low), and face pain. My husband (the last bread winner in the family) is also suffering from the effects of microwave radiation. We have nothing to gain by being so sick as there is no monetary government compensation.
I too discovered that the Ontario Energy Board mandated a time-of-use smart meter, they did not specify “wireless” technology. I also learned that our local hydro or utility companies are in violation of “Distribution System Code” sections 5.1.5 and 5.1.7, by not giving the customers the option to have the meter of their choice (in a reasonable amount of time) once the customer has requested a change. This is why hydro refuses to return our calls or acknowledge our letters, so that they can stretch out the “reasonable” time frame. I have been requesting a change for well over a year now and finally our local hydro has been forced to deal with the problem and are changing out the meter next week to my request for a phone modem operated smart meter without RF. Of course the cost of this meter, the monthly monitoring fee charged by hydro, along with the monthly fee for installing the separate phone line will all be at our expense. They have also said that it will be a temporary fix (approx. 2 yrs) until all of Cambridge is RF and then they will return to change the meter back to the KILLER once again.
There have been thousands of independent studies that prove unequivocally that RF and microwave radiation affects human health. These studies have been documented by leading world scientists, doctors, and biologists. The studies that state there are no adverse health effects have been proven over and over again to have been influenced and paid for by the industry they are supposed to be reporting on. Read the Sage Report and the BioInitiative Report. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine has called for a moratorium on the installation of smart meters on homes and schools. They state “Chronic exposure to wireless radio frequency radiation is a preventable environmental hazard that is sufficiently well documented to warrant immediate preventative public health action”. These specialists in the field are the very people who train our doctors on environmental hazards and yet the government and health agencies choose to ignore them. The Canadian Environmental Health Clinic in Toronto are calling the illnesses caused by this wireless technology a “Global Pandemic”. NO- there is nothing POTENTIAL about this situation, it is a KNOWN FACT!
The meters installed in our city and many other cities in Ontario were purchased from a US meter company that had million dollar losses in 2008, 2009, and 2010. In fact in their March 31, 2010 annual report to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, they reported a total debt of over $460 million dollars. As well, in 2009 one of their engineering employees was fired after he said, “he repeatedly told management about a multitude of dangerous defects in one of their wireless meters.” He reported that the failure rate of the meter was 20 times higher than it was supposed to be. These facts raise many questions; the most important two being- #1. Were the issues pertaining to meter defects ever addressed? and #2 Are the meters that have been installed in Canada in 2009 and earlier, the same meters with defective issues? (look at the time line) A hydro employee told me about a soldering defect in our meters that had to be fixed, a similar complaint made by the engineer whistle blower’s report from the US meter company. Problems with our meters will never be prevented since they are exempt from independent safety-certification processes such as Underwriters’ Laboratories (UL). We are dead ducks sitting in the water!
Do your own research people because you will hear and read nothing but lies from the Government, Health Canada, the World Health Organization, the wireless industries, and the local utility companies. I am sick of hearing about the obsolete and archaic Safety Code 6 that does nothing to protect Canadian citizens since the radiation exposure limit is one of the highest in the world. Anyone writing the words “potential ill health effects” has obviously not done their homework. The information is out there-they just want you to spend a lifetime searching for it!
My Brother and I are fighting the installation of a smart meter to our homes, through the battle we have been able to unearth a lot of information,first there has never been an act passed in the Victoria government to make it law,that we have to have one, but Powercor clam have a deemed electricity distribution contract which binds Powercor and customer under the electricity distribution code,clause 3.3.2[a].But in the books on contract law there is no mention of deemed contract. WE are still trying to find out about the legality on deemed contract? this is proving to be a little hard.
