Smart Meter Radiation Refugee Files $120 Million Lawsuit

At West Boylston High School young Deborah Cooney dazzled her teachers. On graduation day it was no surprise when she was chosen to give the ceremony speech.

She studied economics at Brown University. This catapulted her into the role of vice president of Peoples Savings Bank in Worcester, MA.

She was V.P. for 10 years.

After being laid off following an ownership change in the 1990s she decided to pursue her dream. She set out to become a professional musician.

She headed for the sunshine state. She soon found herself playing piano and singing in the entertainment suites of prestigious hotels like the Queen Mary, the Ritz Carlton and the Century Plaza Hotel.

After a spell moving around and performing in “lots of resorts, bars and dives all over the world” Deborah settled down in San Diego. She opened a studio and gave piano and singing lessons.

All’s good up to here, right.

Then….

Bam

Her life was turned upside down in April 2011. She was suddenly stricken by a high-pitched ringing in her ears.

Deborah recalls “I remember the exact moment the tinnitus started I was just relaxing in my house in between [teaching] sessions. And all of a sudden it was like somebody turned something on.”

Strange isn’t it how it just came on like that?

Not that strange. For Deborah the culprit was obvious, a bank of 100-plus wireless smart meters installed in a nearby apartment complex.

Things went from bad to worse. “I couldn’t stand the house anymore,” Deborah said. “I couldn’t sleep in the house. I couldn’t eat any of the food in the house … it got so radiated it got me sick. … I was eating out. I was trying to sleep on the beach.”

For Mimi, Deborah’s adopted cat, the effects were particularly noticeable. Her behavior completely flipped. The feline went from being an indoor “house cat” to one who stayed increasingly outdoors. Mimi ran away, only to return “completely dehydrated, having heart palpitations … the same things I was suffering from” recalls Deborah.

Mimi came back because she realized there was no place to go, Deborah says. Sadly Mimi has since passed away.

In August 2011 Deborah realized she could no longer sleep, work or live in her own house. Leaving her Frisbee champion boyfriend, she piled her belongings into her 2003 Hyundai Accent and drove 2,600 miles from Chateau Drive to Green Bank in West Virginia.

Green Bank West Virginia is the location of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. It’s also protected from cell phone towers and the like.

In December 2012 Deborah filed a $120 million federal lawsuit against San Diego Gas & Electric Co., smart meter manufacturer Itron, the state Attorney General, the state Public Utilities Commission and its president, Michael Peevey, and others.

The lawsuit, filed in the San Francisco federal court, could be a first of its kind. In it Deborah alleges that:
“[she] could feel the immediate effects of radiation when she walked in the front door, experiencing a pins-and-needles feeling all over her skin, muscle contractions, stiffness, and pain, ataxia, dehydration, etc. Plaintiff felt a shock to her heart … at exactly 1:00, 5:00, and 9:00, as if something was being transmitted every four hours, on the hour. The shock would initiate cascading heart attack symptoms: chest pain, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, nausea, circulatory problems, edema, numbness and an impending sense of doom.”

Deborah now lives in a 10-by-20-foot rented cabin without electricity and drives 8 miles to use a small home to shower, cook and use the phone and computer.

“The smart grid completely destroyed [my life] plan” of buying a home, solar panels and a plug-in electric car”. Now, she says, “I’m having a hell of a time surviving and paying the bills. … I’m not happy here. I want to be in California—and I can’t because of the smart grid.”

Deborah’s Story Isn’t Unique

There are countless others like Deborah who’s lives have been turned upside down by smart meter and similar EMF exposures.

What’s unique is Deborah’s ‘Erin Brockovich style reaction’ to her situation. More people need to stand up for their rights like Deborah.

Unfortunately everyone doesn’t have the means to file a federal lawsuit. But everyone should have the right to live a normal life.

When electrical sensitivity sprung into my world in 2002 I was also deprived of living a normal life. One day I was fine, the next BAM. I couldn’t use my cell phone. I couldn’t use a cordless phone. I couldn’t use my computer. I couldn’t even use my land-line.

