NEW MEXICO’S CITIES HAVE NO SMART METERS HELP US KEEP IT THAT WAY!

In 2017, after two years of proceedings, we kept smart meters out of many of New Mexico’s cities, including Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, Santa Fe, Las Vegas, Silver City, Lordsburg, Deming, Alamogordo, Ruidoso, and Tularosa. In an unusual show of cooperation, all of the public, private, and governmental entities participating in the proceedings listened to and supported one another in fighting for and securing the right of the people to their health and safety in their homes and communities.

The Attorney General of New Mexico; the City of Albuquerque; Western Resource Advocates; New Mexico Industrial Energy Consumers; Coalition for Clean Affordable Energy; Citizens for Fair Rates and the Environment; the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union No. 61; New Mexicans for Utility Safety (that’s us); and the staff of the Public Regulation Commission were unanimous in opposing smart meters. As a result, PNM’s application for smart meters was defeated.

Now, five years later, PNM (Public Service Company of New Mexico) is back, reapplying for smart meters in our state. The Gen 5 Itron Riva meters it wants to install this time are designed to be part of a 5G network and a “Distributed Intelligence Web”. New Mexico has passed a new Grid Modernization Statute allowing public utilities to apply for smart meters. But among the criteria for approval is that the application must be “reasonable” and that smart meters must “provide customer protection.” Meters that damage customers’ health and the environment are neither reasonable nor protective.

You can help us defeat PNM’s new application and preserve New Mexico as a refuge and an example to the world of what the people can do to protect our health and environment. 300,000 people worldwide subscribe to my newsletters. If thousands of you write to the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission, that will have an impact. The public is specifically entitled to submit comments in any proceeding under the PRC’s rules.

Smart meters consume energy. Smart meters emit radiation and cause all the wiring in your home to emit radiation. Smart meters cause fires and explosions. Smart meters are hackable. Smart meters invade your privacy. Smart meters are inaccurate and raise your electric bills.

We ask everyone, worldwide, to please email the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission telling them your experience after a smart meter was installed on your home.

Tell them how it has affected your health. Tell them how it has affected the animal, bird, and insect life on your property and in your community. Tell them how it has affected your utility bills. And if your smart meter caused a fire, of course include that.

Or, if you were able to opt out and keep your old meter, tell them your observations of the effect of smart meters on the health of your neighbors and community.

Write to: New Mexico PRC <prc.records@prc.nm.gov>. Write “Case No. 22-00058-UT” in the Subject line.

Be sure to also send a copy to me at Arthur@cellphonetaskforce.org.

New Mexico is one of the last two states in the US — Connecticut is the other one — where an investor-owned electric utility has not deployed smart meters. We want to keep New Mexico that way — an example to the world of what is possible, and a lower-radiation refuge for those who need one.

Thank you for your help!

Arthur Firstenberg President, New Mexicans for Utility Safety President, Cellular Phone Task Force Author, The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life Administrator, International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space Caretaker, ECHOEarth.org (End Cellphones Here On Earth) P.O. Box 6216 Santa Fe, NM 87502 USA +1 505-471-0129 info@cellphonetaskforce.org

November 29, 2022

NO CELL PHONE! Campaign Launched Worldwide Today

When I was eight years old, as I stood among the birds and trees in front of my cousins’ country home, I suddenly heard a horrendous noise I had never heard before. “It is called a chain saw,” said my uncle George, as he explained to me what it did. In my mind’s eye I saw forests tumbling down all over the world.

Four years later, a TV commercial filled me with foreboding. It featured a bottle of shampoo falling to the floor of a shower stall and not breaking! The Prell company was introducing the wonders of plastic to a consuming public.

That same year, 1962, a marine biologist awakened the world to the devastation caused by pesticides, igniting an environmental movement that shook the world to its roots.

Yet today, 60 years later, the world poisons itself with five times as much pesticides as it did before Rachel Carson’s monumental book. The few remaining old growth forests continue to be felled by machines with a power beyond anyone’s control. And as marine mammals, seabirds and turtles choke on bottle caps, lids and grocery bags, the oceans will soon contain more plastics than fish, and we swim in microplastic particles that rain down on us day and night in the very air we breathe.

