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

Wind turbine syndrome: a classic ‘communicated’ disease

• 
  

The Conversation

20 July 2012, 6.09am AEST

The original article appeared here.

AUTHOR

1. Simon Chapman
   Professor of Public Health at University of Sydney 

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

Simon Chapman currently receives funding from the National Health & Medical Research Council for three project grants, and one capacity building grant. He receives no funding from any wind energy company or agents acting on their behalf.

ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR

24 May 2011

The evidence is in – plain cigarette packs turn young smokers off

23 May 2011

A licensing scheme to make smokers butt out for good

At the beginning of this year I started collecting examples of health problems some people were attributing to wind turbine exposure. I had noticed a growing number of such claims on the internet and was curious about how many I could find. Within an hour or two I had found nearly 50 and today the number has grown to an astonishing 155.

I have worked in public health on three continents since the mid 1970s. In all this time, I have never encountered anything in the history of disease that is said to cause even a fraction of the list of problems I have collected.

The list of 155 problems includes “deaths, many deaths”, none of which have ever been brought to the attention of a coroner. It includes several types of cancer, and both losing weight and gaining weight. You name it. Haemorrhoids have not yet been named, but nothing would surprise me.

Many of the problems are those which affect large proportions of any community: hypertension (high blood pressure); mental health problems; sleeping difficulties; sensory problems (eyes, hearing, balance); and learning and concentration difficulties. Every day in Australia many hundreds of Australians receive their first diagnosis with these problems, and most live nowhere near wind farms.

So is it reasonable to suggest that all these problems – or even a fraction of them – are caused by wind turbines? Wind farm opponents repeatedly argue that turbines cause both rapid and long-gestation health problems. It is common to read accounts of people having been adversely affected within hours or even minutes of being exposed. If this was true, there is a big problem here.

Wind farms have existed in Australia long before the first claims about health ever surfaced. The Ten Mile Lagoon wind farm near Esperance, Western Australia has been operational for 19 years. Victoria’s first, the Codrington wind farm, just celebrated its 11th birthday, and has 14 turbines each capable of producing 1.3 megawatts. And yet health complaints are relatively recent, with the few in Codrington post-dating a visit to the area by a vocal opponent, spreading anxiety.

In this sense, “wind turbine syndrome” (which incidentally produces zero returns from the United States National Library of Medicine’s 23 million research papers) is what we can call a “communicated” disease: it spreads via the nocebo effect by being talked about, and is thereby a strong candidate for being defined as a psychogenic condition.

One prominent opponent of wind farms says he can hear them 35km away. Others talk about electricity from the turbines “leaking” into the soil and causing deaths of hundreds of cattle and goats. Such catastrophic events would always attract huge news attention. But try to find such coverage and instead you will only find website anecdotes about what happened on a neighbour’s farm.

Opponents also say that only “susceptible” people are adversely affected by wind turbines. But they repeatedly say animals such as sheep, cattle, dogs and poultry are badly affected, with problems such as malformations, sudden death, sterility and yolkless eggs being common.

Against this, on any trip to a wind farm region, one can find thousands of livestock grazing contentedly around the turbines. In Tasmania there is a poultry farm with a wind turbine at the front gate. Is the argument now that only some animals are “susceptible” too?

There have now been 17 reviews of the available evidence about wind farms and health, published internationally. These are reviews of all studies, not single pieces of research. Each of these reviews have concluded that wind turbines can annoy a minority of people in their vicinity, but that there is no strong evidence that they make people ill.

The reviews conclude that pre-existing negative attitudes to wind farms are generally stronger predictors of annoyance than residential distance to the turbines or recorded levels of noise. In other words, people who don’t like wind farms can often be annoyed and worried by them: some might even worry themselves sick.

There are two main anti-wind farm groups in Australia busily fomenting anxiety and opposition. One is the Waubra Foundation, a group of mainly wealthy individuals, none of whom live in or near the town of Waubra, near Ballarat. Several of them, NIMBY style, have opposed turbines near their own properties elsewhere. They are led by an unregistered doctor, Sarah Laurie, and a wealthy mining investor, Peter Mitchell who also has connections to the Landscape Guardians. Despite their name, the Guardians have never attempted to guard our landscape from over-zealous residential developers, open cut coal or coal seam gas mining. They only target wind farm developments. All three – Waubra, the Guardians and Mitchell’s mining investment company share a South Melbourne post office box.

