Editor,

Ever since SMPA announced their smart meter program, folks have been writing letters to the editor decrying the RF energy (also known as electromagnetic fields, or EMF) emitted by these devices. But it's the amount of RF energy that's important, not simply the fact that they emit RF.

We are bathed in RF energy. The sun is a huge source--it doesn't just give us light. AM and FM broadcast stations emit copious quantities of RF. Your cell phone emits RF. The cell phone towers do likewise. Your garage door opener uses RF. Public safety officials communicate using RF. The wireless broadband service from Ouraynet and Skybeam emit RF energy, as do the Dish satellites. If you or your neighbors have a wireless home network, you get sprayed with that too. It's everywhere!

But how much is too much? As a ham radio operator (and an electrical engineer), I was trained on harmful RF emissions. RF damages the body through heating. Think of it: you put a TV dinner in the microwave and nearly a thousand watts of RF cooks it. A thousand watts is a million times a milliwatt, which is about the power level the smart meters actually radiate (most of their RF is conducted away over the electrical feed lines). Frankly, a milliwatt isn't going to cook anything. That's less power than your cell phone puts out. And, the power that your body absorbs drops off as the square of the distance from the RF-emitting device, meaning that if you move a device that's one foot from you to two feet, you cut the amount of RF you get by a factor of four.

I challenge anyone who claims to be "EMF sensitive" to a double blind test. You and an observer sit in a room. I'll sit in the next room with another observer and turn an RF-emitting device on and off at odd intervals. Can you tell whether it's on or off? There's no way on the planet you'll figure that out! The human body is simply not sensitive to milliwatt levels of RF energy.

Let's get some sense back into this debate. Smart meter technology is here to stay. A meter that can be read from afar is not the same thing as demand pricing (it takes a different kind of meter). There really is some science at work here, not to mention economics. I'm happy to be the myth buster.

Dave Casler
Ridgway