It is no one’s fault, and it is everyone’s fault. Today, without assigning blame, we have an opportunity to gather together in personal action for the future of life on Earth. An opportunity to change course. Microwave radiation is the first pollutant that is being spread intentionally over every square inch of the planet. And it is the first pollutant whose source and driving force — the mobile phone — is within the palms and pockets of the world’s population at all times. This gives us a unique opportunity to be proactive instead of just advocates. To be a movement of change and not just for change. To set an example of what must also be done with respect to the other environmental assaults.

Wireless technology is also the first pollutant for which there is not a dose response: the effect does not depend on the dose. Reducing the power level of a wireless device does not reduce the harm that it causes. For purposes of health and environment, a cell phone is a cell tower. We cannot have birds and insects and also have cell phones. Our children will not live to grow up if we do not get rid of cell phones.

The benefits of ridding one’s life of cell phones — the restoration of your health and vitality — are immediate, startling, and far greater than the benefits that they provide. And as this action spreads, so will the benefits. A restored vitality of the forests, oceans, wildlife and birds that once gave life meaning will give people much more than they will give up when they throw away their cell phones — and gladly give up, once they feel the difference and realize what they have traded away.

We ask you to join in pledging to do your part in putting an end to the greatest, most urgent, most ignored assault on the Earth that there is.  To plant a seed that will be watered, grow, and proliferate. No one — not legislators, not judges, not corporate CEOs — can do it for us.

Please read and sign the pledge below. It comes in two versions, one for people who still own cell phones, and the other for people who do not. You can also read and sign them in these languages:

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NO CELL PHONE! Pledge (for those who still have cell phones)

Protect your planet, your family, your pets and yourself by getting rid of your cell phone now. It’s up to each of us to stop the destruction.

WHEREAS, your cell phone emits the same microwave radiation as a cell tower;

WHEREAS, making a cell phone call or sending a text exposes you to much more radiation than the radiation from any cell towers;

WHEREAS, turning on your cell phone causes the nearest cell tower to emit more radiation;

WHEREAS, for your cell phone to work when you want it to, all the cell towers on Earth have to be there;

WHEREAS, reducing the power of your cell phone, holding it away from your body, or putting it on a table, does not make it any safer and can harm you even more;

WHEREAS, in experimental animals, a two-minute exposure to a cell phone damages the blood-brain barrier, and a two-hour exposure causes permanent brain damage, even when the power is reduced 100-fold;

WHEREAS, cell phone radiation interferes with nerve conduction and brain function and is a predominant cause of multiple sclerosis, ADHD, autism, dementia, anxiety disorder, depression, and other neurological disorders today;

WHEREAS, cell phone radiation interferes with your metabolism and is a predominant cause of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer today;

WHEREAS, your cell phone, when you call or text, directly exposes not just you, but your family, children, pets, friends, passersby, and the birds, insects, animals, plants and trees in your neighborhood to microwave radiation;

WHEREAS, most insects and at least one-third of all birds on Earth have already disappeared, having been killed in large part by the radiation from cell phones and cell towers;

WHEREAS, life on Earth evolved for billions of years without microwave radiation (the microwave radiation from the sun and stars being miniscule), and there is no safe level of exposure;

WHEREAS, microwave radiation is the first pollutant that is being intentionally dispersed over every square inch of the Earth, instead of unintentionally like every other pollutant;

view as PDF: in English en français auf Deutsch en español

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS What is wireless technology?

Wireless technology is any means of sending information or energy through space without wires. It includes:

satellites, radar, radio, television, cell towers, cell phones, cordless phones, microwave ovens smart meters, WiFi, Bluetooth, fitness trackers, smart watches, baby monitors wireless keyboards, mice, printers, headphones and speakers, wireless security systems, wireless car keys, wireless garage door openers, wireless battery chargers, remote controls, wireless microphones RFID chips in credit cards and driver’s licenses, radio collars and chips in wildlife, cattle and pets, chips in home appliances wireless hearing aids, assistive listening devices, medical alert pendants, chips in medical implants, wireless pacemakers autonomous vehicles, drones, and robots numerous other radio-enabled devices that are proliferating in today’s world

Every one of these devices, without exception, emits radiation.

