Neuro-degeneration - the Mercury-Alzheimer's Connection

Someone in America is diagnosed with Alzheimer's every 68 seconds. Mercury is the only toxin that has ever been shown to directly cause all of the typical degenerative pathologies of Alzheimer's disease in nerve cell cultures. This video from the University of Calgary illustrates an experiment that showed mercury in exceedingly small quantities causing the breakdown of growing neurons, leaving the neurofibrillary tangles seen in AD.

Mercury - How to Get this Lethal Poison Out of Your Body

Mercury poisoning could be leading to your ill health and weight gain, and you may not even realize it. In this weeks UltraWellness blog, Mark Hyman MD reviews some of the most recent research on the effects of mercury toxicity, explains how you can find out if you have a heavy load of mercury in your body, and offers suggestion on how to limit your exposure.

Mercury Detox - A 3-step Plan to Recover Your Health

Are you worried that you might be poisoned by mercury? A scary thought - but there is a way to heal. In this weeks UltraWellness blog Mark Hyman, MD outlines a 3-step plan to help your body detoxify from mercury and recover your health.

Health hazards of silver and mercury, or amalgam filling

Dental amalgam is a primitive filling material made of between 43 and 54 percent mercury.  Amalgam fillings are commonly called as “silver fillings” – a marketing term that deceives many consumers into believing that amalgam is mainly silver, which is only a minor component of amalgam. 

Amalgam is not stable after it is implanted into human teeth – it constantly releases mercury vapor into your body.  And this mercury bioaccumulates.

What are the dangers of dental mercury?

1. Dental mercury endangers our environment
   

   Amalgam accounts for between 240-300 tons of mercury entering the market every year. In the United States, dental offices are the second largest user of mercury – and this mercury eventually ends up in our environment by one pathway or another. Dental mercury from amalgam pollutes:

   • water via not only dental clinic releases, but also human waste (amalgam is by far the largest source of mercury in our wastewater);
   • air via cremation, dental clinic emissions, sludge incineration, and respiration; and
   • land via landfills, burials, and fertilizer. 

   Once in the environment, dental mercury converts to its even more toxic form, methylmercury, and becomes a major source of mercury in the fish people eat.

   Mercury and other toxic chemicals are accumulating in fish and wildlife to dangerous levels. Over 50,000 of U.S. lakes now have warnings regarding eating the fish. That's about 20 percent of all significant lakes in the U.S., including all Great Lakes, as well as about 7 percent of all U.S. river miles, and many coastal bays and estuaries. Over 50 percent of Florida water bodies have mercury warnings, and a large survey found over 30 percent of Floridians have dangerous levels of mercury.

   The fish and wildlife subject to these exposures are showing serious and sometimes catastrophic hormonal and reproductive problems related to the accumulation of mercury and other endocrine disrupting chemicals. Affected species include:

   Wading birds	Alligators	Florida panthers	Minks
   Bears	Seals	Beluga and orca whales	And more…

   The environmental health effects of amalgam are well known, and have recently been reiterated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency: brain damage and neurological problems, especially for children and the unborn babies of pregnant women.  Due to the high costs of cleaning up this environmental hazard, amalgam is now recognized as “more expensive than most, possibly all, other fillings when including environmental costs.”   

   With dental mercury uncontrollably entering the environment from multiple pathways, ending dental mercury use and transitioning to non-mercury alternatives is the only way to eliminate this significant source of mercury that threatens our environment and ultimately our health. 

2. Dental mercury endangers our health

   The mercury in amalgam is a neurotoxin – and pro-mercury dentists are implanting it an inch from the brain! 

   Vulnerable populations – such as children, the fetuses of pregnant women, hypersensitive individuals, and people with kidney impairments – are known to be particularly susceptible to the neurotoxic effects of dental mercury. 

   That is why the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s advisory panel on dental amalgam in December 2010 warned against the use of amalgam in vulnerable populations and insisted that FDA had a duty to disclose amalgam’s risks to parents and consumers.  As panelist Dr. Suresh Kotagal – a pediatric neurologist at the Mayo Clinic – summed it up, there is “no place for mercury in children.”

