Showing posts with label standard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label standard. Show all posts

Thursday, 24 July 2014

Limits for Ultra High Frequency Electromagnetic Fields Exposure

 
Avoiding Smart Meter’s in Victoria
(A Manual of facts to help you)
The aim of this web page is to provide you with some little known facts to assist you in your fight to protect your health, privacy and democratic right to say ‘NO’. It has been compiled from personal experience and many hours of research.

Limits for Ultra High Frequency Electromagnetic Fields Exposure

Smart meter radiation must be within limits specified by AS 2772 RADIATION PROTECTION STANDARD Maximum Exposure Levels to Radiofrequency Fields — 3 kHz to 300 GHz. This Standard was created by AUSTRALIAN RADIATION PROTECTION AND NUCLEAR SAFETY AGENCY (ARPANSA).

As I understand soon it will be updated:
http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2014L00960

But I don’t see that there will be much change here which will benefit the people of Victoria. Also, the ‘compatibility statement’ for this piece of legislation ignores the fact that Victorians are unknowingly being subjected to an experiment. (There has been no meaningful research into nonionizing radiation).

If we look at the history of the ARPANSA standard written in 2002, there was a prior standard of 1985. In the late 1990s it was time to update it, but it was not that simple:


 The technical committee did not reach agreement on the last revision of the Standard in 1999, which sought to introduce the more lenient ICNIRP Guidelines.

Also, in the conclusions in this document, para 4.240, the committee chair did not support the decision to transfer the responsibility for setting a new standard to ARPANSA. Despite this, the job of creating new standards; was passed on to ARPANSA. What did ARPANSA use as a base for the 2002 standard? See page ii http://www.arpansa.gov.au/publications/codes/rps3.cfm

Standard are based on the published 1998 Guidelines of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP).

So I get the impression that the 1985 standards had stricter limits than the current standards. If so, this does not sound very promising!



International approach to UHF radiation.


In many countries, standards are based on ICNIRP guidelines, but not everywhere.

This site lists many countries/regions where standards are stricter. And it is a shame our Victorian government did not try to find out why:


Italy: The basic limits for magnetic flux density are identical with the reference levels in the Recommendation. A 10 times lower 'attention value' applies to existing situations with exposure for more than 4 hours in homes, playgrounds and schools. A 'quality goal' of 3% of the reference level applies to new construction of homes, playgrounds or schools near power lines, substations or transformers (or vice versa). An even stricter limit for magnetic flux density (0.2% of the reference level) was adopted in three regions before the federal law came into force. This too applies to power lines near homes, schools and other places where people may stay for more than 4 hours per day.
In Switzerland, an Ordinance on Non-ionising Radiation has been in force since 1999. Exposure limits identical to the reference levels in the European Recommendation apply to all areas accessible to the public. A stricter, precautionary limit on magnetic flux density of 1% of the reference level applies to new installations...


Technical terms for measuring UHF radiation.
 
The rate at which radiofrequency radiation is absorbed in the body is measured in watts per kilogram (W/kg).

The Australian limits are determined by AS 2772 which has Whole-body average (W/kg) 0.08 with allowed maximums of up 2-4 W/kg (see page 7, table 2).

The European Unions’ main standard is the same as Australia, from 0.08 up to 4 W/kg, see Table 1 page 64:

http://www.smartmeters.vic.gov.au/about-smart-meters/reports-and-consultations/ami-meter-em-field-survey-repor

so their usage in Switzerland or some parts of Italy would be questionable.

Notice that in tests of a bunch of Smart meters which are installed together the radiation reached 31% (Table 10).

In multistorey buildings, the situation may become really bad. We can only guess the amount of radiation people living close to bunch of then on their floor and also exposed to Smart meters above and below.

There are reports that radiation in areas of multistorey flats which are next to Smart meter locations is well beyond ARPANSA limits, but these reports are ‘not official’.