I also am trying to find our where it has been put into law that Smart Meters are mandatory, and I was told by someone at Dept Primary Industries that it is contained in the Electricity Industry Act 2000 part 46D, which relates to an ammendment of the Act in 2006 that relates to the roll out. I need someone to interpret the Act though, because as far as I can tell (I’m not a lawyer), these points relate to the requirements of the energy distribution companies when installing meters. I can”t find where is says in the Act, or in the Ammendment, that meters MUST be replaced with AMI meters. I am also fighting off United Energy at the moment, after postponing 12+ months ago. We’ve had letters this week advising that they’ll be coming to install soon. I’m starting to feel so helpless. We have these meters with the neighbours on either side of us, and many more in the street, and my husband and I now suffer with constantly ringing ears…… imagine what things may be like if they put one in our home. Our meter box is right on our bedroom wall!
Hi Georgina, Look i am just like you with meters all around. Don’t let them install one… get doctor’s advice, legal document or whatever you think may help. there are so many in the same position, thousands of us in fact. There needs to be an opt out here like in the UK, it is possible that your neighbours want them uninstalled, so stand firm on your decision. They (the distributor) don’t have the legal right to ‘force’ installation. If you have the chance, attend a meeting in your local area for more support and advice… hang in there!
I would like to see a request made for an independent study that is free from interference by the industry. Researchers should be made to prove that they have no affiliations with wireless manufactures or the telecommunications industry. There should also be a balance with respect to the qualifications of the researchers – i.e. they should not all be physicists or electrical engineers. There would need to be representation from medical sciences too.
I hope that some supporting evidence was sent with the request for a safety guarantee. I suspect Mr O’Brien will send his generic response as he did with me citing that smart meter emissions are within ARPANSA standards RF requirements. That the emissions from a smart meter are less than a baby monitor, wireless network etc. Unfortunately Mr O’Brien and his advisers failed to refute any of the evidence I provided in my letter and ignored it completely. He/they hide behind a standard that cannot guarantee proof of safety.
From ARPANSA’s RADIATION PROTECTION STANDARD Maximum Exposure Levels to Radiofrequency Fields — 3 kHz to 300 GHz Radiation Protection Series Publication No. 3
“It is impossible to prove, with absolute certainty, the absence of an effect. To prove with certainty that radiofrequency energy, or any other aspect of the human environment, is completely safe is impossible; as to do so requires proof of the absence of any association between exposure to radiofrequencies and any one of an infinite number of health outcomes. Scientific studies are designed not to give ‘proof’, but are designed to disapprove or ‘falsify’ the current hypothesis or accepted viewpoint on an issue.”
Our standards are over 10 years old and have been hobbled by vested interests without due care of the consequences. We are all guinea pigs. The precautionary principal has been warped from its original intentions. Caution has been thrown into the wind with the forced installation of RF transmitters into every home. There are plenty of scientific studies that show a definitive link between RF emissions and cancer and a host of other diseases, which have been provided on this site in other posts, but the Government refuses to acknowledge it.
From the Herald Sun http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/victorias-electricity-smart-meters-here-to-stay/story-fn7x8me2-1226221273964
“The $2.18 billion roll-out of Victoria’s electricity smart meters will go ahead because too much money has been spent to pull back.” A scathing auditor-general’s report released two years ago said the program was “flawed and a failure”, the financial benefits flowing to power companies rather than consumers.”
It would be great to see the Mount Alexander and Hepburn shires get together on this one. Both are forward thinking in their own right.
I have written to our Local Council and to date have not received a reply. Hopefully they will be as accomodating as the Mount Alexander Shire Councillors. Come on everyone write to your Council and forward a copy of this Post, asking them to take into account just how Dangerous these SMART METERS are to people’s HEALTH and SAFETY.— Pam
YAY!!! This is ‘my’ council and I am so pleased they did such a good job on this issue. Yes, lobbying the MAV is a great idea, and Mt Alexander Shire Councillors deserve extra credit for that.
Roll out of smart meters is not complete here (I am in Castlemaine) – some of us have them and some of us don’t, and none of them are switched on yet, so we are in a great position to say we have heard about the dangers and we don’t want the meters!!!
Interest in the issue here is growing, and I suspect that if the smart meters were switched on more people here would have an interest in them as there would undoubtedly be people feeling the effects, sadly.
It’s been very inspiring to see other communities take action on this issue, so thanks to everyone who is working on stopping smart meters – every person who acts potentially motivates someone else to act.