""Hilltop turbines are being blamed for myriad maladies. What is the truth behind these outlandish claims?

NEW technology has long attracted "modern health worries". Microwave ovens, television and computer screens and even early telephony all caused anxiety in their time. More recently, cellphones and towers, Wi-Fi and smart electricity meters have followed suit.

Another is gathering attention; the very modern malaise known as wind turbine syndrome. I set out to collect the conditions attributed to wind farm exposure. Within hours, I'd found 50 often florid assertions about different illnesses. Today my total sits at 198, with a range redolent of Old Testament plagues.

The list includes "deaths, yes, many deaths", none of which have ever come to the attention of a coroner, cancers, congenital malformations, and every manner of psychiatric problem. But mostly, it includes common health problems found in all communities, with wind turbines or not. These include greying hair, energy loss, concentration lapses, weight gain and all the problems of ageing. Sleep problems are mentioned most, but insomnia is incredibly common. Animals get a look in. Chickens won't lay; earthworms vanish; hundreds of cattle and goats die horrible deaths from "stray electricity".""

and there's more - follow the link - http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628850.200-the-sickening-truth-about-wind-farm-syndrome.html

It's all true you know, so beware of 'stray electricity' , it's everywhere!!!!

Even wind energy supporters seem to get it...

http://nursesforsaferenewablepower.wordpress.com/tag/health-effects-wind-turbines/

Neil Andersen: We knew there was a turbine going over there, we were not notified of any meetings or any type of concerns. In other words, there was no input from this residence.

I am an energy conservationist, I’ve had my own passive solar building company for 35 years. I was actually looking forward to that turbine being erected there. Although when it went up it was quite astounding the size of it.

I was proud looking at it from this viewpoint until it started turning. And it is dangerous, Sean. Headaches. Loss of sleep. And the ringing in my ears is constant. Never goes away. That started probably in May. It’s a constant reminder of that thing. I can look at it all day long, and it does not bother me. It’s quite majestic. But it’s way too close.

Sean Corcoran: How long after it started to spin did you start feeling some sort of symptoms?

Myself, it took me about a month and a half, maybe two months, to manifest all the symptoms. First it was the pressure in the head. The ears popping for no reason at all. Trying to get the water out of your ears and there was no water there. My wife, the first day, she feels it and notices it, and she feels it and notices it every day.

People talk about the noise, it gets loud. It gets jet-engine loud from this point right here. But the noise is the minimum component of that turbine. There is a pressure involved that gets into your ear, like you’re climbing at altitude in an airplane and your ears pop.

And there is a low-frequency pulse that particularly drives me crazy and some of the neighbors around here. It is a once-per-second low-frequency pulse, and it messes up your vestibular organs in your inner ear. And gives you a sense of off-balance and vertigo.

We both have signs of these symptoms. Headaches. My wife gets headaches three or four times a week, she wakes up with a headache. She’s actually sleeping in a back bedroom right now with earplugs and a white noise machine trying to mask the sound. But it is really not doing any good because the sound just comes right through the windows, right through the insulation, right through the earplugs. And the pulse is right there.

Can you hear it right now?

You don’t hear it. It’s inaudible. There’s testimony from all over the country of the same thing, people complaining about the turbines. Denmark, Australia, Canada, the United States. But there is really no peer-reviewed medical info, which I hear all the time. Prove it, they’re saying. Prove it. (my comment: Yes there is peer reviewed info but gov’t's will not recognize it because it didn’t come from industry)Come down here and hear it yourself if you want.

And do you take that as people calling you a liar or people calling you a fool?

I’m not sure. I think they just don’t want to believe it. It’s so ironic, here I have to try to get that thing knocked down. Basically it’s a good principle, anything that can wean us off the number-two fuel, heating oil, and that type of thing is good for us, but it has to be done correctly. In this case it certainly wasn’t.

They look at us as being the bad aspect of this. But the people in the wind industry, you cannot turn a blind eye to this. You know about it.

I’m sorry we don’t have doctors that have come to prove it. I welcome anybody to come down here with their testing equipment and test what this thing does, but I will tell you, it does hurt the wind industry. And I know there are properly-sited wind projects out there that are getting knocked down because of this. But that’s okay too.

I think everybody should just stop for awhile and figure this out. You can’t just be forcing these on people.

The Andersens decided to keep a calendar to document the turbine’s noise and its effects on them. They let us photograph parts of their log:

http://climatide.wgbh.org/2011/03/extended-interview-you-cant-be-forcing-these-on-people/

Neither the article or the website seem to be particularly wind supporting to me.

There seem to be quite a few people who once they decide they don't like wind turbines claim to previously have been supporters.

For example we have five 2.5MWp turbines awaiting planning just under two miles from us and the opponents seem to like claiming that they were previously supporters of renewable energy too. Despite this they don't seem to be able to get their facts correct - '70,000 [windturbines] are needed to replace one coal fired power station' springs to mind as part of the mudslinging campaign.

It's a sales technique called feel, felt, found used to win people over...

Interesting testimony in that he sounds pretty reasonable. What it doesn't say is how far away the turbine is, or the size. A pic on the site says '1000ft from the end of the drive'. So I guess that's a little over 300m - no idea if his drive is 5m or 300. I would be very surprised if you can get significant pressure effects at over 300m, but maybe it's possible. There clearly must be some pressure changes at the blades.

http://nursesforsaferenewablepower.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/one-familys-story-of-living-with-with-one-wind-turbine/

(Editor’s note: Neil Andersen lives 1,320 feet (402 meters) from Wind One. The turbine is 262 feet tall from the ground to the hub. Total height to blade tip is just under 400 feet. Interestingly, Neil is the owner of a solar energy company and an avid supporter of green energy.)

