Announcing: A Symptom Checklist for Residential Smart Meters

Helping Households Detect a EMF-Related Health Decline

For many years it has been a goal of mine to create a ‘bingo card’ checklist of relevant EMF-related symptoms so that families might more quickly ‘connect the dots’ linking their inevitable EMF-overexposure and the rise of any associated deleterious health symptoms.

I’ve long been concerned with the onset of sharp household health decline, generally, but also the manifestation of EMF over-reactivity (sometimes called Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity) soon after having a Utility ‘smart meter’ installed at home.

With this SubStack post, I can finally announce ‘mission accomplished’!

Here is the full handout, current as of January 24, 2025.

More Timely Than Ever, In Massachusetts

Massachusetts Utilities¹ have been given the green light to widely deploy their Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) offerings. This was all the impetus needed to ramp up upgrades to the existing electric metering, from the hodgepodge of older analog and newer AMR (advanced Meter Reading digital meters) to the next generation AMI². We have already heard from people across the Commonwealth that this effort is actively under way in their area (as of December 2024). No one will be excepted as this rolls out over the next few years, though these Utilities are required to provide safe opt-out options, for a monthly fee.

Those of us ‘in the trenches’ have seen that there is a correlation between poor health and installation of newer ‘smart meters’, with clear evidence of causation. These meters are aggressive to human biology and have never been tested for long term health effects. Some people have reported significant symptoms on the same day as their ‘smart meter upgrade’, some symptoms even starting at the moment these meters are newly energized. There is nothing ‘psychosomatic’ about these symptoms, nor do they stem from the ‘placebo effect’ or ‘nocebo effect’. They are genuine, repeatable, and widely seen in a segment of the human population (and their pets!).

In fact, such negative health effects are predictable, given how thousands of scientific papers spanning over more than 6 decades repeatedly show the deleterious effects of non-thermal levels of wireless communication signal radiation, one of the key EMF stressors that stem from the ‘smart’ meters being deployed in the Commonwealth.

Distilling A Symptom Short List

I felt it was important that the form factor was to be a single-sided sheet for all symptoms, with space to keep track of up to 5 household members individually . I envision this as something tacked to the refrigerator or other visible place in households whose health is anything but perfect or who will proactively monitor after their own smart meters have entered the picture.

I managed to squeeze around eighty symptoms on the checklist.

To come up with the content of the checklist, I reviewed nearly five hundred anecdotes and testimonials from people who correlated their health issues with broadcasting meters. Most of these comments were from the 2009-2012 time period, but the meters of today are no less injurious to biology, and we have every reason to believe they may be still worse. In many of these testimonials, similar symptoms were described and often the sufferers were able to report symptom abatement or cessation soon after the offending meters were removed from the home.

In addition, there were several broad self-reporting surveys of smart meter health impacts. From these, I identified a top-20 list of the most commonly reported symptoms.

I made many editorial judgments about what was placed on the list and what did not make the cut. At the end of the attached document, I provide my definition of each line item. If anyone feels strongly that they have ideas for changes which would improve the result, please leave me a comment.

The Final Symptom List

The final list includes not only basic mental and physical health symptoms, but includes the listing of key diagnosed conditions that are EMF-influenced as well as lifestyle circumstances that people might not associate with the negative influence of smart meters. In short, I wanted people to be able to see the bigger picture, from what might be relatively minor symptoms, individually, but when considered collectively are indicative of a situation requiring action at the household level.

How To Use the Symptom Checklist

Although the first page houses the symptom checklist, there are other pages that carefully explain the definition of each symptom, an outline of next steps if you are checking way too many of the boxes, a list of references to become more knowledgeable

Here is the built-in example I provide.

Next Steps and References Are Included

There is a page in the handout which gives some specific ‘next steps' for people who realize their health decline might be due to EMF-overexposure, such as from a newly installed ‘smart meter’. This will include developing a game plan to find/remove EMF over-exposure in the home. Note that although we often single out the electric smart meters, the modern natural gas and municipal water meters are also ‘smart’ in a similar manner; these all need to stay on your radar.

Finally, there are references for learning more about EMF-affiliated health considerations, from both sufferers and scientists. Learning the facts, rather than the spin, is key to regaining the upper hand in this situation.

If you want more specific information about Smart Meters that we see in Massachusetts, then you may wish to start with my previous SubStack article, or dig much deeper at the new focused Smart Meter Science Substack from Patricia Burke.

1. At least, the investor-owned Utilities - Eversource, National Grid and Unitil

2. In Massachusetts, the term Advanced Meter Functionality (AMF) is often used in place of AMI. They are synonymous.