WARNING: The following article contains the discussion of scientific concepts and peer-reviewed scientific literature
An opinion by Lucian Fioretto
Firstly, I should introduce myself. I am a college student studying biochemistry at Binghamton University and I have taken an interest in the scientifc literacy of the public. I occasionally read the Wellsville Sun and was concerned when I came across a recently published article with several problematic, factual errors throughout. The article in question is “Smart Meter truth; about knowing before you consent” by Frederick Sinclair. I would like to make it clear that I value the Wellsville Sun and support Mr. Sinclair’s ability to continue publishing his work. However, I believe it is important to respond to factual errors and hopefully learn from them together as a community. I welcome Mr. Sinclair to respond to my critique, either by contacting me or by publishing another article. Although my article will focus on the points Mr. Sinclair made in his publication, this is not particularly directed at him, as I have seen similar claims made about smart meters and other technological devices. It should be noted that Mr. Sinclair subsequently published, “The ‘Smart Meter’ rabbit hole” on August 2nd, restating many of the same claims made in his first article addressing smart meters. This was published after I had finished the vast majority of my writing and the underlying claims are extremely similar, so I will not be explicitly addressing the small amount of new information contained in his most recent publication.
WARNING: The following article contains the discussion of scientific concepts and peer-reviewed scientific literature. If this is supremely boring to you, here is a quick overview of the main points I make:
Mr. Sinclair and others that agree with him use quite imprecise and strong language, creating a sense of fear around electromagnetic radiation and misinforming the public. There is no scientific consensus that non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation is harmful to people, and the addition of smart meters to your daily life should not be of great concern.
If you are skeptical of my points, read on and consider the evidence for yourself. All of my sources are cited throughout the article and listed at the end. They are also all publicly available, barring one scientific article behind an unfortunate paywall.
In his article, Mr. Sinclair provides a bulleted list of reasons why one should consider opting out of having a smart meter installed. In the interest of concision, I will respond to the first four points simultaneously, as they are closely related.
1. “Digital meters emit strong bursts of radiation into your home and that of your neighbor. These bursts threaten your health and cause dirty electricity in wiring which poses additional threats.”1
2. “Thousands of independent, government and peer reviewed scientific studied [sic] show the radio frequency radiation emitted by digital Smart Meters can cause biological harm. see [sic] americansforresponsibletech.org.”1
3. “No federal agency has declared Smart Meters as safe.”1
4. “Reports of harm include tinnitus, headaches, dizziness, nausea, heart irregularities, insomnia, brain fog and other symptoms from exposure to the microwave radiation.”1
A rebuttal of these points requires the discussion of radiation and waves. Mr. Sinclair provides no evidence for his claims made in the article, but I will respond to the popular misinformation surrounding radiation and waves that I have come across previously and while doing research for this article. In fairness, Mr. Sinclair directs readers to the website, americansforresponsibletech.org, which I will address later.
Mr. Sinclair’s case against smart meters boils down to popular misconceptions about EMFs (Electric and Magnetic Fields) and their harmful health effects. These concepts can quickly become quite complicated, so I will simplify them, but not to so extreme a degree that the truth is miscommunicated. To start, both fields are generated by electrical charges (think of this as electric current flowing through a wire). Because these fields are so closely linked, they are often referred to together as electromagnetic fields. These fields produce electromagnetic radiation. Electromagnetic radiation is, in simple terms, the flow of energy generated by electromagnetic fields.2, 3, 4 In slightly more technical terms, “…electromagnetic radiation is the flow of photons (also called light quanta) through space.”3 I suspect the word “radiation” can be intimidating and scary. However, electromagnetic radiation is actually what makes up the visible light that we perceive as colors! There are many articles written about this across the internet, some of which I have cited and you may read further if you’re curious.
Now that we have covered what EMFs and electromagnetic radiation are, let’s try to characterize them and assess if they are truly as dangerous as Mr. Sinclair and others have claimed. To aid with this, I have included the following picture.
This picture may seem intimidating at first, but it is easy to begin understanding. This image accurately represents the qualities that we use to characterize electromagnetic radiation. As you can see, the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation that makes up visible light (the electromagnetic radiation we perceive as colors) makes up a small sliver of the total spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. As you move from left to right across the image, the energy of the waves decreases. For example, gamma rays carry more energy than radio waves. This can be calculated using the information about wavelength and frequency (these are simply qualities of waves) contained in the image above.5
Mr. Sinclaire claims that, “radio frequency radiation emitted by digital Smart Meters can cause biological harm.”1 Firstly, it is true that smart meters emit radio waves.6 As you can see in the image above, these are the waves with the lowest energy and are therefore non-ionizing. This means that they are unable to affect molecules beyond heating them (as is the case of microwaves found in… you guessed it, a microwave appliance).
There has been legitimate research into the negative health effects that are associated with exposure to radio-frequency radiation. However, there has been insignificant evidence to conclude that non-ionizing radiation (such as radio waves and microwaves) are harmful to biological organisms. It should be noted that there are significant challenges to completing these studies and more research should be done to ensure the safety of the public.7 It is good to concern oneself with the safety of new technologies, but we should not postulate unscientific rhetoric about how unsafe radio-frequency radiation and microwaves are. Furthermore, we are already exposed to far greater sources of radio-frequency radiation than that of which will be emitted from a smart meter, such as cell phones.6
To conclude this section about health effects, I would like to respond to Mr. Sinclair’s claim that there are “reports of harm [including] tinnitus, headaches, dizziness, nausea, heart irregularities, insomnia, brain fog and other symptoms from exposure to… microwave radiation.”1 We should avoid making such strong statements about the harm of microwave radiation. Although I am certain there are claims from individuals that they experience certain symptoms and they attribute these symptoms to microwave radiation exposure, there is no conclusive evidence to attribute these symptoms to microwave radiation exposure.8
Beyond radiation exposure, Mr. Sinclair mentions, “dirty electricity in wiring which poses additional threats.”1 He further addresses the concept of dirty electricity in his most recent article but the provided definition does not grant his claims of dirty electricity’s harmful health effects any more credibility.9 One of the very few reputable sources I came across that focused on dirty electricity was an article in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology. This article outlines how the claims made against electromagnetic radiation are not well supported scientifically and arise from studies with methodological flaws and over-blown conclusions.10 While Mr. Sinclair and others make very strong claims, the scientific evidence does not support such activity.
