FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE            June 17, 2013
Press Release #1

 

An appeal of the Michigan Public Service Commission’s order regarding the DTE smart meter opt-out has been filed by Linda Kurtz and Cynthia Edwards of Ann Arbor and Leslie Panzica-Glapa. The DTE opt-out plan does not allow customers to retain their analog meters or their old-style digital meters. Rather, it requires every customer to accept a smart (AMI, or advanced) meter. Under the plan, customers wishing to opt out would later have the radiofrequency of these meters turned off, turning it into what DTE calls a nontransmitting AMI meter, or the opt-out meter. Kurtz and Edwards are co-intervenors in the opt-out case before the MPSC and organizers of the Smart Meter Education Network. Panzica-Glapa is the woman who took the smart meter off her home in Dexter in order to protect her and her son’s health.

Kurtz said, “What DTE, the MPSC, and most of the public does not understand is that for customers who are sensitive to electromagnetic frequencies, turning off the wireless on the meters is not sufficient. The switched mode power supplies of the advanced digital meters cause power quality issues in building wiring, creating what is commonly known as dirty electricity. This is a spiky, pulsed electric current that has been shown in numerous scientific studies to have harmful effects on the human body, including the breakage of DNA bonds, which can lead to cancer. For people like me, the effects are more immediate. When I am in a building with smart meters or DTE’s opt-out meter for more than 20 minutes, I am unable to sleep at night and have heart palpitations and difficulty focusing. Imagine if a meter like that were on my home 24/7.” Edwards experiences blood pressure changes and heart arrhythmia in buildings with opt-out meters, and reports that a friend of hers experiences high blood pressure, breathing problems, tinnitus, and pain in her eyes. Kurtz says, “I spent a week in a home with a digital meter similar to DTE proposes to put on our homes. I was literally unable to sleep the entire time I was there. This is the home in which I grew up. Unbeknownst to me, a digital meter had been put on my parents’ home. I know  what my life will be like with one of these meters on my home. It will be unbearable. I will be unable to function.”

Panzica-Glapa removed the smart meter from her home in January after her son’s blood sugar levels spiked. “He’d had stable A1Cs for years, ever since he was diagnosed with diabetes,” Panzica-Glapa said. “We went for his regular check-up about 3 months after the smart meter was put on our home, and his levels had spiked into the danger zone, going from a stable 7.2 up to 9.4. A month after I took the meter off our home, his levels dropped back to 7.8, and at his next check-up were 7.4.” Meanwhile, Panzica-Glapa was able to sleep again. She hadn’t known that an advanced meter had been put on her home. Last July, she found herself suddenly unable to sleep. After a month of essentially sleepless nights, she began talking with people and someone asked her if she had a smart meter on her home. She said, “What’s a smart meter?” They explained to her that she should look for a blue face on a digital meter. She found she had a smart meter and, after another sleepless week, began sleeping in a tent in her backyard until the high winds in October repeatedly knocked her tent over. Since she removed the smart meter, she has experienced better sleep, but because she works in homes with advanced meters, she is still experiencing a great deal of difficulty.

Kurtz and Edwards are co-organizers of the Smart Meter Education Network, a group they organized last summer when they began experiencing health problems from advanced meters. The group is active in Ann Arbor and southeastern Michigan and hopes to expand its outreach into the western and northern parts of the state.

Said Panzica-Glapa: “I’m involved in this effort with the Smart Meter Education Network because my health is affected so severely. What people don’t realize is, even if they can’t feel it, it may well be affecting their health. My son couldn’t feel any of the symptoms I felt, and slept well at night. Yet his blood sugar levels shot through the roof. I’ve talked to so many people who have been reporting health changes since smart meter installation, but none of them knew to link it to the meters. Clients with blood sugar spikes like my son’s, heart arrhythmias, tinnitus, memory problems. Most people, like me, didn’t even know a meter had been put on their home.”

DTE has begun enforcing its opt-out plan on selected customers, sending notices via certified letter demanding that individuals who have “expressed an interest” in opting out call DTE’s main number to opt out  within 30 days of receipt of the letter. If they do not respond, they will be deemed to have opted in, and a radio-disabled smart meter will be installed on their home. Paradoxically, DTE is not informing all of its customers that an opt-out is available. Huge swaths of neighborhoods are receiving notices that DTE will be installing advanced meters on their homes within a few weeks, but none of those customers are being informed of the opt-out. “This would seem to be in direct contravention of the MPSC order, which directed DTE to notify all its customers of the opt-out,” said Kurtz. Kurtz and Edwards filed a petition for a rehearing with the MPSC on June 14, asking that the commission clarify its May 15 order.

 
Court of Appeals case number: 316728