Problems of falling and stagnant real estate prices in many of Australia’s rural areas are well known. When landowners with property that would be hard to sell see a wealthy energy company moving into an area and investing millions in turbines, it’s not difficult to predict that some will see potential in being “bought out” by such companies. Mining companies do it regularly. When this has happened in some communities, word spreads fast. I have been given accounts of lavish renovation and relocation “shopping list” demands that have been given to some wind energy companies by hopeful complainants.

Tellingly, four allegedly unlivable houses near Waubra where complaining residents were bought out now house non-complaining occupants.

When anti-wind farm leaders move around communities, sometimes with entrepreneurial lawyers, spreading anxiety that the turbines can harm heath, we can get a potent combination of poorly informed, worried and angry residents seeded with the idea that their protests might lead to a payout.

Other complainants appear to see the turbines as symbols of values and movements that they despise: totems of green politics, modernity and the urban artifice.

Almost daily, I receive heated email suggesting I should host a turbine in my inner city backyard. The irony is that for 22 years I’ve lived 300m under the main flight path into Sydney airport, 30 metres from a busy road and 200m from a railway line where the combined noise is incomparably louder than hundreds of wind turbines. I rather think I wear my fair share of community noise. But some in the bush believe that unlike city dwellers, it is their birthright to be sheltered from any intrusion in their pristine surrounds, the ultimate in NIMBYism.

Fortunately, anti-wind farm voices in the bush are in a small minority, as this CSIRO study shows.

Wind turbines power mass hysteria

ABC.net

Simon Chapman

23 May 2012

The history of medicine contains many bizarre episodes of mass hysteria and psychogenic illness, with mass fainting by children during school vaccinations a common example.

Outbreaks of mass hysteria have common factors which contribute to their contagion. People "spreading" alarm about alleged harms are central to the proliferation of mass hysteria and today the internet is peerless as a disease vector.

While most people have heard of the placebo effect (when an inert "drug" like a sugar pill or a sham surgical procedure like inserting random acupuncture needles is followed by people feeling better) its opposite, the "nocebo" effect, is less appreciated.

A nocebo effect occurs when people feel ill or are convinced they have symptoms after being told that something is harmful. For the past few months, I have been collecting claims about adverse health effects made by opponents of wind farms. Today the total stands at 113 different diseases and symptoms in humans and animals.

Other than perhaps the aftermath of a nuclear blast on population health, there is nothing known to medicine that comes close to the morbid apocalypse that is being megaphoned by anti-wind groups.

It is not just illnesses and symptoms that occur but "deaths, yes, many deaths mainly from unusual cancers", which have strangely never come to the attention of any coroner.

Did you know that wind turbines can cause lung cancer, leukaemia, diabetes, herpes, "electromagnetic spasms in the skull", infertility and the ghastly sounding "loss of bowels"?

Any very common problem together affecting literally millions of people across Australia (sleep problems, high blood pressure, lack of concentration, forgetfulness, children doing poorly at school, nosebleeds and muscle twitches) can all be explained by wind turbine exposure.

Nothing else is relevant if you live near one. But there are some benefits too. Those who are overweight can lose kilograms through exposure to wind turbines, but the excessively slim can gain weight as well!

Is this magic?

It's not just humans that are affected. Did you know that "seagulls no longer follow the plough in areas near wind turbines ... the seagulls have learned that the worms have all been driven away ... They must go elsewhere for their food." This can happen as far as 18km from a turbine!

Whales have their sonar systems disrupted, chickens won't lay, and sheep wool is poorer in quality. Tragically, a "peahen refused to go near a peacock" and dogs "stare blankly at walls", ignoring owners. Never seen a dog like that.

It's not just the effect of turbine exposure that causes harm, but leaking "stray or tingle electricity" generated by the turbines can mysteriously travel through the soil with disastrous consequences. This has resulted in 400 goats "dropping dead" in New Zealand, dairy cows being "shocked through milking machines", and almost every known malformation in birds and farm animals.

Many of the above have been folded into a new disease entity called "wind turbine syndrome" by an American doctor, Nina Pierpont, set out in a vanity press book K-Selected Books run by herself and her partner.

"Wind Turbine Syndrome" appears not once in the US national Library of Medicine's online PubMed library of over 21 million biomedical papers. But that's not stopped this psychogenic "syndrome" bouncing around to the tune of 154,000 Google hits.

Pierpont's Australian counterpart is an unregistered South Australian doctor, Sarah Laurie, who travels about spreading the bad news. With a straight face, Laurie told a recent meeting of mostly bussed in protesters in the Victorian town of Mortlake that just one night in a house in proximity to a wind turbine had "just about everybody ...every five or ten minutes needing to go to the toilet."