   The FDA panelists are not alone.  Other countries are already working to protect vulnerable populations, especially children, from exposure to amalgam.  For example:

   • The forty-seven nations of the Council of Europe passed a resolution calling on the nations to start “restricting or prohibiting the use of amalgams as dental fillings,” explaining that  “amalgams are the prime source of exposure to mercury for developed countries, also affecting embryos, foetuses (through the placenta) and children (through breastfeeding).  Exposure to mercury can seriously affect the health of patients and dental professionals, and early exposure to low doses of mercury (during pregnancy and through breastfeeding) increases the risk of a decrease in the intelligence quotient (IQ) among children.… According to the World Health Organization in 2005, certain studies show that mercury may have no threshold below which some adverse effects do not occur.”
   • Australia’s National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) says amalgam should be avoided in pregnant women, nursing mothers, children, and people with kidney disease.  As the government of the state of Queensland explains, “Amalgam is now generally avoided for filling children’s teeth. Growing children tend to be more sensitive to the effects of exposure to any chemical substance in their environment…High level exposure to mercury (which is present in silver fillings) may affect the kidneys. Therefore, the NHMRC, suggest people with kidney disease may be more concerned than others to minimise exposure to mercury.”
   • Health Canada directed its dentists to stop using amalgam in children, pregnant women, and people with impaired kidney function – way back in 1996
3. Dental mercury endangers dental workers

   It is known that the mercury from amalgam causes reproductive harm – dental mercury even crosses the placenta and accumulates in unborn babies.

   Due to mercury exposure from amalgam in the workplace, dental workers – including dentists, dental hygienists, and dental assistants – are at particular risk for suffering reproductive harm.  Studies have shown that dental workers have elevated systemic mercury levels. Many of these dental workers are women of child-bearing age, which makes them particularly susceptible to the occupational hazards associated with handling mercury. 

   Few dental workers employed by pro-mercury dentists are given protective garb or air masks to minimize their exposure to mercury.  After all, they would look like astronauts with all that protective gear and that would scare off the patients (who have every right to be scared of mercury).  Many dental workers are not even aware of the risks of occupational mercury exposure.  As a result, dental workers have reported serious health problems – especially reproductive failures and birth defects caused by amalgam in the workplace.

4. Dental mercury endangers our oral health

   On top of all the neurological, reproductive, and environmental harm caused by amalgam, it turns out that amalgam even endangers our oral health.

   As a primitive filling material, amalgam can be detrimental to oral health.  It is well known that placing amalgam requires the removal of a significant amount of healthy tooth matter.  This removal, in turn, weakens overall tooth structure which increases the need for future dental work.  On top of that, amalgam fillings, which expand and contract over time, crack teeth and create the need for still more dental work. 

   Superior modern alternatives preserve healthy tooth structure and actually strengthen teeth, leading to better oral health and less extensive dental work over the long-term.   

What are the alternatives to amalgam?

Amalgam is interchangeable with numerous other filling materials – including resin composites and glass ionomers – that have rendered amalgam completely unnecessary for any clinical situation.  Always choose non-mercury fillings! 

Within Vandana Shiva’s dedication to defending the natural world is a profound celebration of life. When we allow systems to sustain balance and wholeness, life truly can thrive. Below are some clips from an interview with THRIVE that never made it into the final cut of the film.

In conjunction with World Health Day, on April 7th, Vandana has asked us to share this message and call to action about choosing biodiversity over GMOs - specifically the Trojan horse that is Golden Rice. Please tune in for this important message.

- Kimberly Carter Gamble - April 4, 2015

Vandana Shiva - Biodiversity or GMOs?

Transcription

Vandana Shiva: As long as we stay alive, as long as we do not see ourselves as separate, as long as we see ourselves as carried by this amazing force, this amazing intelligence, there is never a moment you can feel powerless because you experience that deep power every moment and that’s where you stop despairing.

And in the ???, communities have got together to harvest rain as they used to traditionally through ??? and rivers that had died are coming alive. So, we are seeing a realignment with the water cycle and the sanctity of water and it is a power. That realignment unleashes energies, political and spiritual energies, that are, in my view, stronger than the power of capital, irresponsible capital, and we are turning things around.

There’s nothing like “the big work” and “the small work”. All work done for keeping life in its fullness and maintaining life in its fullness is The Great Work, as Thomas Berry taught. As a mother, I always say, “Once you’ve changed a babies ‘nappies’, that becomes the measure of the great work.” The ability to be there to change the ‘nappie’ at 3 a.m. in the morning — that is as important as dealing with the World Bank and it’s as important as dealing with the World Trade Organization.

Most cultures for most of humanity have lived over long periods of time by adapting to the patterns. We have developed in contemporary times this arrogance that our patterns are superior and that there is no pattern — that it’s all chaos, it’s disorder, it’s just accident — and then imposing the structures of concrete, the structure of fossil fuels, the patterns of pollution on a body of patterns of constant recycling. It is really the challenge of our times.