What’s wrong with wireless technology?

By substituting radiation for wires, we are swimming in an ocean of artificial electromagnetic fields that are interfering with life itself. We are in effect electrocuting ourselves, our children, our pets, the insects, birds, animals, trees and plants around us and all of living creation. We are killing our planet.

This is about long-term exposure, right? Cancer that takes years to develop?

No. The effects are rapid. Heart rate changes immediately. Blood sugar rises in minutes. Having wireless devices on in your house interferes with your sleep and your memory. Using a cell phone destroys brain cells in minutes to hours, and can cause a stroke or a heart attack. Studies show that even cancer can develop within months of first exposure. When a cell tower is turned on, birds leave the area immediately. Insects disappear. Even slugs and snails vanish. Most of this takes no time at all.

What types of radiation are used in wireless technology?

All frequencies of radio waves, microwaves, infrared radiation, visible light, lasers, sound waves, even nuclear radiation. Most home devices use microwaves.

Isn’t microwave radiation natural? Don’t microwaves come from the sun and stars?

Almost all the radiation we receive from the universe is the light and heat from the sun, not microwave radiation. The microwave radiation a person receives from an average cell tower is millions of times stronger than all the microwave radiation from the sun and stars. The microwave radiation a person’s brain receives from their cell phone is billions of times stronger than the microwave radiation from the sun and stars. And at any particular frequency it is trillions of times stronger than the microwave radiation he or she receives from the sun and stars at that frequency. And the faint microwaves from the sun and stars are not pulsed and modulated. It is the pulsations and modulation that cause much of the harm.

Aren’t light and microwaves both electromagnetic? Therefore isn’t microwave radiation safe?

No. That is like saying arsenic is safe because oxygen and arsenic are both elements, or that cyanide is safe because water and cyanide are both chemicals. But oxygen and water are necessary for life, while arsenic and cyanide are deadly poisons. It is the same with electromagnetic radiation. Visible light is necessary for life. Microwave radiation is a deadly poison.

Aren’t toxic chemicals more harmful than electromagnetic radiation?

Electromagnetism is more complex and more fundamental than chemistry. Electromagnetism shapes the sun and stars. Electromagnetism animates life. Electromagnetism is behind chemistry. There is no “chemical force” in the universe. Outside of atomic nuclei, there is only gravity and electromagnetism. Electromagnetism guides everything we see, including ourselves. Chemistry is an effect, not a cause.

Can’t we find safe frequencies? Won’t that solve the problem?

That is looking at both wireless technology and life too simplistically.

Most wireless technology has only one goal: to transmit information to computers, information of great complexity and variety. It is not simple, constant radiation of one amplitude and one frequency: such radiation would carry no information. Instead, it is multiple large frequency bands, each divided into hundreds, thousands, and millions of individual frequencies of all different bandwidths, overlapping and interacting, pulsed at an enormous variety of intervals, in an enormous variety of shapes, patterns and durations, all over the world. Even a single signal from a single device has a variety of amplitudes, frequencies and pulsations, and is modulated in complex ways in order to carry all the information needed to be read by a cell phone or computer.

Life has to also carry an enormous, almost infinite complexity of information in its nervous systems and its meridians, and to store and process this information in its cells, organs and chakras, and in its DNA which is shared and circulated among trillions of individuals of 50 million different species, all connected to one another and to the earth, sky and universe in a grand circuit of energy and information.

The artificial cloud of energy and information is interfering with, overpowering and destroying the natural, living circuitry of energy and information. It cannot be otherwise.

What about LiFi? If light is safe, why not use light instead of microwaves?

Light is a nutrient. We absorb it with our eyes, and into our blood. It is necessary for health. It regulates our biorhythms. Green plants need it for photosynthesis. We absorb more of the pulsations and modulation frequencies when they are carried into our bodies by light than when they are carried into our bodies by microwaves. LiFi is more harmful to life than WiFi.