Let's assume the residents went to bed at 11 and woke at 7; that would be 48 to 96 times a night for each person. Is she taking the piss?

The Victorian Government has introduced a 2km setback rule for wind turbines for any residence, and the NSW government currently has the same distance out for public discussion. The NSW Health Department has sensibly advised that any decision on setbacks cannot be made on the basis of any evidence of harm to health.

Seventeen reviews of the evidence back this up with the NHMRC soon to add an eighteenth. If that too should clear turbines, you can bet the anti-wind lobby has already rehearsed why it too should be ignored.

It is easy to find claims on the web that turbines can bring on symptoms within hours or even minutes of exposure. It's something of a problem then that of the 150,000 turbines around the world, only a small fraction have generated complaints, and that with many having been erected in the 1990s, the "epidemic" of wind farm complaints had its beginnings several years later.

And you will search in vain to find anyone deriving income from hosting turbines who is complaining: money, it seems, is a magic cure. Opponents retort that these people are gagged by confidentiality clauses, but common law claims of negligence are never voided by contracts.

Political acquiescence to the NIMBY and turbine-rent-envy driven culture of complaint about wind farms threatens to seriously hobble Australia's ability to meet carbon reduction targets. Meanwhile, the great majority of the public supports wind power and nations like China and India are surging ahead in wind-energy production.

Simon Chapman is professor of public health at the University of Sydney. Twitter: @simonchapman6. View his full profile here.

Wind farm ecologist defends bird safety

ABC News

April 24, 2012

Click here for the article.

An ecologist says there is no evidence wind farms are threatening the future of native bird populations.

A dead wedge-tailed eagle has been found not far from the base of a wind turbine at the Waterloo wind farm in the mid-north of South Australia.

Dr Cindy Hull, who works for renewable energy producer Hydro Tasmania, says some birds fly into blades but wind farms do not affect habitats or migration patterns.

"There's been a lot of work trying to assess whether it's impacting on the fate of the species and it isn't," she said.

"The wind industry is actually the only electricity generators that monitor their impact on wildlife, no-one else does.

"So just because nothing's been reported from the other types of electricity generation, doesn't mean impacts aren't occurring, they're just not being measured."

Environmental consultant Travis How of consultancy company EBS Ecology says there are wedge-tailed eagles and peregrine falcons at the proposed Stony Gap wind farm site, south of Burra.

"We've worked with TRUenergy to then design infrastructure around that so potential habitat and the known populations aren't impacted upon at all," he said.

How many times do I have to tell you?

How many times do I have to tell you ....?  Apparently, it's over 17.

Professor Simon Chapman, School of Public Health and Teresa Simonetti, Sydney University Medical School have been accumulating reviews of the research literature on wind farms and health.

As of early this year, they have 17 reviews from around the world.  This list will be updated regularly.

Here's the list:

• 2012:  Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. Independent Expert Science Panel Releases Report on Potential Health Effects of Wind Turbines
• 2012: Oregon Wind Energy Health Impact Assessment. 
• 2011: Fiumicelli D. Windfarm noise dose-response: a literature review. Acoustics Bulletin 2011; Nov/Dec:26-34 
• 2011: Bolin K et al. Infrasound and low frequency noise from wind turbines: exposure and health effects. Environmental Res Let 2011
• 2010: Knopper LD, Ollsen CA. Health effects and wind turbines: a review of  the literature. Environmental Health 2010; 10:78
• 2010: UK Health Protection Agency Report on the health effects of infrasound
• 2010: NHMRC Rapid Review of the evidence 
• 2010: Chief Medical Officer of Health in Ontario
• 2010: UK Health Protection Agency. Environmental noise and health in the UK. A report by the Ad Hoc Expert Group on Noise and Health. (this report is about all environmental noise)
• 2009:  Minnesota Department of Health. Environmental Health Division. Public Health Impacts of Wind Turbines.
• 2009: Canadian Wind Energy Association.  Addressing Concerns with Wind Turbines and Human Health. CanWEA, Ottawa.
• 2009: Colby et al. Wind Turbine Sound and Health Effects: An Expert Panel Review.
• 2008: Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit 
• 2007: National Research Council (USA): Impact of wind energy development on humans (Chapter 4: pp97-120) of: Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. 
• 2005: Jakobsen J. Infrasound emission from wind turbines. Jf Low Frequency Noise, Vibration and Active Control 2005; 24(3):145-155
• 2004: Leventhall G. Low frequency noise and annoyance. Noise & Health 2004;.6(23):59-72 
• 2003: Eja Pedersen’s Review for the Swedish EPA 

And below is what all these reviews say about the bulk of the issues raised by wind opponents.  It's a long list but it's definitely worth a read to understand the unanimity of the reviewers.

