What "cyber hacking"? The meters report usage only.

http://marylandsmartmeterawareness.org/smart-meter-news/newscientist-wireless-smart-meters-tell-snoopers-when-you-are-not-home/

This article explains how easy it is to hack into the Smart meters and get information.

here is a link to a msnbc article on how smartmeters are used to hack into homes
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45946984/ns/technology_and_science-security/t/smart-electricity-meters-can-be-used-spy-private-homes/#.UN

Indeed! If you want to be afraid of something that overwhelming science says is perfectly safe, fine, but be prepared to pay up. I don't want to subsidize the ill-informed.

Actually science is pointing to significant safety concerns .

the BioInitiative 2012 Report says that evidence for risks to health has substantially increased since 2007 from electromagnetic fields . The report reviews over 1800 new scientific studies and includes 29 independent science and medical experts from around the world. It shows :
evidence for neurotoxicity , fetal impacts , cancer, blood barrier leakage and sperm damage. http://www.bioinitiative.org/

l recommend you take the time to read the science , look at all the sides, then decide where you stand.
This will take a while .

http://www.childhoodcancer2012.org.uk/slides/session7.3-henshaw.pdf

Childhood Cancer 2012 Conference presentation on EMF and Childhood Cancer.

Pepco is about profits.

Hi Frank - There are some links about this issue in the comment section of this article: http://chevychase.patch.com/articles/concerns-raised-about-smart-meters. Hope they will be helpful to you!

it is time for this country to get serious about Radio frequency microwave radiation as emitted from Smartmeters, cell phones and so so sadly.... WIFI.

In Europe - france has banned WIFI in schools and the european Parliment is asking for a precautionary approach and reduction of exposure for children. In italy the Supreme court ruled a mans brain tumor was due to his cell phone and huge lawsuits are looming in Isreal about WIFI in schools. In India government officials changed radiation norms to a tenth of their previous standard based on health concerns.
In the US??
In the USA it gets almost zero coverage.

Steven Maxwell: the reason it gets almost zero coverage is that there has been absolutely zero scientific research that has linked radio frequency radiation with a scientifically accepted cause of harm to living tissue. In your many comments on the topic all over Patch, you link to several crackpot websites, and articles about crazy people who think they're sensitive to radio waves (note that no science backs this up. None.)

You appear to be the same type of crackpot who argues that GM food is dangerous (it isn't) and vaccines cause autism (it doesn't.) If there were a number of reputable, peer-reviewed, repeatable scientific studies that indicate that RF radiation causes harm, then perhaps there would be more coverage. But the fact is, there isn't. Please stop spreading your lies and disinformation.

Dear CP resident
it would be hard to know what is more of a crack pot but here is a CNN article on cell phone radiation when the classification first came out.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.html

do you think the WHO is a crackpot?
The IARC?
what about the American Academy of Pediatricians who is now coming out supporting the "Cell phone right to know Legislation" .

http://www.ewg.org/release/american-academy-pediatrics-endorses-cell-phone-safety-bill

Are they crackpots too?
They are throwing in their support because childrens skulls absorb so much more of the radiation than adults.

Most important quotes from the CNN article
""What microwave radiation does in most simplistic terms is similar to what happens to food in microwaves, essentially cooking the brain," Dr. Black chair of neurology said. "So in addition to leading to a development of cancer and tumors, there could be a whole host of other effects like cognitive memory function, since the memory temporal lobes are where we hold our cell phones."

"A team of 31 scientists from 14 countries, including the United States, made the decision after reviewing peer-reviewed studies on cell phone safety. The team found enough evidence to categorize personal exposure as "possibly carcinogenic to humans"

Did you know that an Iphone should be at least half an inch from your ear so it does not exceed FCC guidelines?

My bill went up significantly after smart meter installation. I read the meter myself, did the calculations, and found out PEPCO had misread the meter and transposed numbers. Even though the smart meter was installed, it was not yet on line. A human still had to come out and read it. So one option is make sure YOU verify meter readings on your statement.

Try reading actual science: http://www.skepdic.com/electrosensitives.html

Have we so quickly forgotten about asbestos , lead and cigarette smoke? How long it took to get regulations in place despite the knowledge that was out there so many years earlier.

Perhaps a bit interesting is that this teacher points out the skeptic website that CP resident points us to. As if this is the information source we should trust over doctors ? Really?

You clearly are very good at searching out whatever psuedo-scientific bunk supports what you want to believe. It is no use arguing with people like you, who always need to feel they are the victim of something. Enjoy spamming Patch and other sites with your views - the intelligent among us who value the scientific method and evidence-based policymaking will continue to ignore you.

The main source of pesudoscience in this arena is that funded by the electric companies, and Telephone Companies.

I see another uninformed, unqualified, but probably good-hearted person who has actively looked for something to blame for any problems in their life. The article is rife with factual errors ("microwave-level energy" being just one of them.)

See http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/cellphones. The important part is:
"Although there have been some concerns that radiofrequency energy from cell phones held closely to the head may affect the brain and other tissues, to date there is no evidence from studies of cells, animals, or humans that radiofrequency energy can cause cancer."

There is also a great section about "Why are the findings from different studies of cell phone use and cancer risk inconsistent?" that talks about all the various ways a study can go wrong and show a link where there is none. This type of reporting bias is not limited to RF/health studies.

Cell phones have been widely used for the past 20 years. In that time they have gotten less, not more, powerful (as the number of towers proliferate.) There has been no outbreak of any sort of cancer, disease, or disorder that has been able to be traced to cell phone radiation. Further, there has been no discovered mechanism for this non-ionizing radiation to cause any harm to living tissue.

sigh
http://www.prlog.org/12052898-studies-show-cell-phone-use-increases-brain-cancer-risk.html
Dr. Lennart Hardell and his research group just published a review paper in the journal, Pathophysiology, that examined the evidence for brain tumor risk associated with wireless phone use (1, 2). The researchers conducted a meta-analysis in which data from previous studies were subjected to a systematic, quantitative analysis.

The meta-analysis found that the risk of glioma, a tumor which constitutes 80% of all malignant (i.e. cancerous) brain tumors, was 2.29 times greater on the side of the head where users held their phones among those who used mobile phones 1,640 or more hours in their lifetime (as compared to non-regular users). The corresponding risk for acoustic neuroma, a non-malignant tumor of the nerve that connects the ear to the brain, was similar—2.55 times greater. In contrast, the corresponding risk for meningioma, a tumor of the outer covering of the brain, was not significantly greater among regular cell phone users. (Over a ten year period, 1,640 hours corresponds to 27 minutes of cell phone use per day on average.)

I do appreciate your decorum in the last post. Please note that powerline EMFs above 3 milligauss are shown to increase a childs leukemia risk to double or more.
The research shows this over and over again per the WHO and IARC as well. Sadly as the mechanism by which this could be caused by EMF is not understood by doctors they never could say it was a cause and effect relationahip.
Sadly lobbyist from the power companies forced the EPA to shelve its Draft Report that would have influenced the way electricity is wired in residential settings here in the USA.

Indeed, no one says EMFs cause it, but man there sure are way tooooooooooooooooooooo many associations via research.
I hope you understand this concept.
I hope you do not live under a powerline.

Especially as now the evidence is mounting that ELF EMFs cause neurodegeneration via the oxidative stress they put on the brain.
sigh

50 years to get lead paint banned in the US compared to Europe. Any thoughts oon why?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18990717
Powerlines and dementia in 4.7 Million Swiss people

a Cancer researcher i should say.