I think real science has to be a spiritual endeavor because real science is understanding deep patterns, understanding lasting process, and understanding how things hang together. Spirituality is the same thing. It is about understanding our place in the universe, it is about connecting to the rest of life, and that connection creates in its very existence a humility of you being just a small part of a very, very large, limitless beast and, while creating humility in you, it also creates responsibility that what you do has impact on a lot, on the full fabric, on the whole web of life.

 

Healthy Biodiversity or GMOs: will the future of nutrition be in women’s hands or under corporate control?

- By Vandana Shiva

Summary

Women have been the primary growers of food and nutrition throughout history, but today, food is being taken out of our hands and substituted for toxic commodities controlled by global corporations. Monoculture industrial farming has taken the quality, taste and nutrition out of our food. As a result, India is facing a nutritional crisis: every fourth Indian goes hungry, and in 2011 alone, diabetes took the lives of 1 million Indians. Malnutition and Anaemia requires affordable, diverse, nutritionally rich food where health & nutrition of women & children are given high priority, with them having much more say in decision making.

Now, the same companies who created the crisis are promising a miracle solution: GMOs. Genetically engineered Golden Rice and GMO Bananas are being proposed by corporations hiding behind the cloak of academia as a solution to hunger and malnutrition in the Global South. But these are false miracles. Indigenous biodiverse varieties of food grown by women provide far more nutrition than the commodities produced by industrial agriculture. Golden Rice is 350% less efficient in providing Vit A than the biodiversity alternatives that women grow. GMO ‘iron-rich’ Bananas have 3000% less iron than turmeric and 2000% less iron than amchur (mango powder). Fenugreek (Methi), drumstick (Sahjan) and many others are far richer in Iron, & their availability & affordability need to be promoted. Apart from being nutritionally empty, GMOs are part of an industrial system of agriculture that is destroying the planet, depleting our water sources, increasing green houses gases, and driving farmers into debt and suicide through a greater dependence on chemical inputs. Moreover, these corporate-led industrial monocultures are destroying biodiversity, and we are losing access to the food systems that have sustained us throughout time. When we consider the number of patents involved in these initiatives, it becomes all too clear that the only beneficiaries of these supposedly ‘people-led’ ventures are large companies operating for profit — not for people.

This needs to stop now. We call on all women — the world’s primary food-growers and food-givers — to stand together and reclaim our knowledge, our farming, and our food. To expose the lies generated by the GMO industry, to reject the false promises of Golden Rice and GMO Bananas, and to reclaim the planet for all living beings.

India’s nutritional emergency

India is facing a nutritional emergency. We are the capital of hunger and malnutrition. Every fourth Indian is hungry. Every second child wasted and stunted. India is the diabetes capital of the world with 50.8 million patients.

In 2011 the diabetes epidemic in the country took 1 million people’s lives. Diabetes, a metabolic disorder, is a result of an imbalanced diet. The Green Revolution’s focus on rice monocultures has been made at the cost of greens, daals, and more nutritious millets — and diabetes has crept into rural areas. Contrary to popular belief, diabetes affects more people in rural India (34 million) than affluent urban Indians (28 million).

An imbalanced agriculture based on monocultures and an imbalanced diet based on further denutrified white polished rice, & fine white flour has become a cause of increasing chronic Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs). With 80% Medical costs being Out of pocket expenditure (OOPE) paid for by the patients & the families, NCDs become killers. Nearly 50% of Indian women suffer from iron deficiency anaemia.

What should be our response to this nutritional emergency: bringing biodiversity into our agriculture and food, or intensifying chemical monocultures of rice through the introduction of GMO Golden Rice? Empowering women by keeping food and nutritional security in their hands, or allowing corporations to take control of our food?

Nutritional deficiencies are a direct result of destruction of biodiverse sources of nutrition by industrial monocultures. Proponents of industrial agriculture — most significantly implemented in India through the Green Revolution — did not value nutrition. Instead, they focused on increasing inputs of imported chemicals, water and fossil fuels to grow chemical monocultures, in which food was reduced to an empty, toxic commodity. It lost is quality, taste, aroma, and — most importantly — its nutrition.

There are six processes through which industrial farming robs food of its nutrition.