Direct health effects from noise and WTS

• “There are no direct pathological effects from wind farms and that any potential impact on humans can be minimised by following existing planning guidelines.” Source: NHMRC 2010 

• “There is no evidence that the audible or sub-audible sounds emitted by wind turbines have any direct adverse physiological effects.” Source: Colby 2009 review  
• “... surveys of peer-reviewed scientific literature have consistently found no evidence linking wind turbines to human health concerns.” Source: CanWEA 
• “There is insufficient evidence that the noise from wind turbines is directly... causing health problems or disease.” Source: Massachusetts review  
• “There is no reason to believe, based on the levels and frequencies of the sounds and... sound exposures in occupational settings, that the sounds from wind turbines could plausibly have direct adverse health consequences.” Source: Colby 2009 review  
• “... while some people living near wind turbines report symptoms such as dizziness, headaches, and sleep disturbance, the scientific evidence available to date does not demonstrate a direct causal link between wind turbine noise and adverse health effects. The sound level from wind turbines at common residential setbacks is not sufficient to cause hearing impairment or other direct health effects...” Source: Ontario CMOH Report 
• “... the audible noise created by a wind turbine, constructed at the approved setback distance does not pose a health impact concern.”Source: Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit
• There is no evidence for a set of health effects, from exposure to wind turbines that could be characterized as a "Wind Turbine Syndrome." Source: Massachusetts review  
• “... there is not an association between noise from wind turbines and measures of psychological distress or mental health problems.” Source: Massachusetts review
• “Evidence that environmental noise damages mental health is… inconclusive.” Source: Ad Hoc Expert Group on Noise and Health 
• “…no association was found between road traffic noise and overall psychological distress…”Source: Ad Hoc Expert Group on Noise and Health 
• “To date, no peer reviewed scientific journal articles demonstrate a causal link between people living in proximity to modern wind turbines, the noise (audible, low frequency noise, or infrasound) they emit and resulting physiological health effects.” Source: Knopper&Ollson review

• “... there is no scientific evidence that noise at levels created by wind turbines could cause health problems other than annoyance...” Source: Eja Pedersen 2003 Review

• “None of the... evidence reviewed suggests an association between noise from wind turbines and pain and stiffness, diabetes, high blood pressure, tinnitus, hearing impairment, cardiovascular disease, and headache/migraine.” Source: Massachusetts review 

• “...there are no evidences that noise from wind turbines could cause cardiovascular and psycho-physiological effects.” Source: Eja Pedersen 2003 Review
• “…there was no evidence that environmental noise was related to raised blood pressure…”Source: Ad Hoc Expert Group on Noise and Health 

• “The health impact of the noise created by wind turbines has been studied and debated for decades with no definitive evidence supporting harm to the human ear.” Source: Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit

• “The electromagnetic fields produced by the generation and export of electricity from a wind farm do not pose a threat to public health...”Source: NHMRC 2010

• “... no consistent associations were found between wind turbine noise exposure and symptom reporting, e.g. chronic disease, headaches, tinnitus and undue tiredness.” Source: Bolin et al 2011 Review
• “... low level frequency noise or infrasound emitted by wind turbines is minimal and of no consequence... Further, numerous reports have concluded that there is no evidence of health effects arising from infrasound or low frequency noise generated by wind turbines.” Source: NHMRC 2010
• “... renewable energy generation is associated with few adverse health effects compared with the well documented health burdens of polluting forms of electricity generation...” Source: NHMRC 2010
• “Although opposition to wind farms on aesthetic grounds is a legitimate point of view, opposition to wind farms on the basis of potential adverse health consequences is not justified by the evidence.” Source: Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit
• “What is apparent is that numerous websites have been constructed by individuals or groups to support or oppose the development of wind turbine projects, or media sites reporting on the debate. Often these websites state the perceived impacts on, or benefits to, human health to support the position of the individual or group hosting the website. The majority of information posted on these websites cannot be traced back to a scientific, peer-reviewed source and is typically anecdotal in nature. In some cases, the information contained on and propagated by internet websites and the media is not supported, or is even refuted, by scientific research. This serves to spread misconceptions about the potential impacts of wind energy on human health...” Source: Knopper&Ollson review 

