The wireless age has introduced countless devices that many of us can’t live without, like cell phones, laptop computers and wifi routers. Like all electronics they communicate using electromagnetic frequencies - or EMFs. Some people worry that EMFs are making them sick - and say that technology should slow down.
KQED has done a lot of reporting on SmartMeters over the past year, including this story from the Central Valley by KQED’s Sasha Khokha.
My interest in the subject stems from a note I read on a neighborhood listserve, about a company’s plans to install a wireless cell phone tower on Bernal Hill. A number of San Francisco neighborhoods have fought these towers in recent years – often successfully –over concerns about EMFs – electromagnetic frequencies.
As I learned pretty quickly, there’s no mere toe-dipping on the subject of EMFs. People have arguing about the health effects of EMFs ever since (and probably before) the Cold War, when employees at the US Embassy in Moscow blamed a variety of health problems on the fact that the KGB had been directing high-power microwaves at the walls of the building.