First, industrial breeding is based on uniformity, long distance transport, and industrial processing. In comparison, food grown by women — who have been the primary seed breeders and producers of food — is based on diversity, taste, nutrition, quality and resilience. Traditional Indian varieties of wheat like Kathia, Bansi, and Mishri are full of taste and nutrition with low gluten varieties too. Industrially bred wheat varieties, on the other hand, are low in nutrition and have contributed to the epidemic of gluten intolerance.

Second, by replacing biodiversity with monocultures, industrial agriculture reduces the amount of nutrition per acre. With diversity we can grow enough iron for 20 Indias, and enough Vit A for all of India today.

Third, by substituting the sophisticated ecological processes of renewing fertility with chemical inputs of synthetic fertilizers, the health of the soil is destroyed, nutrition in soils is reduced, and plants which provide our food become nutritionally empty.

Percentage Decline in Mineral Content
of US and British Crops in the Last Sixty Years

Mineral	US 1963–1992 (13 fruits & vegetables)	Britain 1936–1987 (20 fruits & 20 vegetables)
N/A, not analyzed. * U.S. (Berginer, 1997) and British (Mayer, 1997) data.
Calcium	−29	−19
Magnesium	−21	−35
Sodium	N/A	−43
Potassium	−6	−14
Phosphorus	−11	−6
Iron	−32	−22
Copper	N/A	−81

The British Journal of Nutrition published a meta-analysis done by Professor Carlo Leifert of Newcastle University and 15 other scientists from around the world. This research finds significant differences in the nutritional content of organic and non-organic crops (fruit, vegetables, cereals and pulses). Organic crops and crop-based food products were found to have significantly higher concentrations of antioxidants (including phenolic acids, flavanones, stilbenes, flavones, flavonols and anthocyanines) compared with their conventionally produced counterparts. The mean percentage difference for most antioxidant compounds was between plus 18% and 69%. Smaller, but still statistically significant, composition differences were also detected for a number of carotenoids and vitamins.

A switch to eating organic fruit, vegetable and cereals (and food made from them) would lead to a 20–40% (and for some compounds up to a 60%) increase in crop-based antioxidant/(poly)phenolic consumption without any increase in calories. This is important as there is strong scientific evidence of the health benefits of increased consumption of (poly)phenolics and other plant secondary metabolites with antioxidant activity, most notably protection against chronic diseases, including cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases and some cancers.

Fourth, GMOs are also leading to a decline in nutritional availability, because the biotechnology industry is growing commodities, not food. 90% of the GMO corn and soya goes to biofuel and animal food, not human food. This is not a viable food system.

Fifth, herbicide tolerant crops account for most of the GMOs cultivated. The use of Roundup (glyphosate) with Roundup Ready crops removes vital minerals like manganese through “chelation”-binding. Manganese is vital to the gut-brain connection. The depletion of this nutrient could be contributing to the autism epidemic in the USA. According the Centre of Disease Control, at current rates of increase, 1 in 2 children in the USA could be born autistic in 10 to 20 years. (Seneff in Vandana Shiva(ed) Seed Sovereignty, Food Security: Women in the Vanguard, Women Unlimited New Delhi, 2015)

Sixth, just as there is an ecology of biodiversity in our fields, there is an ecology of biodiversity in our nutrition. Nutrients need each other. Fats are needed for absorption and bioavailability of Vit A, and Vit C is needed for absorption of iron. Mechanistic reductionism in nutrition, like mechanistic reductionism in agriculture, undermines the ecological processes through which our farms grow nutrition and our bodies are nourished.

All the evidences points to the need to grow nutrition by intensifying biodiversity and ecological processes in our food and farming systems. This is the path Navdanya has followed over more than 2 decades. We have increased production of nutrition (Health per Acre) as well as farmers’ incomes (Wealth per Acre) through agroecology and biodiversity.

But today, industrial agriculture paradigm is trying to extend its non-sustainable life by promising answers to malnutrition through GMOs such as Golden Rice and GM Bananas.

Golden Rice is a False Miracle

Golden Rice is genetically engineered rice with two genes from a daffodil and one gene from a bacterium which gives it a yellow colouring, which is supposed to increase beta carotene, a precursor to Vit A. It is being offered as a miracle cure for Vit A Deficiency (VAD).