Annoyance

• “... wind turbine noise is comparatively lower than road traffic, trains, construction activities, and industrial noise.”Source: Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit 
• “The perception of noise depends in part on the individual - on a person’s hearing acuity and upon his or her subjective tolerance for or dislike of a particular type of noise.  For example, a persistent “whoosh” might be a soothing sound to some people even as it annoys others.”Source: NRC 2007
• “... some people might find [wind turbine noise annoying. It has been suggested that annoyance may be a reaction to the characteristic “swishing” or fluctuating nature of wind turbine sound rather than to the intensity of sound.” Source: Ontario CMOH Report 

• “… being annoyed can lead to increasing feelings of powerlessness and frustration, which is widely believed to be at least potentially associated with adverse health effects over the longer term.”Source: Ad Hoc Expert Group on Noise and Health
• “Wind turbine annoyance has been statistically associated with wind turbine noise, but found to be more strongly related to visual impact, attitude to wind turbines and sensitivity to noise.” Source: Knopper&Ollson review
• “... self reported health effects like feeling tense, stressed, and irritable, were associated with noise annoyance and not to noise itself...” Source: Knopper&Ollson review 
• “... many of the self reported health effects are associated with numerous issues, many of which can be attributed to anxiety and annoyance.” Source: Knopper&Ollson review
• “To date, no peer reviewed articles demonstrate a direct causal link between people living in proximity to modern wind turbines, the noise they emit and resulting physiological health effects. If anything, reported health effects are likely attributed to a number of environmental stressors that result in an annoyed/stressed state in a segment of the population.” Source: Knopper&Ollson review
• “… some community studies are biased towards over-reporting of symptoms because of an explicit link between…noise and symptoms in the questions inviting people to remember and report more symptoms because of concern about noise.” Source: Ad Hoc Expert Group on Noise and Health 
• “... it is probable that some persons will inevitably exhibit negative responses to turbine noise wherever and whenever it is audible, no matter what the noise level.” Source: Fiumicelli review  Fiumicelli article abstract
• “The major source of uncertainty in our assessment is related to the subjective nature of response to sound, and variability in how people perceive, respond to, and cope with sound.” Source: Oregon review
• “... sleep difficulties, as well as feelings of uneasiness, associated with noise annoyance could be an effect of the exposure to noise, although it could just as well be that respondents with sleeping difficulties more easily appraised the noise as annoying.” Source: NHMRC 2010 
• “Even noise that falls within known safety limits is subjective to the recipient and will be received and subsequently perceived positively or negatively.”Source: Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit
• “... annoyance was strongly correlated with a negative attitude toward the visual impact of wind turbines on the landscape...” Source: NHMRC 2010
• “Respondents tended to report more annoyance when they also noted a negative effect on landscape, and ability to see the turbines was strongly related to the probability of annoyance.”Source: Minnesota Health Dept 2009
• “[It is proposed that annoyance is not a direct health effect but an indication that a person’s capacity to cope is under threat. The person has to resolve the threat or their coping capacity is undermined, leading to stress related health effects... Some people are very annoyed at quite low levels of noise, whilst other are not annoyed by high levels.” Source: NHMRC 2010
• “Further, sounds, such as repetitive but low intensity noise, can evoke different responses from individuals… Some people can dismiss and ignore the signal, while for others, the signal will grow and become more apparent and unpleasant over time… These reactions may have little relationship to will or intent, and more to do with previous exposure history and personality.” Source: Minnesota Health Dept 2009
• “Stress and annoyance from noise often do not correlate with loudness. This may suggest [that other factors impact an individual’s reaction to noise… individuals with an interest in a project and individuals who have some control over an environmental noise are less likely to find a noise annoying or stressful.” Source: Minnesota Health Dept 2009
• “There is a possibility of learned aversion to low frequency noise, leading to annoyance and stress...” Source: Leventhall 2005 review
• “Noise produced by wind turbines generally is not a major concern for humans beyond a half mile or so because various measures to reduce noise have been implemented in the design of modern turbines.”Source: NRC 2007
• “Noise… levels from an onshore wind project are typically in the 35-45 dB(A) range at a distance of about 300 meters...  These are relatively low noise or sound-pressure levels compared with other common sources such as a busy office (~60 dB(A)), and with nighttime ambient noise levels in the countryside ( ~20-40 dB(A)).” Source: NRC 2007
• “Complaints about low frequency noise come from a small number of people but the degree of distress can be quite high. There is no firm evidence that exposure to this type of sound causes damage to health, in the physical sense, but some people are certainly very sensitive to it.” Source: Ad Hoc Expert Group on Noise and Health
• “… there is the theoretical possibility that annoyance may lead to stress responses and then to illness. If there is no annoyance then there can be no mechanism for any increase in stress hormones by this pathway… if stress-related adverse health effects are mediated solely through annoyance then any mitigation plan which reduces annoyance would be equally effective in reducing any consequent adverse health effects. It would make no difference whether annoyance reduction was achieved through actual reductions in sound levels, or by changes in attitude brought about by some other means.” Source: Ad Hoc Expert Group on Noise and Health 