I pretended I was OK. I wasn’t OK. My existence was blighted by a long list of ailments and all the time I was getting worse. This went on for years.

It was 2 years before I even admitted to myself that I was electrically sensitive. Not because I was too proud but because I was ignorant.

I believed that I was the only person on the planet reacting to EMFs in this way.

The day that I learned that I was not alone, that day my life changed. But I didn’t suddenly get better. That took years. Lots of 1 step forward 2 steps back moments.

But I did it.

Am I ‘cured’? Cured is the wrong word. That presupposes that being electrically sensitive means there’s something wrong with you. Which is not correct, everyone’s electrically sensitive. The problem is when the reaction becomes extreme and you can no longer function normally.

Do I live normally? What’s normal? I don’t own a cell phone and I don’t have wall-to-wall WiFi in my home and office. But for the rest, on the face of it I live pretty much like most people. That’s to say my electrical sensitivity is no longer a handicap for me. It doesn’t stop me doing things. It doesn’t affect my work time and it doesn’t affect my playtime. I can go to friends who’ve got cordless and WiFi, it no longer bothers me. I can take public transport, trains, buses, trams, they no longer bother me.

I can travel. One of the things that hit me most when I was sick was not being able to get on an airplane. I can now take long distance flights, and have done every year for the last 6 years. And I can regularly stay in hotels and at friends with WiFi and other wireless exposures.

Why am I telling you this? Because there’s so much that people don’t understand about EMFs and EMF protection.

In 2009 I created this website. I wanted to get things off my chest. I wanted people to know the truth about the dangers of EMFs. People started sending me messages asking for help with their EMF problems. I answered their questions. Then there got to be so many questions I couldn’t answer everyone individually. So I wrote a few articles answering the questions that got asked the most. It just grew from there.

Then I began to feel frustrated. People asked me how I got better. I tried to explain. There’s a lot to explain. I couldn’t explain in a few lines. So I decided to lay it all out in a book.

It took me a year to write my book, I called it “Beating Electrical Sensitivity – The Path To Tread”. It’s a great book. I love reading books. And I’ve had a lot of positive feedback from people who bought it. But I realized that everyone doesn’t like reading books.

So I set about creating something better.

My knowledge has evolved in the 2 years since I wrote the book, I wanted to reflect this. I also wanted something more hands on. That’s what I’ve been working on for the last 6 months. Going beyond the book.

But the aim is the same. EMF protection. To make it so that you can live a normal life again.

Does it work? There are no guarantees. It depends on something that I have no control over. It depends on you and your situation.

Are You Shooting Yourself In The Foot On EMF Protection?

What I do know is that there are a lot of people shooting themselves in the foot on EMF protection. Most people don’t have a sufficiently good understanding of basic EMF protection; buying the right EMF meters, how to use those meters, applying shielding. Then there are those that have understood the importance of basic EMF protection but they think that’s all they need to do. They forget what I call the ‘bigger picture’. Then there are those that convince themselves that it’s ‘too late’ for them. That they’re beyond help.

Why did it work for me? What makes me so special? It’s a question I’ve often asked myself. I’m no idiot but I’m not that smart a guy. At school I always seemed to have to work harder than the others. I have qualifications but none in the field of EMFs and health. So why me?

Maybe it’s because of all that. Dealing with electrical sensitivity has been a huge challenge but sometimes it seems as though everything I’ve ever done has prepared me for that challenge. Rising to a challenge is like everything else, the more you do it the more you get better at it.

You know my thoughts on gizmos and ‘quick fixes’. Mine doesn’t involve any of that. Neither is it an easy solution. It requires effort. It takes time. That’s how the body works. That’s how healing works.

Healing works through nature. Or to be more precise, healing works by harnessing the forces of nature.

 

I highly commend what Deborah’s doing. She knows her chances of winning the lawsuit are extremely slim, but she’s not letting that put her off. She’s doing it anyway.

But as commendable as Deborah’s lawsuit is you can’t count on Deborah to improve your lot. You need to take action and protect yourself.