This piques my interest. I assume other folk in the same place do not notice anything  ?

How did you record that embedded sound - is that acoustic detection (microphone) or radio reception ? Do you have a feel for the intensity in dB SPL or dBA if it is acoustic or the field strengths in V/m or mA/m if it is electromagnetic ?

Certainly many things with switch mode supplies in can be  very noisy in the ultrasonic, due to ferrite core vibrations and can easily be detected with something similar to the traditional Bat Detector  (such things are also used to detect certain types of electronic inverter firing up in a way not dissimilar to the old whistling camera flash guns as well as to detect deliberate covert use of ultrasonic harassment equipment ) However the frequencies are higher than you mention, but unless others can hear it too I wonder about you responding to reciprocal mixing effects with something that is really supersonic.

The official levels for ultrasound exposure (and infra-sound as well)  are in this handy report by the UK Independent Advisory Group on Non-ionising Radiation. However they allow levels that are quite high  - equivalent to 100dBA above 25 KHz. 

How sensitive is this effect for you ?  can you detect if there is a smart meter or not walking past a closed meter box on a property where you have not yet been told if there is one or not ?

Mike.

Hi Mike,

Thank you for your interest and your reply. In answer to your questions:

My wife has suffered from tinnitus for some time, prior to the meter installation. She has been reporting recently an increased level of tinnitus but hasn't been able to relate it as I can to being in the house and easing when not in the house. We've had few visitors to the house since 9 February, but it was interesting that in the short amount of time the engineer from the power distribution company was in the house, he could perceive a high pitched tone and pressure on his ears and felt some relief when I powered down the television and surround sound sytem from standby. He couldn't describe the effect as strong as it was to me however.

The sound I included is an audio recording taken close to the meter. I am away from home at the moment and I wouldn't trust my smart phone apps to give a sensible reading for dBA. What I can say is that hear it between 2 and 3 metres away from the cupboard with the door open if there is little ambient noise around at the time. No one who's tried to listen to have said they can't but distances away from when they start hearing the noise vary but most need to be closer than me. It is low volume and I can't blame it for the tinnitus I am suffering as I cannot hear it when much further away with the door closed. I do suspect there is a connection between that noise though and the behaviour of the electronic component(s) resulting in the tinnitus. If you want to know what the tinnitus sounds like, then try listening to a 14kHz tone using https://onlinetonegenerator.com/ or similar. So far about 50% of people I've asked if they can hear it have confirmed that they can. It's far from a pleasant sound and I recommend that the volume is turned to zero before clicking the play button, then slowly ramping it up afterwards until you, or someone in the room, can hear it. Do not listen to it for very long, particularly if you have any history of tinnitus. I do wonder whether there is some ultrasonic sound going on resulting in a 14kHz harmonic, but that is tinnitus, a perceived sound rather than an actual sound. (Tinnitus sounds worse with ear plugs rather than quietening the tone.) My smart phone apps are displaying sound around 17kHz to 21kHz but that's their limit. I would need some specialised kit to check whether the meter is producing higher frequencies.

Sensitivity is difficult to judge. The tinnitus tone doesn't go away quickly. It's still badly affecting me some 28 hours since I left home and I keep wondering if my temporary abode is affected. However the electricity meter is in another building and turning everything off at the small distribution board makes no difference. I suspect that I have simply over exposed myself to the problem back home and a break has absolutely been the best thing to do. I spent enough time in three houses with smart meters to know that my tinnitus was not being induced there. I suspected my mother-in-law's meter could be affecting me but only came to light once I had the problem at my home. Any feeling of tones in her living room were blamed towards her old CRT television. The pressure feeling I was getting in my house was a pretty rapid change when coming and going, but that ended after turning off the surround sound system and a couple of other audio devices that didn't need to be left on in standby mode. Before that, due to the pressure changes, I could almost instantly tell when the Landis+Gyr was turned off while I was upstairs in the house. I obviously reacted immediately to the Kaifa meter being powered up. I haven't as yet been in a house not knowing there was a digital electricity meter and deducing that there was one installed, but I haven't been in too many different homes since my problems began. I will be trying though.

Andrew

I just need to clarify that my reaction to the Kaifa meter being powered up could not have been as a result of the audio equipment in the room coming back on as the main switch on the distribution board was still off at that point. So whatever caused the painful flinch was specific to the meter alone.

