Maine ‘Smart’ Meters on Trial for Health Safety - East Idaho News
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Maine ‘Smart’ Meters on Trial for Health Safety

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GETTY H 072612 ElectricityMeter?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1343314884862iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Are “smart” meters safe?  Or do these wireless devices, which use radio waves to report consumers’ electric consumption to utilities, pose a threat to health?

Such questions have been debated widely in California and other states.  Yet, to date, no state’s public utility commission has held public hearings on the question or conducted its own safety investigation.  Now, Maine is poised to do so.

So widespread are fears about the devices’ safety, according to the anti-meter group Naperville Smart Meter Awareness in Illinois, that three states have instituted moratoriums on them.  In others, anti-meter, class-action lawsuits are pending.  In California, says the group’s website, 47 municipal jurisdictions have either demanded a halt to installations or have criminalized them.

The Maine Public Utilities Commission voted on Tuesday to investigate the safety of Central Maine Power’s “smart” meters, 615,000 of which have been installed in homes throughout the state at a cost of $192 million, according to Smart Grid Today, an online journal that tracks the power industry.

The public utility commission vote followed a Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruling two weeks ago that instructed the commission to resolve safety concerns about the meters, according to The Portland Press Herald.  Under Maine law, says Bruce McGlauflin, an attorney representing worried Maine utility customers, the commission must ensure that utilities provide safe service.

Exactly how the commission will do that remains to be seen.  “It’s been left to their discretion,” McGlauflin said.

“Smart” meters produce radio-frequency emissions similar to those produced by cellphones, he added.  Some people, including some of McGlauflin’s clients, believe they have a heightened sensitivity to the emissions and blame them for migraines, sleeplessness and other physical or mental illnesses.

Dan Richman, a Smart Grid Today reporter, says utility commissions in California and other states have addressed the safety question by conducting reviews of scientific literature.  The result of such reviews, he says, has been uniform: “The literature concludes the meters are safe.”

In 2010, the California public utility commission, in rejecting what it called an unreasonable request to investigate alleged health impacts further, noted the meters’ emissions were one six-thousandth of those permitted by federal health standards.  The World Health Organization stands virtually alone in calling them a potential carcinogen.

No commission has held hearings; nor has any attempted its own original research.  For Maine to take either step, Richman says, would be a first.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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