Infrasound

• "Claims that infrasound from wind turbines directly impacts the vestibular system have not been demonstrated scientifically... evidence shows that the infrasound levels near wind turbines cannot impact the vestibular system." Source: Massachusetts review 
• “There is no evidence that infrasound ... [from wind turbines ... contributes to perceived annoyance or other health effects.” Source: Bolin et al 2011 Review 
• “There is no consistent evidence of any physiological or behavioural effect of acute exposure to infrasound in humans.” Source: UK HPA Report
• “... self reported health effects of people living near wind turbines are more likely attributed to physical manifestation from an annoyed state than from infrasound.” Source: Knopper&Ollson review
• “... infrasound from current generation upwind model turbines [is well below the pressure sound levels at which known health effects occur. Further, there is no scientific evidence to date that vibration from low frequency wind turbine noise causes adverse health effects.” Source: Ontario CMOH Report
• “It would appear... that infrasound alone is hardly responsible for the complaints... from people living up to two km from the large downwind turbines.” Source: Jakobsen 2005 review 
• “From a critical survey of all known published measurement results of infrasoundfrom wind turbines it is found that wind turbines of contemporary design with therotor placed upwind produce very low levels of infrasound. Even quite close to theseturbines the infrasound level is far below relevant assessment criteria, including thelimit of perception.”Source: Jakobsen 2005 review 
• “With older downwind turbines, some infrasound also is emitted each time a rotor blade interacts with the disturbed wind behind the tower, but it is believed that the energy at these low frequencies is insufficient to pose a health hazard.” Source: NRC 2007 

Shadow flicker

• “Scientific evidence suggests that shadow flicker [from the rotating blades of wind turbines does not pose a risk for eliciting seizures as a result of photic stimulation.” Source: Massachusetts review
• Shadow flicker from wind turbines… is unlikely to cause adverse health impacts in the general population.  The low flicker rate from wind turbines is unlikely to trigger seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy.  Further, the available scientific evidence suggests that very few individuals will be annoyed by the low flicker frequencies expected from most modern wind turbines.” Source: Oregon review
• “Flicker frequency due to a turbine is on the order of the rotor frequency (i.e., 0.6-1.0 Hz), which is harmless to humans.  According to the Epilepsy Foundation, only frequencies above 10 Hz are likely to cause epileptic seizures.” Source: NRC 2007

Community & social response to wind turbines

• The perception of sound as noise is a subjective response that is influenced by factors related to the sound, the person, and the social/environmental setting.  These factors result in considerable variability in how people perceive and respond to sound... Factors that are consistently associated with negative community response are fear of a noise source... [and noise sensitivity...” Source: Oregon review
• “Wind energy developments could indirectly result in positive health impacts... if they increase local employment, personal income, and community-wide income and revenue.  However, these positive effects may be diminished if there are real or perceived increases in income inequality within a community.” Source: Oregon review  
• “Effective public participation in and direct benefits from wind energy projects (such as receiving electricity from the neighboring wind turbines) have been shown to result in less annoyance in general and better public acceptance overall.” Source: Massachusetts review
• “... people who benefit economically from wind turbines [are less likely to report noise annoyance, despite exposure to similar sound levels as those people who [are not economically benefiting.” Source: NHMRC 2010 
• “Landowners... may perceive and respond differently (potentially more favorably) to increased sound levels from a wind turbine facility, particularly if they benefit from the facility or have good relations with the developer...” Source: Oregon review
• “The level of annoyance or disturbance experienced by those hearing wind turbine sound is influenced by individuals' perceptions of other aspects of wind energy facilities, such as turbine visibility, visual impacts, trust, fairness and equity, and the level of community engagement during the planning process.” Source: Oregon review  
• “Wind energy facilities... can indirectly result in positive health impacts by reducing emissions of [green house gases and harmful air pollutants, and... Communities near fossil-fuel based power plants that are displaced by wind energy could experience reduced risks for respiratory illness, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and premature death.” Source: Oregon review
• “The environmental and human-health risk reduction benefits of wind-powered electricity generation accrue through its displacement of electricity generation using other energy sources (e.g., fossil fuels), thus displacing the adverse effects of those other generators.” Source: NRC 2007
• “Community engagement at the outset of planning for wind turbines is important and may alleviate health concerns about wind farms. Concerns about fairness and equity may also influence attitudes towards wind farms and allegationsabout effects on health. These factors deserve greater attention in future developments.” Source: Ontario CMOH Report 

