Wind Turbine Opposition Syndrome

One of the arrows in the quiver of those who oppose the siting of wind farms in their area is an affliction called “Wind Turbine Syndrome.” It has an assortment of symptoms such as headaches, disturbed sleep, blurred vision, dizziness, and digestive troubles. The theory is that there are health effects caused by the sound of wind turbines, especially low frequencies, plus vibrations transmitted through the ground. The primary proponent of this syndrome, at least in terms of actual research, is Dr. Nina Pierpont, M.D., PhD, a pediatrician living in Malone, NY. She performed a case study on a group of families living near a wind farm in upstate New York.

As you can imagine, wind power advocates didn’t let this stand. The American and Canadian Wind Energy Associations assembled a panel of scientists and had them study the problem. The panel looked at European studies of the effects of wind farms and reviewed the science on the relationship between acoustics and human health. They released a report in December of 2009.

I recently read the report from executive summary to appendices. The report is thorough and coherent. The panel’s reasoning makes sense to me in terms of fundamental physics and biology.

I’ll get right to the meat of their conclusions and then dig a bit deeper.

“In the area of wind turbine health effects, no case-control or cohort studies have been conducted as of this date. Accordingly, allegations of adverse health effects from wind turbines are as yet unproven. Panel members agree that the number and uncontrolled nature of existing case reports of adverse health effects alleged to be associated with wind turbines are insufficient to advocate for funding further studies.

In conclusion:
1. Sound from wind turbines does not pose a risk of hearing loss or any other adverse health effect in humans.
2. Subaudible, low frequency sound and infrasound from wind turbines do not present a risk to human health.
3. Some people may be annoyed at the presence of sound from wind turbines. Annoyance is not a pathological entity.
4. A major cause of concern about wind turbine sound is its fluctuating nature. Some may find this sound annoying, a reaction that depends primarily on personal characteristics as opposed to the intensity of the sound level.”

In addition, from the executive summary:

* "The sounds emitted by wind turbines are not unique. There is no reason to believe, based on the levels and frequencies of the sounds, that they could plausibly have direct adverse physiological effects."
    * If sound levels from wind turbines were harmful, it would be impossible to live in a city given the sound levels normally present in urban environments.

There are some telling results from previous European studies, as follows:

“A strong correlation was also noted between noise annoyance and negative opinion of the impact of wind turbines on the landscape, a finding in earlier studies as well.”

“Approximately 10 percent of over 1000 people surveyed via a questionnaire reported being very annoyed at sound levels of 40 dB and greater. Attitude toward the visual impact of the wind turbines had the same effect on annoyance.”

“Annoyance was correlated with sound level and also with negative attitude toward the visual impact of the wind turbines.”

The researchers also note that Dr. Pierpont misinterprets a study on the effect of subsonic vibrations on the human body, much to the advantage of her thesis. It has to do with the threshold level at which humans sense vibrations through bone as compared to air. You can read the details in the report itself at the link above.

The panel’s rejection of Dr. Pierpont’s study rests partly on its contradiction of well-established science on acoustics and biology. It also has to do with the fact that Dr. Pierpont performed her case series study on self-selected individuals. Dr. Pierpont advertised for people living near a wind farm who thought they were experiencing symptoms due to noise. She interviewed 38 people from 10 families, but didn’t compare their experience to anyone else near the wind farm. That is what the panel meant by the reference to the absence of case-control or cohort studies in the excerpt above. A case –control study would compare a group of individuals near wind farms to another group of demographically similar people who do not live near wind farms. A cohort study is similar in that it reviews the histories of people who are alike in most ways but differ in one significant aspect. Asking people with grievances to come forward isn’t conclusive science.

The panel also explored the so-called nocebo effect. We are all familiar with the placebo effect, where people experience real relief due to their expectations about a fake drug. The nocebo effect is the mirror of this, when people experience symptoms of illness due to their expectation that a particular event or treatment should cause such symptoms. This is common in drug trials, where test subjects experience nausea, dizziness, headaches, or even rashes after downing an empty capsule. The panel concludes that the symptoms of the families in question are either irrelevant to their proximity to wind turbines or the product of negative expectations.

The report categorically rebuts the concept of wind turbine syndrome, and does it without breaking a sweat, scientifically speaking. In 2006 the UK Department of Trade and Industry published a study that came to the same conclusions. The UK National health Service also critiqued Pierpont’s study as weak in design and proving nothing. Also in 2006, Canadian Acoustics magazine published an article by Geoff Leventhall, a noise and vibration consultant, that explored the fallacies of wind turbine infrasound.

Setting aside the idea of acoustically induced symptoms, annoyance is a real issue. Designers need to take this into account when planning and developing wind installations. It is important, however, to deal with this issue as what it truly is – an emotionally driven value judgment – and not a health effect. That places it in the arena of debatable community-wide values. If annoyance became an unstoppable basis for law, we’d all spend our lives in court.