Department of Housing, owner of some buildings with possible over-the-limit levels of radiation is not in any rush to check this out. They settle aged and fragile people next to the source of powerful radiation and ‘forget’ about any Duty of Care.


In Russia, general rules for the protection are set in a 1999 framework law. Exposure limits for specific frequency ranges are set in so-called 'Hygienic epidemiological requirements'. The public exposure limit for electric and magnetic fields of 50 hertz is 10% of the reference level in the European Recommendation. The motivation for this is to prevent biological effects that are not seen as health risks in Western countries.

Russia found some "biological effects" in UHF radiation! And cut the limits by 10 times. The
USSR had stricter rules than USA, and more, in USSR there was a belief that UHF radiation has "bio effects", this is something that ARPANSA does not want to hear! For example, the Soviet limits for occupational exposure were just 0.4 W/kg per hour, while ARPANSA "generously" give us up to 4 W/kg in our homes, 24/7! This sounds alarming to me. May be it would be worthwhile our Government asking Russia for more information on this subject?


jmpee.org/JMPEE_PDFs/21-1_bl/Vol21-1-Pg9-Czersk.pdf

Terms mandated, compulsory, standard – do all they have the same meaning?


Avoiding Smart Meter’s in Victoria

(A Manual of facts to help you)

The aim of this web page is to provide you with some little known facts to assist you in your fight to protect your health, privacy and democratic right to say ‘NO’. It has been compiled from personal experience and many hours of research.


Terms mandated, compulsory, standard – do all they have the same meaning?

Are Smart meters "mandated"? To answer this question we must first define ‘mandate’. According to the Australian Oxford Dictionary ‘mandate’ = ‘authority to perform certain tasks’.

Pay attention: authority does not mean obligation. You can do something, but you not have to do it.

The Victorian government and distributors claim that the mandate for the AMI rollout is in the government gazette S200 dated 28th of August 2007 and specifically sect 14.1a, which requires the distributors to ‘use their best endeavours’ to install remotely read interval meters in every home and small business in Victoria. ‘Best endeavours’ is defined in the Electricity Distribution Code sect 19 and states; ‘in relation to a person, means the person must act in good faith and do what is reasonably necessary in the circumstances’. Now, reading ‘the mandate’ in plain English, it should be read as: ‘the distributors are to act in good faith and do what is reasonably necessary in the circumstances’. NOTHING MORE!

 There is one more Order in Council from 10 December 2013: www.gazette.vic.gov.au/gazette/Gazettes2013/GG2013S439.pdf which use same term "each distributor must use its best endeavours to install a complying remotely read interval meter "


So to answer the original question, yes, there is legislation which requires the distributors to ‘use their best endeavours to install remotely read interval meters’, the distributors have mandate to install them, the meters are mandated.

 
 

Are they compulsory?

According to ‘the mandate’, no they are not! The government/distributors are putting their interpretation on what the legislation says and fail to quote what it actually says!

I do not know any Government-issued document which use term «compulsory» in relation with remotely read electrical meters.

There is no legislation which says a customer cannot refuse to have one or which interpret refusal having Smart meter as offence. It therefore stands to reason, that if a customer says ‘no thanks’, that should be the end of the storey! Sadly, this is not the case.

Is coercion, bullying, trespassing, cutting off padlocks, disconnection - ‘acting in good faith and doing what is reasonably necessary in the circumstances’? The Essential Services Commission has said no. What have they done about it? NOTHING!

Can "non-standard" meters be used?

In agreement with Information from Department of Environment and Primary Industries YES, they CAN:

Where a customer has refused the installation of a Smart Meter, the Government has decided that the costs associated with manual reading may be recovered by a distribution business through an additional fee.
It is anticipated that the fee will be introduced in March 2015.
A distribution business will only be able to recover the costs of maintaining a non-Smart Meter if the customer has actively refused the installation of a Smart Meter.

So this document tells us loud and clear: smart meters are NOT the only option. It just depends on your actions: "if the customer has actively refused ".