Is there anything not caused by wind farms?

Teresa Simometti from the Sydney Medical School and Prof. Simon Chapman from the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney have been collecting the claims made about health problems in humans and animals that windfarm opponents attribute to exposure to wind turbines.

Here's the list so far:

Anxiety and panic disorder

Cancer

Cardiovascular disease

Chest pain

Cold sores (herpes)

Depression

Diabetes

Diarrhoea

Disrupted relationships

Dizziness

Ear pain

Epilepsy

Exacerbation of chronic disease (e.g. fibromyalgia, scleroderma, diabetes, hyperthyroidism)

Eye pain

Falls and equilibrium problems

Frequent urination

Gastrointestinal upsets & indigestion

Headache and migraine

Hearing loss

Hypertension

Inability to conceive

Joint & muscle pain

Loss of energy

Malformation in chickens, cattle

Multiple periods (4-5) per month

Muscle twitches

Multiple sclerosis

Motion sickness

Nausea

Nerve pain & tingling

Nosebleeds

Palpitations

Paralysis

Perforated eardrum

Poor appetite

Poor concentration & memory

Poor wound healing

Stomach ulcers

Stress & irritability

Tachycardia

Tinnitus

Vertigo

Vomiting up blood

Weight gain

Weight loss

The authors also list all the references to documents where these claims are made.  Here are some of the most frequent citations: 

• http://www.healthywindwisconsin.com/Ontario%20Health%20Survey%20Abstract%20Results%20and%20Responses.pdf

• http://www.windvigilance.com/about-adverse-health-effects/mental-health-and-wind-turbines

• http://www.savewesternny.org/docs/pierpont_testimony.html

• http://betterplan.squarespace.com/todays-special/2010/6/18/61810-whats-on-the-docket-for-the-wind-siting-council-bad-vi.html
• http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/09/21/wind-farm-ruined-our-health-family-suit-claims-vertigo-nausea-and-sleep-loss/

The authors then went on to demonstrate how these symptoms have been proven to not have occurred from exposure to wind turbines.  We'll cover that in another post.

Latest wind farm research is a load of hot air

We turn, once again, to Australia to learn more about what is going on in own back yard.  The Society for Wind Vigilance claims that their research into complaints from people near wind farms has undergone peer review.  For example, here's a quote from Carmen Krogh to the Canadian Senate:

Carmen Krogh, Member of the Board, The Society for Wind Vigilance: Thank you. I have been conducting research on this subject for about three years and I have had a couple of articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. I did some research on the sociological impacts because, not only were people experiencing a variety of symptom, but the social impacts were significant as well. I concluded in one of my articles that if we do not site wind turbines properly, people will suffer adverse health effects. 

Source: THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY, THE ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES 

OTTAWA, Tuesday, October 18, 2011 

This is Senate Evidence, and it's been peer reviewed.  So it must be good science - right?

Wrong.  

Simon Chapman, Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney, keeps an eye open for statements like these.

Professor Chapman, according to Wikipedia,  " has authored 17 books and major reports, 281 papers and 150 letters and commentaries in peer reviewed journals.  Chapman is a regular writer on public healthmatters in leading Australian newspapers, having written over 200 opinion page and journalistic articles since 1981.  His main research interests are in tobacco control, media discourses on health and illness, and risk communication."

Here's what he wrote about the Society's claims:

Crikey.com

October 14, 2011

Simon Chapman

Yesterday I wrote about the connections between some of the principal individuals who have been vocal in opposing wind farm development in Australia.