Andrew

Thank you for the clarification that it is a direct  acoustic measurement.   It is interesting and in some ways reassuring for you that many other people can hear the meter whining at least to some degree.  It is also a pretty poor feature on a product that cannot be turned off  that may well be installed in or beside a bedroom.

The fact that the sensitivity varies between subjects is not terribly surprising, especially if there is a spread of ages. Generally  folk lose the higher frequency response as they age, and those who have worked with noisy machines or been exposed to gunfire and so on are likely to become insensitive at a younger age. (and the stereotype of the deaf drummer in the band is loosely based on fact.).

Given what else you say I wonder if the effect is totally acoustic or a mix of acoustic and some EM effect. The problem there is that these things are almost always unrepeatable, which makes sensible testing from a sample of one very difficult.

Meanwhile does the superposition of low levels of white or pink (bass -heavy) noise over the trigger signals relieve your symptoms at all ? - I have a colleague at work who has reported that (from a pocket music layer )to be helpful though of course your case could be totally different.

Mike

I would be complaining if I didn't have tinnitus but could hear the acoustic noise the meter is making in any part of the house except for the under-stairs cupboard where it is housed. I don't like it even in there, it is irritating whenever I need to go into the cupboard for something else in there. The gas meter is not silent when gas is flowing, it makes a rather clunky churning noise, bit louder if anything than the electricity meter noise but not as irritating. I have to say I was rather disappointed with the smart gas meter; it was the same as the 20 year old meter taken out but with a digital display and communications module stuck on the front. I have no reason at the moment to believe that the gas meter has anything to do with my tinnitus. 

The two fitters who came to the house both said electricity meters all make a noise, but I know that's not the case with other brands of meter and why should any digital electricity meter make acoustic noise? (Maybe a small transformer hum, but the noise I've recorded and put in my opening noise? That surely shouldn't be acceptable.) My discussions with the energy company were abruptly shut down when I started querying the electronics inside the meter. I emailed the UK support email address for Kaifa on 14 March asking for help and so far that has been met with silence.

The engineer from the power distribution company could only measure an EM field strength of 0.5microT very close to the meter itself and less anywhere else in the house.

Noise and music do help distract from tinnitus, it's the opposite to earplugs and ear defenders which remove the noise and leave you listening with nothing but the tinnitus. My tinnitus is so high pitched and loud that it takes a lot of sound of different frequencies to smoother it and I fear doing that for long periods of time would lead to damaging my hearing. The best way to deal with tinnitus is to remove the source and that is proving so difficult. I almost feel it would be easier to sell the house and move to one with an analogue meter to be sure I won't be blighted again. Should it be me who leaves my house or the electricity meter?

Removing either the meter or myself from my house doesn't solve the problem of such meters being rolled out to millions of homes that can potentially cause such harm even if it is only to a small minority. I've found two cases of tinnitus afflicted people blaming meters installed for close neighbours. How hard would that be to solve if it is so bad dealing with my own meter? Surely the meters could and should be designed and constructed better. If the current meter and the prior Landis+Gyr meter meet all the necessary standards for the UK, then given my experience, those standards need revisiting.

Andrew

Back home and back on with the awful tinnitus again. RIght side cleared up after a couple of days while left side remained stayed pretty bad, after 4 days, but maybe I hadn't escaped far enough away from a smart meter. In response to Mike's initial reply, being back home has given me chance to run a sound spectrum analyser on my smart phone and here are the resulting screenshots. The first image was taken whlie holding the phone quite close to the meter:

The second is the spectrum in my living room:

Where I have been staying also had some sound in the 19kHz to 21kHz region. Still quite low level but I am noticing a correlation between the strength of my tinnitus and amount of noise in that 19kHz to 21kHz region. I would really like to be able to see the electrical noise the meter is producing. I'm wondering also about very low frequencies in relation to the response to the audio equipment in the house causing the terrible pressure feeling on my eardrums until almost all was unplugged.