But Golden Rice is a false miracle. It is a disease of nutritionally empty monocultures offered as a cure for nutritional deficiency. According to goldenrice.org, children under the age of 7 require 450 ‘units’ of Retinol (Vitamin A) Equivalents. Children would therefore have to eat 300gms of Golden Rice to get their daily requirement of Vit A. In indigenous food cultures, a child’s diet normally contains less than 150 gms of rice, but also contains a range of other nutritious foods grown by women. In fact, Golden Rice is 350% less efficient in providing Vit A than the biodiversity alternatives that women have to offer. To get your daily requirement of Vit A, all you need to eat is one of the following:

• two tablespoons of Spinach or Cholai leavesor Radish leaves
• four tablespoons of Mustard or Bathua leaves
• one tablespoon of coriander chutney
• one and a half table spoon of mint chutney
• one carrot
• one mango

Not only do these indigenous alternatives based on women’s knowledge provide more Vit A than Golden Rice at a lower cost, they also provide other nutrients. One such example is iron, which helps fight iron deficiency and anaemia. But just like the biotechnology industry is offering Golden Rice for Vit A deficiency, it is promoting GMO bananas for increased Vit A and iron. In reality, GMO bananas provide 7000% less iron than indigenous biodiversity that Indian women are experts in growing and processing.

The Vit A in GMO Vit A bananas has been pirated from indigenous bananas in Micronesia. The beta-carotene traits have been added to the sticky japonica rice Taipei 309, which Indians do not eat. The feeding trials for Golden Rice as well as the GM Bananas were done illegally and unethically.

By foregoing biodiversity alternatives that provide more nutrition, the biotechnology industry is pushing for a monoculture rice diet, which is a recipe for intensifying the diabetes epidemic. With 62 million patients, India already has extremely high rates of diabetes. Golden Rice is an irresponsible proposal that would intensify this by blocking much-needed alternatives — biodiversity and balance in our diets. For example, dietary fats are needed to absorb Vit A. To get these in our diets, we need biodiversity of oilseed crops and livestock. Rice monocultures displace both these forms of fat, leaving us with no way to absorb Vit A, and thus aggravate the nutritional crisis.

Golden Rice will also aggravate the ecological crisis caused by industrial agriculture. Since Golden Rice is part of the industrial agriculture package (also known as the seed-chemical package), it promotes monocultures, which further destroy biodiversity. Golden Rice will increase the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, which are rupturing the planetary boundary of the nitrogen cycle.

India is already one of the largest importers of nitrogen fertilizers, and Golden Rice will only serve to increase this. Moreover, it will increase the use of water, intensifying the water crisis. It will contribute to climate change through increased green house gas emissions. And it will leave our farmers liable to higher input costs through dependence on chemicals and fees for proprietary technologies.

As a source of nutrition for the Global South, Golden Rice has no real benefits. But considering the precedents set by soya, corn, canola and cotton, introducing Golden Rice as a way for large companies to gain control over entire food cultures based on rice, makes perfect sense.

Golden Rice is A Trojan Horse for Corporate Control

Proponents of Golden Rice declare that it is a product of public research carried out through public funding. But in reality, the scientists involved are closely linked to the biotechnology corporations pushing royalty collection through patents.

Scientists Ingo Potrykus (Zurich) and Peter Beyer (Freiberg) are closely connected to the Biotechnology corporations for commercialization of Golden Rice through patents. There are more than 70 patents linked to Golden Rice, despite it being promoted as a product made for the public by the public. Corporations controlling these patents include Bayer AG, Monsanto Co, Orynova BV and Zeneca Mogen BV. A letter written by Dr. Potrykus illustrates just how enmeshed the invention of Golden Rice and corporate interests always were. When questioned about his partnerships with corporations in an email exchange with RAFI/ETC Dr. Potrykus wrote,

“Why did we need to involve a commercial partner? Because Golden Rice also needs a commercial basis to reach the urban poor. Why do we need a patent? Because only then we can ensure, that nobody interferes with our task. Zeneca (now Syngenta) had, therefore, legal rights on the Golden Rice. Why are you upset if in return Zeneca is trying to make profit from developing a commercial ‘Golden Rice’, which even also will have benefits for the poor not directly linked to subsistence farmers? Could you not agree that it is neither fair nor wise to blame industry for working for profit? This is for what they are there.”

The project leader on the Golden Rice project at the International Rice Research Institute is Dr Gerard Barry, was also involved with some of Monsanto’s ‘golden egg’ patents and the man responsible for the company’s toxic RoundUp resistant products. There is a clear revolving door between corporations and research institutions in which a handful of actors are driving a for-profit corporate venture. Giants including Monsanto and Syngenta sit in the driver’s seat by controlling patents Intellectual Property Rights, while cleverly spinning these initiatives as philanthropy to open up for more & more patented grains, vegetables, fruits, while ensuring systematic erosion of tradition diverse foods & Traditional knowledge about healthier, more nutritional, culturally acceptable, diverse food crops & foods, projecting them as inferior.