It should be possible to go and measure the pressure pulses he claimed were the cause?

http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/10/11/response-to-new-scientist-opinion-essay/

I write to you with regard to the opinion piece, “The sickening truth about wind farm syndrome” recently published in your New Scientist.

The only positive thing I can say about this appalling piece it that it is an opinion piece and does not purport to be objective truth. Just as well because it is anything but that. The use of phrases such as “Australia’s high-priestess of wind turbine syndrome” are more commonly found in public smear campaigns than in publications like New Scientist.

I have been an independant researcher into the measurement of noise and vibration from wind farms for several years and unpaid by any funding group, including wind-farm interests, wind-farm activists and “fossil fuel interests.” I have spoken with many people living nearby wind farms in New Zealand and have measured noise and vibration levels near several wind farms including Te Apiti, Tararua and Makara in New Zealand.

Contrary to the florid and inflammatory statements Simon Chapman makes about the people and complaints regarding these wind farms, there is clear evidence that research is desperately required in this area. The noise levels from the current generation of wind turbines has very large components of infrasound and low frequency sound as the size of the turbines has doubled and trebled, lowering the emitted frequencies(1). This would explain much of Simon Chapman’s issues with complaints only occurring recently. The approach from many of the acousticians representing the wind-farm companies to this low-frequency sound/infrasound is “what you can’t hear, can’t hurt you.” If the same were said of being able to detect radioactivity with our five senses, I’m sure that we would consider the speaker ill-informed at best.

As a fairly recent entrant into the field of acoustics I find it unfathomable that acousticians appear to have so little understanding of the issues involved and give so much credence to overly-simplistic measures such as A-weighted sound level and 10-minute averages. The former largely discounts low frequency sounds and virtually ignores infrasound because it “can’t be heard.” The latter smears out the “rumble/thump” and amplitude modulation that are key issues in annoyance associated with wind farms.

The very fact that acousticians do not venture outside of the A-weighted sound measures indicates that they do not consider low frequency and infrasound at all, and it is indicative that research published by such people very rarely include anything more than these blunt instruments. Yet research from people such as Alec Salt are finding that there are clear effects within the inner ear from such frequencies(2,3).

Perhaps Simon Chapman’s 35-year career in public health have narrowed his outlook so that he is unwilling to investigate some issues in an unbiased manner.

Needless to say, this emotional, biased, uninformed and derogatory opinion piece does not reflect well on New Scientist at all and I consider it well below the standard I would expect from any such publication.

Huub Bakker, BE, PhD, Senior Lecturer, Massey University, New Zealand

(1) Moller, Henrik; Pedersen, Christian Sejer, (2011) Low-frequency noise from large wind turbines, JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA Volume: 129 Issue: 6 Pages: 3727-3744 DOI: 10.1121/1.3543957
(2) Salt, AN, (2004) Acute endolymphatic hydrops generated by exposure of the ear to nontraumatic low-frequency tones, JARO-JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR RESEARCH IN OTOLARYNGOLOGY Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Pages: 203-214 DOI: 10.1007/s10162-003-4032-z
(3) Salt, Alec N.; Hullar, Timothy E., (2010) Responses of the ear to low frequency sounds, infrasound and wind turbines, HEARING RESEARCH Volume: 268 Issue: 1-2 Pages: 12-21 DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2010.06.007

Dr Huub Bakker MIPENZ, SMIEE
Senior Lecturer, Deputy MRA Cluster Leader, Mechatronics and Industrial Automation Major Leader
School of Engineering and Advanced Technology
phone
+64 6 350 5376 or +64 21 033 6528
email
H.H.Bakker@massey.ac.nz
physical address
School of Engineering and Advanced Technology
Room RC2.21, Riddet Complex, Massey University, Tennant Drive, Palmerston North
mailing address
Private Bag 11222, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 4320
internal mail
SEAT, Manawatu Campus, PN 456

Posted By: fostertomMany people report effects that science can't explain or measure. Science's huge mistake is to say 'if we can't measure it, it's just someone's silly imagination'.

Rather, say 'there's something interesting here - at very least the person's feeling is real - lets look into it, maybe find something hitherto unsuspected'.

That's what the Victorian 'natural philosophers' did - but since re-branding as 'science' that open-minded curiosity has been self-censored out of sight. Peer ridicule is scientists' biggest fear.

I think that's a bit of a strawman argument tbh Tom. I'm sure there are some scientists who say that, but there are many who don't. Painting such a large and diverse group with a brush that broad isn't likely to be accurate or helpful.

Hell, there are whole branches of science built on a lot of pretty flimsy assumptions.

Posted By: SeretPainting such a large and diverse group with a brush that broad isn't likely to be accurate or helpful.

Just fishing for a rise!

I've just been referred to a paper published by Geoff, Leventhall for Defra. Its a review of the health effects of low level, low frequency noise.

http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/4141/1/Benton_2003.pdf

Section 12.2 quotes a study that looked at low frequency noise from things like refrigerators, heating systems etc. They compared people exposed to very low level (25-30dbA) to people with no exposure. They reported..

"The test group suffered more from their noise than the control group did, particularly in terms of annoyance and sleep disturbance. They were also less happy, less confident and more inclined to depression."

They also listed a pretty dramatic increase in problems such as:

Heart ailments anxiety, stitch, beating palpitation - 81% compared to 54%
Chronic insomnia - 41% vs 9%
Shortness of breath, shallow breathing, chest trembling 58% vs 10%

If low levels of low frequency noise from (some) refrigerators can do that then why not from other sources?