Cell phones are much smaller than cell towers. Doesn’t that mean they are safer? Doesn’t it mean the radiation does not travel as far?

Cell phones and cell towers emit the same radiation; size has nothing to do with it. The main difference is that a cell tower emits as many signals simultaneously as there are cell phones communicating with it at that time, whereas a cell phone only emits one voice channel and one data channel. A cell tower therefore emits stronger

by Arthur Firstenberg

1. HOW MANY SATELLITES ARE BEING LAUNCHED INTO SPACE?

In 2019, at least eight companies and governments are competing to send up fleets of from 150 to 42,000 satellites each.

SpaceX, based in the United States, has plans for 42,000 satellites, is already launching 60 at a time, twice a month, and is developing a larger rocket that can launch 120 at a time. As soon as 420 satellites are in orbit, it plans to turn them on. That could be as early as February 2020.

OneWeb, based in the United Kingdom, has plans for 5,260 satellites and intends to launch 30 at a time every three to four weeks beginning in January 2020. As soon as 300 satellites are in orbit, in late 2020, it plans to turn them on.

Telesat, based in Canada, has plans for 512 satellites, and intends to begin service in 2021.

Amazon has plans for 3,236 satellites and intends to begin service as soon as 578 are in orbit.

Lynk has plans for “several thousand” satellites and intends to begin service in 2023.

Facebook has plans for thousands of satellites but has not disclosed its plans to the public.

Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, has plans for 640 satellites, to be deployed between 2022 and 2026.

Aerospace Science and Industry Corp., a Chinese state-owned company, has plans for 156 satellites, to be in place by 2022.

In addition to these satellite plans, Loon, a subsidiary of Google, has a contract to provide Internet to remote areas of the Amazon rainforest in Peru from stratospheric balloons.

2. WHERE WILL THE SATELLITES BE LOCATED?

Most will be located in the ionosphere, which is the lower part of the Earth’s magnetosphere. SpaceX’s satellites will orbit as low as 340 kilometers (210 miles) in altitude.

3. WHAT ARE ALL THESE SATELLITES FOR?

They are for 5G, the Internet of Things, and to provide high speed Internet to every square inch of the Earth. Because data travels faster in space than in fiber, all cell towers will transmit their signals to satellites, to be routed through space to their destinations.

The satellites will also be used to populate all remote areas on Earth with cell towers. Every satellite customer will purchase a small “user terminal” they they will mount on their house or their car, where it will function as a small cell or mobile base station for use by the public. SpaceX has already applied to the Federal Communications Commission for permission to sell 1,000,000 user terminals in the United States, and OneWeb has applied for 1,900,000.

The only exception is Lynk, whose satellites will be able to connect directly to cell phones, and will turn every cell phone on Earth into a satellite phone. “The artificial divide between satellites and terrestrial systems is about to end,” says Lynk.

4. WILL THESE SATELLITES USE 5G TECHNOLOGY?

Yes. They will use phased arrays, beam-forming technologies, and millimeter waves with frequencies from 10 GHz to 80 GHz, just like 5G antennas on earth.

5. WHAT WILL THIS DO TO THE EARTH?

The Earth’s electromagnetic envelope—the magnetosphere—will be massively polluted. Millions of pulsed, modulated digital signals covering 80 GHz of spectrum will be emitted day and night into the magnetosphere by tens of thousands of satellites, each emitting multiple laser-like beams directed at the surface of the Earth. This will have several kinds of effects: (a) the direct radiation arriving at the ground; (b) pollution of the global electrical circuit; and (c) alteration of the magnetosphere itself.