The more I am searching online about tinnitus, smart meters and switched-mode power supplies, the more people I am find that report tinnitus shortly after the fitting of smart meters. Some of these are going back 10 years, so I am simply not buying the idea that this is a new phenomenon only affecting myself as my energy company is trying to suggest. Obviously a lot of others reporting tinnitus after smart meter fitting blame the Wi-Fi and mobile phone communications smart meter use which I can't blame as the Communications Hub has been removed, but there's still a lot finger pointing from people about the noise from the switched-mode power supplies employed. A couple of people I found stated the noise and then the  tinnitus can be virtually eliminated by the use of a whole house filter. Is that a possibility to the answer to my troubles? I really wish I understood more about the science going on here, because it really is a very big problem I am suffering. Being told like some people I've found reporting tinnitus within 2 days of having a smart meter fitted that "you just have to live with it" and/or "go to an ENT specialist" is not acceptable.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I live in Perth Australia and I developed bilateral tinnitus on 12/3/22, 2 days before my Gyr Landis E350 smartmeter was installed. In my case, I suspect the meters are involved, but wondered if noise from other installations, might be travelling on the line.

The tone I hear sounds lower than the one you posted. It doesn’t go away if I am out for the day, but does seem to improve. It also seems to get worse if I spend any length of time behind the meter box (several times, I have felt pulses in the ears/head, standing behind it). Unfortunately the meter box is on the other side of my master bedroom wall. 

I don’t have much else to share at this point, as have only just started researching  and trying to find an answer. I am considering engaging an EMF / expert to do some testing, haven’t yet spoken with the network operator and am yet to see an audiologist. 

I wish you luck with your Ombudsman complaint and hope that you find a solution that resolves the issue to your satisfaction.

Dan

Not had that specific issue but I have experienced something similar. It could be resonance in the structure of the building. Are the meters attached directly to the house structure (via metal screws/bolts and washers) or are they mounted with rubber dampening washers? I suggest you ask the provider to reinstall them with adequate resonance dampening - a rubber backplate and rubber washers for the holding screws should do. It is important that the meter housing and attachment doesn't touch building structure directly without dampening. 

Thanks for your reply Peter.

The meter is attached to a wooden board which is mounted to the inside of the outer house wall by 4 large screws with some sort of non-metallic sleeving that results in a gap between the wall and the board of just under 2cm. I do therefore have a little bit of control on the mounting of the meter. As my luck would have it, one of the four screws is covered by the meter and I've just tried to turn the three other screws without success - they probably haven't moved since the house was built in 1957. I can tell you though that applying a bit of pressure carefully to the corners of the meter with my hands does quite significantly dampen down the audible noise it is making, so getting the meter mounted on a rubber backplate with rubber washers may certainly help cut down the nuisance noise.

Could adding such dampening to the meter reduce the tinnitus significantly? Can you share your experience of something similar? It may not be a meter, but the electronics inside the meter which are arousing suspicion are common to lots of other devices.

Andrew

Thanks for your reply Dan and sorry to hear you have developed tinnitus by whatever means.

If your tone fades when you are away from home and comes back quickly when you return then that's not too different to myself, but obviously I can state my tinnitus started with my own smart meter installation. Can you run a sound analyser app to see if you get readings similarly to mine particularly in the 19kHz to 21kHz region?

I've read reports of other people claiming that their tinnitus was caused by smart meters that had been installed for their neighbours. Some that were in apartment buildings had multiple meters fixed to the outside of their apartment, which seems rather unfair whatever the meters do or not do beyond registering power usage. Are the meters being installed on an area by area basis in WA? Have you checked with your neighbours?

Here in the UK, rollout of smart meters by location is rather random due to the way the energy market was privatised. Former regional energy companies and new companies compete for business in most parts of England, Scotland and Wales. (Northern Ireland is different.) Householders are asked by their energy company if they would like smart meters and they can decline or accept, they are not currently mandated although some companies now have tariffs that require them. How I now wish I hadn't accepted the meters, I had no idea of the trouble ahead. I had heard of people being worried about the health affects of the Wi-Fi and mobile phone signals these meters employ but these are hardly any different to what has been in common use for the many years and I have never experienced any problems with these in the past. Removing the communications hub reverting the meters to dumb wasn't likely to make much difference unless their was a rogue component in the hub, but this wasn't the case. As such I've now lost for no gain the very benefit of the smart meters I wanted, which was to monitor the electricity usage of electrical appliances so I could assess the cost effectiveness of replacing them with new more efficient appliances.

For the record, my nearest neighbour has had smart meters for a few years, my other neighbour refuses to accept them.

Andrew