Letter to the Editor
Dear Editor:
Thank you for publishing an article about the water meter replacement program. Rob Armstrong’s September 28 memo to Meaford Council indicates that they plan to start installing the Neptune R900 radio frequency water meters inside people’s homes at the end of this month.
The last paragraph of Mr. Armstrong’s memo indicates that people who are concerned about the health effects of EMFs (electro-magnetic fields) that are emitted by such devices can request an option – a transmitter that is placed on the side of the house instead of inside the house.
On this issue of health effects, you might be interested in the statements made by Dr. David Carpenter MD, a graduate of Harvard Medical School and a physician who has worked in the area of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and public health for over 18 years. He states that there is no evidence that radio-frquency transmitting meters are safe for human beings. He says that there is ample evidence that demonstrates “convincingly and consistently” that exposure to radio-frequency radiation (RFR) at elevated levels for long periods of time increases the risk of cancer, damages the nervous system, and adversely affects the reproductive organs.
Unfortunately, it seems that the Neptune R900 device will emit EMFs 24 hours a day into our Meaford homes. We are told this choice was made so that a truck can drive by at any time to take a reading for billing purposes. However, the City of Toronto found an elegant way to avoid running their water meters all the time. This is what the Toronto health department says about how they chose the healthiest system they could find: www1.toronto.ca/City%20Of%20Toronto/Toronto%20Public%20Health/Healthy%20Public%20Policy/Radiation/Files/pdf/B/Backgrounder-RFs%20and%20TO%20Water%20Meters.pdf
A manager of Toronto Water provided us with some details. Their system uses a Neptune T10 mechanical meter (not-transmitting) to measure the flow of water. It is an analogue device that operates like an odometer in a car. It is installed inside the house. The system also has an Aclara Technologies Series 2000 transmitter to connect to a head-in reader. This transmitter is attached outside the house and is programmed to transmit only four times a day… and each time is less than a second. There are 285 readers spread over Toronto.
Aclara supplied the system to Toronto under a contract with Neptune Technology Group Ltd.
If a big city like Toronto can find a way to get their water meter readings with units only transmitting 1 second a day, Meaford should be able to. It would be truly wonderful if Council would look into the possibility of installing readers in Meaford and using the Aclara technology!
Katharine Auslander and Mike Belec, Meaford 4 Safe Technology
