Chapter 12

Wireless Neighbourhood

When it comes to the safety of your family, you have total control over how much wireless radiation is generated inside your home. You can buy and use an abundance of wireless devices radiating 24/7 — or avoid them altogether. The choice is entirely yours.

However, that’s not the case with wireless radiation generated outside your home. Mobile-phone base stations, wireless-internet towers, wi-fi hotspots, smart meters, and even your neighbour’s cordless phone and wi-fi can all have an impact on your home.

The extent to which they affect the people inside your home will depend on how closely they’re located, the power of the signal they transmit, and, in the case of base stations, whether you’re in the main beam of the signal.

Some people use the presence of wireless radiation from external sources as an excuse not to do anything about their internal exposure: why bother when I’m exposed all the time, anyway?

The answer is threefold:

1 It’s often the case that most of the radiation in a person’s home comes from their own wireless devices. Sleeping next to a cordless phone can expose a person to more radiation than from the base station down the road, for example.

2 Reducing your exposure at home reduces your total exposure. This is important because mobile-phone studies are showing that it’s the long-term and cumulative exposures that are associated with tumour risks.

3 It’s relatively easy to block external sources of radiation from entering your home with appropriate shielding. For example: shielding paint, shielding curtain fabric, and shielding window films are readily available from specialist outlets.

Mobile-phone towers, wireless-internet towers, TV towers, and radio towers all emit wireless radiation, although at different frequencies, and, in general, all that’s been said about wireless radiation so far also applies to them.

However, there’s one technology that deserves a special mention, because of its sheer closeness to your home.

Smart meters

Like other ‘smart’ technologies, these electricity meters emit wireless radiation.

One of the problems with these meters is that they’re often located on the outside of a bedroom wall, often right near a sleeper’s head. As you’ve already seen, this is not a good position for any wireless device.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why so many people, in different parts of the world, have reported developing uncomfortable symptoms after smart meters were installed on their homes. Often these symptoms started around the same time as the meters were installed, even when people were unaware they’d been installed.

Melbourne general practitioner Dr Federica Lamech conducted a study of symptoms experienced by 92 residents of the state of Victoria, Australia. The main symptoms reported were insomnia, headaches, tinnitus, lethargy/fatigue, cognitive disturbances, dysaesthesias, and dizziness.

She found that the people surveyed reported symptoms with a remarkable degree of similarity, even though they lived in different parts of the state and had no knowledge of each other.

What can you do?

SUGGESTIONS