Direct radiation. In 2001, Ukrainian scientists warned against the use of millimeter waves by low-orbit communication satellites using phased array antennas. “Observed higher resonance frequencies of a living cell coincide with [these] frequencies,” they wrote. “The power densities and duration of radiation created by these satellites will significantly exceed (by ten or more orders of magnitude—such irradiation is possible over the course of a whole lifetime) the energetic doses inducing change in living cells… Negative consequences of this may be changes in cell structures and physiological processes, genetic changes, and alteration of psychophysiological conditions and behavior.”[1]

Effects on the magnetosphere. The Earth’s magnetosphere already bears the imprint of 50 and 60 Hz and their harmonics from power lines. This phenomenon, known as power-line harmonic radiation (PLHR), has been extensively studied.[2],[3] When power line radiation reaches the magnetosphere, it is amplified thousands of times and interacts with the Van Allen belts, draining them of electrons, which rain down over the earth, modifying the electrical properties of the atmosphere. Not only may this increase the frequency of thunderstorms,[4] but it may shift the values of the Schumann resonances to which all living things are attuned.[5] “Continued expansion of the electrical power system threatens the viability of all life on earth,” wrote Dr. Robert O. Becker in 1985.[6] Tens of thousands of satellites, located in the lower magnetosphere, will be an even greater threat to all life.

Effects on the global electrical circuit. A current of electricity flows at all times through the ionosphere, down to the Earth in fair weather, through the Earth, and back up to the ionosphere in thunderstorms. This global circuit, studied today by atmospheric physicists, was first described in the fourth century B.C. in the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine: “The pure Yang forms the heaven, and the turbid Yin forms the earth. The Qi of the earth ascends and turns into clouds, while the Qi of the heaven descends and turns into rain.” At National Central University in Taiwan, and at Shangai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Fujian Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and elsewhere in China, scientists are confirming that the substance called Qi that flows from sky to Earth and circulates through our meridians, giving us life and health, is electricity.[7]

The ionosphere is charged to an average of 300,000 volts at all times and

by Arthur Firstenberg

view as PDF: in English en français in italiano

How much radiation does a cell phone emit, compared to what exists in nature?

If Neil Armstrong had brought a cell phone to the moon in 1969, it would have appeared from earth to be the brightest object in the universe in the microwave spectrum. In the daytime, the sun would have been brighter, but at night, the cell phone would have outshone every star.

There is a reason cell phones are outlawed in Green Bank, West Virginia: even a single cell phone, even from miles away, would blind the radio astronomers there and make it impossible for them to see the stars. Astronomers measure radio waves in units called janskys. A typical star shines at 10 to 100 janskys. The Sun shines at about 500,000 janskys. When you hold a cell phone against your head, you are pumping energy at the rate of about 100,000,000,000,000 janskys into your brain.[1]

How does that compare to radiation from a cell tower?

Suppose there is a 2,000-watt cell tower two blocks from your house. The part of your brain next to a cell phone is absorbing up to one hundred thousand times as much radiation from the phone as it is from the tower.[2]

Are the FCC’s exposure limits the same for cell phones and cell towers?

No. Cell phones are exempt from the limits imposed on cell towers. The FCC measures exposure in milliwatts per square centimeter. Depending on frequency, the FCC’s limit for whole body exposure to radiation from distant sources is about one milliwatt per square centimeter (1 mW/cm2). The limit for partial body exposure to a cell phone is approximately 20 mW/cm2 (for the brain), which assumes the phone is held at least one and a half centimeters away from your head. It is 50 mW/cm2 (for the hands, wrists and ears). If you hold the phone flush against your head, like most people do, or tightly between your head and your shoulder, the exposure to the brain can approach 50 mW/cm2 also.[3]

Who set the exposure limits?

A radar scientist named Herman Schwan who was brought to the United States from Germany after World War II as part of Project Paperclip. He made some assumptions about the rate at which the human body is capable of getting rid of heat, and on that basis he estimated that the body could safely absorb an amount of radiation equal to 100 mW/cm2. His assumptions were soon proven wrong, since experimental animals died within minutes when exposed to that much radiation. So over the years, the safe level was reduced first to 10 mW/cm2 and later to the current limit of 1 mW/cm2.

Why is the brain exempt from those limits?

Because those limits would make cell phones impractical. And because new assumptions were made about how much heat the brain could safely absorb, and the rate at which the body could dissipate that heat. It was decided that the brain could be safely heated by up to 1° C (1.8° F).

Have these assumptions proven correct?

