The Wizard from Oz

We have always admired the work of Professor Simon Chapman, professor of public health at the University of Sydney.  He has taken a strong stand against tobacco and is now shining a light on the effects of the fear/uncertainty/doubt (FUD) campaign being waged by many wind opponents.

His recent submission to the Australian Senate Inquiry into Renewable Energy (Electricity) sums up his motivation nicely:

I have long had a scholarly interest in risk communication. In particular, I am

interested in significant, high-risk health problems which are under-rated by the

public (eg: smoking), and in low-risk putative health problems which are overrated

by some members of the public causing them to worry, panic and

sometimes express symptoms. It is my view, for reasons set out below, ["below" meaning the balance of his submission] that concerns about the health effects of wind turbines fall into the latter category.

Recently, he published an op ed piece in "The Drum", the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's on-line news channel.  You can find the full edition, including over 400 comments and active links here: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4394656.html

28 NOVEMBER 2012

Fanning fear: the wind farm nocebo effect

SIMON CHAPMAN

Most wind farms around the world have no history of complaints, but the few that do

have seen the local area targeted by external activists who spread panic. Simon Chapman reflects

on the nonsense claims of anti-wind farm activists.

Later today, the Senate will release the report of a committee into a Private Senators' Bill

examining the proposal that wind turbines should not be accredited if the sound emitted

exceeds 10 decibels of the background noise at any time, measured within 22 metres of a

house.

The Bill was proposed by Democratic Labor Party Senator John Madigan and independent

Senator Nick Xenophon. Both have form in expressing opposition to wind farms.

Like Don Quixote who tilted at windmills, Madigan previously claimed (PDF) he was

fighting a "sinister" and "dangerous" industry and Xenophon believes turbines affect brain

activity.

No one following the latest historical example of what is quite plainly technophobic

Luddism has any doubt that the tabling will see a minority report that the proposed

standard be adopted. The bill will be defeated on party lines, with the Greens supporting

the Government. But it has provided a conduit for a Niagara of mostly boilerplate protest

material from the tiny but highly organised opponent groups.

While the bill is purportedly about noise levels in the audible spectrum, the focus of many

fear-laden submissions has been around the sub-audible low-frequency noise - infrasound -

that wind turbines (and pretty much all machines) create. While studies have shown (PDF)

that Australians living near the coast or in cities are constantly subject to far greater 'doses'

of infrasound, apparently the sort emitted by wind turbines has a special flavour that

causes a never-before-seen medical condition.

"Wind turbine syndrome" is a term coined in a self-published book by a US small town

doctor who personally opposed a wind farm proposed near her property. Tellingly, the

term does not appear once among 22 million papers indexed by PubMed, the US National

Library of Medicine's repository of peer reviewed research published in acknowledged

journals.

With now 217 diseases and symptoms claimed to be caused by exposure to the subaudible,

low frequency infrasound emitted by wind turbines - some by as little as a few

minutes exposure - there are undeniable and rhino-in-the-room size clues that complaints

are psychogenic: "communicated" diseases spread by the nocebo effect. This is where

dramatically and repeatedly suggesting to people that something is likely to make you ill,

triggers claims and sometimes symptomatic illness in a minority of people.

Most wind farms around the world and in Australia have no history of complaints, and

most of those which do, have seen the local area targeted by external anti-wind farm

activists who spread panic and tell frightened locals to report anything they might

experience to their doctor. The activist groups even provide symptom menus to assist

residents.

Wind farms have existed in Western Australia for nearly 20 years, yet no company

operating over there has ever received a health complaint. Significantly, there are no antiwind

farm group operating in the state.

By contrast, here's a case study of how complaints can get going on the east coast.

In early October 2010, residents of Leonards Hill in central Victoria were encouraged to

attend a presentation in Evansford, given by an unregistered doctor, Sarah Laurie, who has

become Australia's high priestess of wind farm anxiety. Laurie believes (PDF)that

turbulence from wind turbines can "perceptibly rock stationary cars even further than a

kilometre away from the nearest wind turbine" and told a meeting (PDF) in 2011 that

spending a night near wind turbines can cause "just about everybody ...every five or ten

minutes needing to go to the toilet."

In the same week, the Australian Environment Foundation, a deceptively named climate

change denialist group, arranged a protest meeting at the opening ceremony for the

beginning of works on a two turbine, 2,000 shareholder community-owned wind farm at

Leonards Hill, near Daylesford. Banners with "Wind farms make me sick" were prepared

and some 50 people (mostly out of towners) attended the protest, which was reported in

the local press.

In November, Laurie was reported in local newspaper The Advocate as saying "If I were

living right there I would be very concerned. I would be beside myself..." Scary stuff.

In early December 2010, the president of the Landscape Guardians told the Australian

"I've been on medication for the last five years just fighting this." The wind farm had not

even opened but the president was already worried sick.

In mid August 2011, the Ballarat Courier reported that Leonards Hill received its first

health complaint from a 57-year-old woman with sleep problems. She described the sound

of the two turbines, half a kilometre away, as at times "like a jet engine". (Like hundreds

of thousands of Sydney residents, I've lived right under the Sydney fight path for 22 years,

and I've spent time around wind farms. The comparison is nothing less than ludicrous).

The next day, the Landscape Guardians president went public as the second health

complainant about the wind farm.

Those who study the dynamics of psychogenic illness place the communication of scary

information front and centre of this psychogenic/nocebo process. Early next year, a leading

international psychology journal will publish findings of a study that will add important

new evidence to this debate.

The study took healthy volunteers and exposed some to information from the internet

designed to prime them to expect that infrasound from wind farms could make them

experience symptoms. They labelled this group the "high expectations" group. Another

group were not exposed to such information (the "low expectations" group). Both groups

were then exposed in a laboratory to both real and "sham" (fake) infrasound. The high

expectation group reported a significant increase in symptoms during both exposure

sessions, while there was no increase in symptoms reported in the low expectation group.

In Canada an anti-wind farm group took a wind company to a local tribunal, with a

cavalcade of complainants emotionally detailing their health problems. The tribunal agreed

with the wind company that the medical records of all complainants going back a decade

should be presented. These would reveal how many of the victims had a prior history of

the problems they now complained about. The case then collapsed, with the complainants

protesting that this was too onerous a requirement.

All social groups, workplaces and organisations have individuals with reputations for

whinging and negativity. So perhaps unsurprisingly, a recent British study found that

"negative orientated personality" traits predicted unexplained non-specific symptoms

among residents near a wind farm, and not actual noise.

Ten years ago, the media was full of anxiety that mobile telephone towers would bring

down plagues of diseases on those around them. Local governments passed nonsensical

regulations allowing towers on factory roofs, but nowhere near sporting fields, schools or

even nursing homes (where most residents had highly limited life expectancy anyway).

The predicted epidemics of brain cancer never happened, there are more mobile phones

than Australian residents and the anxiety disappeared.

Todays's expected report will contain the equivalent nonsense about wind farms. It will

make interesting reading 10 years from now.

Simon Chapman is professor of public health at the University of Sydney. He tweets

@simonchapman6. View his full profile here.

© 2012 ABC