Should we be wary of wireless?

Less than a century ago, walking into a Sears to grab a new pair of shoes for your kid, you might have been greeted by a Pedoscope. The child would be invited to jam her shoed feet into the contraption to ensure a prospective pair provided the very best fit, by way of X-ray. What did these machines accomplish that wriggling ones toes could not? Nothing really. It was a big ugly gimmick that got asses in the seats.

By the 1950s, it was revealed to be a pretty dangerous one, raising the likelihood of the child, and especially the poor shoe salesman, developing cancer. We now know X-rays need to be handled with great care, but back then, it was just a shiny new toy that looked innocuous enough and increased revenue. Who knew?

It’s stories like this that warm my heart whenever we play with new technology, especially when it’s rolled out in the interest of dazzling rather than really improving life. Most of the time it’s harmless — like Chia Pets — but every now and then you get something special.

Some of you may know Elisa Boxer-Cook from her time as an adjunct professor in USM’s English Department or as a reporter and anchor on our local ABC affiliate. Lately, she’s been earning headlines as the figurehead of the movement to slow Central Maine Power’s planned overhaul of the state’s power meters — those beautiful gray boxes with the cylindrical windows that tell the world how much energy your home burns. The plan is to rip those clunky old boxes from your vinyl siding, and replace them with clunky new ones called “smart meters.”

The “smart” refers to several qualities: first, CMP says they’re more precise than the old ones and will someday allow you to pinpoint the biggest energy-hogs in your house. (Is it the five cell phone chargers you leave in the wall all day, or your son’s Sailor Moon nightlight?)

The second killer feature and obvious incentive for the company are fancy new radios that allow for capturing your usage wirelessly, cutting out the human readers who have traditionally done the job. And this is where most of the opposition comes from. Every day, smart meters will bounce off of one another throughout your neighborhood, collectively transmitting everybody’s bill down to the penny. Which has prompted some to ask — could all this new radiation be harmful to the people slated to live in a swamp of it?

CMP’s retort: You’re already in a sea of wireless love, folks. That smartphone in your pocket, the wireless router that lets you watch Netflix in the bathroom. Each of these devices have a similar method of shooting data through and around us, so CMP sells the smart meters as just another drop in the bucket.

But not everybody is willing to buy this claim on its face. Boxer-Cook notes that while it’s true, wireless transmission is hard to escape, the new meters will be pumping out 40 times the radiation of a Wi-Fi router — no slouches themselves — and would be mandated for any home that desires electricity. Her organization is raising awareness of the unsettled science regarding health effects, but all they’re really asking for is for the the ability to opt out individually. You can’t just call up Crazy Eddie’s Electricity Emporium and go with a more traditional operation — CMP is a monopoly.

If you can’t tell, I’m sympathetic to the opt-out crowd. Do I think these smart meters will kill us all? I lean toward no, but then again I would: I live in an apartment on a tightly-packed street, and I’m addicted to Words with Friends on my iPod Touch. So if these smart meters are hurting people in airy suburbs, I’m toast.

Still, the current ubiquity can’t justify a mentality of anything goes or that opponents must be kooks. Last week The Portland Press Herald profiled Boxer-Cook, leading with the sentence — “Elisa Boxer-Cook doesn’t own a cell phone.” Aside from being false, and akin to opening with “Elisa Boxer-Cook follows the Mayan calendar,” it was a good indication of how alien we find the notion of restraint or extensive vetting before we adopt the very latest tech. Even by state mandate. Right now, CMP is throwing its entire legal arsenal at stopping the debate and getting on with the project.

We’ve only been plugged into this Matrix for a very short time; while Boxer-Cook and others have cited migraines and such from this microwave stew, a less obvious and more grave impact could be the idea that it’s doing subtle, long-term damage to our cells, and that’s something we wouldn’t know for awhile. We do know that you have to get pretty far out into the country to not have somebody’s spam e-mail pulsating through your thyroid.

Links:

Smart Meter Safety Coalition – Organization founded by Elisa Boxer-Cook

CMP | Smart Meter – CMP’s information page and rebuttal.

The SMSC and it’s supporters have lodged more than just health complaints at CMP over the new meters – they are also concerned about reports of inaccurate usage reporting and the meters’ vulnerability to hacking. More information is available on their website.

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Correction: the original print version featured casual references to Teflon and saccharin, alluding to their bouts of bad press when they were listed as carcinogenic. More recent research has found the risk to be overstated, and the references have been removed.

That’s no reason not to share this song by Gilda Radner.