Open letter from Dr. Ingo Potrykus to Hope Shand and RAFI in Response to Their Press Release on “Golden Rice” from October 13

The alternative lies in women’s hands and minds

On International Women’s Day 8^th March 2015 and World Health Day 7^th April 2015, we the women of India and the world concerned & engaged with Women’s Health & nutrition commit ourselves to reclaiming our seed, food, and knowledge sovereignty so that we can all enjoy healthy, safe, nutritious, tasty and diverse food. And through our food, we will reclaim our health and the health of the planet.

We will not allow a further degradation of our food systems and knowledge systems. We do not have to go down the road of replacing our biodiversity with GMO monocultures and our rich knowledge of food and nutrition with scientific and ethical fraud. We will not sacrifice our seed and food sovereignty for corporate control and profits.

We commit ourselves to

1. Promote and evolve the use of our indigenous seeds, crops and foods to address the crisis of malnutrition and health.

2. Spread gardens of hope, diversity and nutrition everywhere: in schools, on rooftops, on balconies.

3. Spread nutritional literacy about our diverse foods, and biosafety literacy about toxics and GMOs. Celebrate 7^th April, World Health Day, which WHO has declared Safe Food Day from Farm to Table as a day for promoting Pesticide Free, GMO Free food.

4. Celebrate Mahila Anna Swaraj (food sovereignty in women’s hands) at Navdanya’s biodiversity farm in Doon Valley (27–29 March 2015) by strengthening alternatives that promote sustainability, justice and health.

5. Celebrate Mother Earth Day, 22^nd April 2015 to liberate the Earth, our farms, our kitchens and our bodies from the burden of disease. Celebrate the connection between the health of the soil and the health of all beings on the planet during 2015 the United Nations’ “Year of Soil”.

As women, in all our vibrant diversity, we will make a paradigm shift from monocultures to diversity, from chemicals to organic, from reductionist and mechanistic science to ecological knowledge, from corporate control and monopolies to seed sovereignty, food sovereignty and knowledge sovereignty in women’s hands and women’s minds. We will grow alternatives to the ecological and health disaster of industrial agriculture and its new false promises of Golden Rice and GMO Bananas.

We will shape the future of food and nutrition through biodiversity in our hands and in our minds. We will take back our seeds, and we will take back our food.

For further information please contact:

Dr Mira Shiva Initiative for Health and Equity in Society Mob: 91 9810582028

Dr Vandana Shiva Diverse Women for Diversity

Truck Hits Utility Pole, Thousands of People’s Smart Meters Explode, Causing Power Surge

- By Melissa Melton - April 1, 2015

No, this is not an April Fool’s joke.

Perhaps smart meters aren’t the safest, nor the “smartest” idea to put on people’s homes after all.

Despite the fact that these meters have been known to burst into flames from time-to-time, and aside from the fact that they continuously expose occupants to electromagnetic radiation, and despite the fact that they can be used to continually collect data on everyone who lives in a home (the newer versions can send signals from individual outlets in a home every 15 seconds to be later broken down with disaggregation algorithms)… now this.

A truck crashed into a utility pole in Stockton a few days ago, causing a power surge that ultimately resulted in some 5,000 smart meters on people’s homes exploding, leaving all of them without power.

Via CBS:

Neighbors in the South Stockton area described it as a large pop, a bomb going off, and strong enough to shake a house.

“The neighbor across the street, his meter doesn’t look as bad but his receptacles are all blackened.” said Brad Abernathy.

PG&E says a dump truck crashed near its Alpine substation on Arch Road. When the truck hit the utility pole, the top wire fell onto the bottom wire, creating a power surge.

So now, instead of just having to worry about continual data collection and surveillance, or the negative health effects of electromagnetic frequency exposure, or the potential for a random house fire, there’s also the possibility of a truck randomly hitting a pole and causing your smart meter to straight up explode, also damaging your home and leaving you and yours without power for at least a week, maybe longer until it can be replaced… to possibly happen all over again?

How “smart” is this smart grid again?

Melissa Melton is a writer, researcher, and analyst for The Daily Sheeple and a co-creator of Truthstream Media with Aaron Dykes, a site that offers teleprompter-free, unscripted analysis of The Matrix we find ourselves living in. Melissa also co-founded Nutritional Anarchy with Daisy Luther of The Organic Prepper, a site focused on resistance through food self-sufficiency. Wake the flock up!