The various organisations at the forefront of the opposition recently published eight papers in a special edition of an allegedly peer-reviewed journal that you could be excused from never having heard of. The Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society is a journal that has appeared erratically over the past few years. It was indexed between 1981-1995 by the Web of Science, the international scientific indexing platform that “covers over 10,000 of the highest impact journals worldwide, including Open Access journals and over 110,000 conference proceedings”.

But after 1995 it was dropped from the list of journals being indexed, generally a sign that indexing services regard a journal as having fallen below an acceptable scientific standard.

In the 14 years it was indexed, a citation search conduced on October 10, 2011 showed that it published 961 papers that had been cited for a grand total of just 345 times — an average of 0.36 per paper — almost a homeopathic strength citation rate. Today, Web of Science shows it has published only seven papers that have been cited seven or more times, with the most-cited paper in its history having been cited just 15 times. PubMed, the indexing service of the US National Library of Medicine also does not index the journal.

Nonetheless, anti-wind farm websites have jubilantly described the journal as a “leading scientific peer-reviewed journal” and the issue as “groundbreaking”. In summary, this is a journal that cannot be described as low ranking in scientific research publishing. It is more accurately described as “unranking”.

All the papers in the issue are only accessible by pay-per-view, but to give an idea of the quality, here’s an example: Krogh CME. Industrial wind turbine development and loss of social justice. Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 2011;31(4):321-333.

This paper contains no “methods” section, so it fails to conform to the most basic requirement of scientific reporting: that it contains details of how the research reported was undertaken. This is a fundamental requirement because without it, readers have no way of assessing the adequacy and rigor of any investigation, and whether any results report and conclusions drawn are justified or not. Instead, the author — a retired pharmacist who PubMedshows published one paper in 1985 — explains that she “began investigating reports of adverse health effects made by individuals living in the environs” of wind turbines in Ontario, Canada  for “more than two years”. That’s it. And this is called peer reviewed “research”.

Instead of describing any research, the author has written a paper that mixes up statements somehow apparently made to her by de-identified informants about negative effects of exposure to turbines with similar examples from other parts of the world, from websites and submission to inquiries by wind farm opponents.  We are told nothing about the process by which her informants were interviewed, the questions they were asked, how they were selected and whether her “study” was approved by any institutional research ethics committee. This is not a paper that would be make first base as an example of serious scientific investigation about wind farms and health.

Its findings contain not a single example of any informant reporting anything but adverse effects of exposure to wind farms, when it is widely acknowledged that a large majority of those so exposed report no adverse effects nor complain about the turbines and even (make the sign of the cross …) like them.

In an attempt to understand the process of peer review that had been followed, in August 2011, I wrote to the editor of the Bulletin, asking the following questions:

1. Were you approached by those participating in [a 2010 anti-wind farm meeting held in Ontario] to publish these papers? Or did the initiative come from you?
2. Did you personally edit this issue or were guest editors used? If so, can you please describe how they were selected?
3. Was there a charge made to the authors to publish their papers together like this?
4. It is plain that all the papers are openly negative about wind farms, which is curious given that there is a large body of research that demonstrates a very different picture. Did you put out a call for submissions or approach researchers working in this area to submit manuscripts?
5. Did you approach any authors who did not have affiliations with the anti-wind farm movement?
6. Were all the papers peer reviewed?
7. Did the authors propose their own reviewers and were these the reviewers used?
8. Can signed or de-indentified copies of these reviews be made available to others on request?

Over several testy email replies, the editor made the following comments:

“A third party mediated between the organizers of the symposium and myself. We are dealing with a very difficult situation in which there is no balanced approach to begin with. Deep pockets have controlled the research agenda and professional people with impeccable credentials did what they did in this case out of there (sic) own pocket. As far as refereeing is concerned, never has any issue been so over refereed by people with impeccable credentials in anticipation of the kinds of concerns you voice.

“I can assure you that this Bulletin is not a front for any special interest group and that I would not have dreamt of publishing this issue had it not been for the questionable conduct of the windfarm industry and government officials. The issue attempts to create a little bit of balance, and show that there are legitimate other voices coming from people with impeccable credentials who are not funded because of their views.”

No copies of reviews or reviewers names were provided. A researcher from the University of Adelaide has subsequently written directly to the authors and received no reviews back. The principle of open peer reviewing is widely discussed in research publishing and while requests by others to see reviews are unusual, refusal to be transparent can only promote suspicion about the process, particularly when the quality of the papers is considered.

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Since this edition was published in August 2011, the Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society has not published a full edition.   It did publish a few online articles but even those stopped in December 2011.   It normally published six times per year, so it has missed a least three editions.