No. A 1° C rise in temperature is usually considered a fever. And although the brain as a whole is heated less than 1° C by a cell phone, the absorption is not uniform. DNA, for example, resonantly absorbs microwave radiation. In experiments done at the Food and Drug Administra­tion during the 1980s, DNA absorbed 400 times as much radiation as expected.[4] Research done at the Max Planck Institute in Germany in 2006 found that brain synapses may be resonantly heated by up to 100° C while the brain as a whole is heated by only 1° C.[5]

I don’t get a headache from my cell phone. Can it be that bad?

Because brain tissue has no pain receptors, we don’t feel the injury. Even a headache doesn’t tell you what’s happening inside your head. Neurosurgen Leif Salford and his colleagues in Sweden found that a single two-hour exposure to a cell phone permanently destroys up to two percent of a rat’s brain cells.[6] Superficially the rats are fine, but two percent of their brain is gone. The experiments gave similar results even when the exposure level was reduced a hundredfold. And in experiments on the blood-brain barrier, they reduced the exposure level ten thousandfold and found that damage to the blood-brain barrier was worse when the exposure level was reduced.[7]

That means that holding the phone away from your head does not protect you. It means that if you use a Bluetooth headset, which emits only 2.5 milliwatts, you are doing more damage to yourself than if you hold the phone to your head. The blood-brain barrier keeps bacteria, virusus, and toxic chemicals out of your brain and maintains the brain at constant pressure. Too much intracranial pressure can lead to a stroke.

How fast does the damage to the blood-brain barrier happen?

Leakage of the blood-brain barrier is detectable within two minutes of exposure and probably begins within seconds.

What do the stroke statistics tell us?

The incidence of stroke overall is steady or declining but it is rising in adults younger than 50,[8] and shockingly so in very young adults. A Danish study published in 2016 examined the rate of strokes in people aged 15 to 30. The annual number of strokes in that age group in Denmark rose 50 percent between 1994 and 2012, and the annual number of transient ischemic attacks (mini-strokes) in that age group tripled.[9]

I’m confused. Which is safer, low power or high power?

Neither. The higher the power, the more heat. The lower the power, the more leakage of the blood-brain barrier. The higher the power, the more your metabolism is disturbed.[10] The lower the power, the more calcium leaks out of your

Guidance to governments, legislators, environmental organizations, schools, and religious, political and community leaders.

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Newly Revised and Expanded: RADIO WAVE PACKET What You Need to Know about Wireless Technology

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Available Now!

THE INVISIBLE RAINBOW A History of Electricity and Life

by Arthur Firstenberg paperback $24.95 available from Chelsea Green Publishing

Also available in: Deutsch   Español    Français   Italiano   Norsk   Русский  български   日本語    한국어 (vol. 1)   한국어 (vol. 2)                                                 

“I found it to be a mystery unfolding and could not put it down. This book is very, very important.

– Sandy Ross, Ph.D. President, Health and Habitat, Inc.

“As a medical doctor I found it hard to put down.”

– Bradley Johnson, M.D. Amen Center, San Francisco

“Just as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring warned the mid-twentieth century about the dangers of indiscriminate chemical and pesticide use, Arthur Firstenberg’s Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life provides a comprehensive analysis of the perils of electricity’s proliferation and exposure to its electromagnetic radiation.”

– Kate Showers, Ph.D., University of Sussex

Electricity is at once the spark of life and the undoing of it. To what extent is our present environmental crisis a result of this contradiction? Where, exactly, did the modern epidemics of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease come from, and why are they out of control? Just how dangerous are computers and cell phones? This groundbreaking book supplies the answers to these and other questions. It is a must-read that begins in the year 1746 and explains what has gone wrong and what must change if we are to survive. A breaker of taboos and an antidote to two centuries of denial, this book is uplifting. An entertaining tale and a resource for researchers, it is a road map to how we came to be where we are, and a window to a possible, necessary, more alive future.

OUR MISSION The Cellular Phone Task Force is dedicated to halting the expansion of wireless technology because it cannot be made safe. We provide: education to the public concerning electromagnetic pollution (electrosmog) advocacy for an electromagnetically cleaner environment support for individuals disabled by radiation from wireless technology and other sources.