I am interested in learning more about Mr. Sinclair’s “Thousands of independent, government and peer reviewed scientific studied [sic] [that] show the radio frequency radiation emitted by digital Smart Meters can cause biological harm.”1 The peer-reviewed scientific review articles (articles that aggregate data from many studies to draw broader conclusions) I cited did not conclude that there is significant biological harm caused by radio frequency radiation.7, 8, 10 I am open to seeing new studies, but currently remain unconvinced of the dire consequences associated with radio frequency radiation. The only source Mr. Sinclair cites is Americans for Responsible Technology. Their website voices some legitimate concerns and references real scientific literature, but they seem to support spurious conclusions about the negative health risks associated with microwave radiation. One of the main and scariest issues they touch on (there are many, so I encourage the reader to take the time to visit the site themselves) is the ability for non-ionizing radiation to produce lasting effects in DNA, causing cancer. However, this is largely overstated and not scientifically supported. Although they cite a few studies that suggest exposure to non-ionizing radiation could result in changes to DNA, there is far from a scientific consensus. The American Cancer Society has stated, “A few studies have reported evidence of biological effects that could be linked to cancer, but this is still an area of research. For example, some studies have suggested that RF radiation might stress cells. This could lead to the creation of reactive oxygen species inside the cells, which can damage DNA. However, other studies have found that RF radiation might protect cells from DNA damage.”11 The FDA states that, “there is insufficient evidence to support a causal association between RFR exposure and tumorigenesis.”12 There is no conclusive scientific evidence to support the claim that exposure to non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation is a health concern.
This article has certainly gone on for long enough. However, I would like to quickly address the other points, unrelated to EMFs, that Mr. Sinclair made in his article.
He raises several security concerns about how smart meters can be used to track homeowners’ habits. This is, in theory, true. If an energy company would like to comb through the data about your energy usage, they could potentially determine certain habits of yours, such as when you wake up and when you are home. Mr. Sinclair also raises concerns about these devices getting hacked and leaking information to unscrupulous third parties. As far as I can tell, this has been a concern from as far back as 2012. However, the attacks that have been described are not carried out remotely and I could not find any reports of large scale attacks that compromise the security of smart meter users.13 If you are concerned about the invasion of privacy propagated by smart meters, I suggest you first reflect on your usage of personal electronic devices, such as the one you may be reading this article with. These internet capable devices already collect and transmit information about your usage to service providing companies.14
Lastly, Mr. Sinclair correctly points out that smart meters have been recalled in the past due to several fires and similar incidents. What he fails to mention is that the fires could not be conclusively traced back to the fault of the smart meter but were possibly caused due to water intrusion or similar faulty installation. All the reports of recalls and fire hazards were from about 10 years ago and do not seem to reflect any current issues with smart meters that may be installed on your home.15, 16, 17 Many of the claims made about the fire risk presented by smart meters come from anti-EMF groups whose concerns about EMFs are unfounded. This fire hazard narrative is just one more way for them to make the public fearful of new technologies.
In short, Mr. Sinclair uses quite imprecise and strong language, creating a sense of fear around electromagnetic radiation which is simply another part of the natural world, and we perceive it with our own eyes every single day. There is no scientific consensus that non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation is harmful to people, and the addition of smart meters to your daily life should not be of great concern.
I am not writing this article to convince readers that our exposure to electromagnetic radiation is 100% safe. However, I hope my writing puts the issue of electromagnetic radiation (especially from smart meters) into perspective and allows readers to logically consider the benefits and risks without fear. Mr. Sinclair wrote his article to inform the public about smart meters and to ensure they were able to give informed consent to have them installed in their home. However, many of the claims he made were erroneous and spread further fear and misinformation, resulting in a lesser ability for readers to give informed consent. This type of misinformation is particularly concerning to me. It is very easy to make people fearful of new technologies that may be difficult to fully understand. If you agree with Mr. Sinclair, I strongly recommend you honestly attempt to engage with the evidence I have presented here, even if it is challenging. It is important that we believe the truth, as Mr. Sinclair himself demonstrated with his concern over informed consent.
I purposefully used trusted, publicly available websites and publicly available peer-reviewed scientific articles. The only article that is unavailable publicly is the publication concerning dirty electricity, which is unfortunately behind a paywall. All of my sources are cited throughout my article using superscripts and there is a link to an exhaustive list of my sources down below. Please read them for yourself.
If you have questions/comments about what I discussed in this article or would like more refutations of popular science misinformation, please reach out to me at contactLucian77@gmail.com! I am happy to answer any questions you may have and would be interested in publishing my work again.
I would like to thank Julian Petrillo for contributing to the editorial process of this article.
Link to references: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rz4eSfqVa6nHnx3tif1s9hjQsi-UZBS1731gY9UTfCg/edit?usp=sharing
