Study: Wind power = nightmares, inner-ear disturbances - I say FUD
- August 14th, 2008
- 6 Comments
I have to say, I’m pretty skeptical of this study. On the surface it seems pretty straightforward: most of the families who lived near wind farms had a similar (if vague) constellation of symptoms including sleep trouble, nightmares, migraines, and other generically scary stuff. Dr. Nina Pierpont suggests this is an effect of long-term exposure of the inner ear to low-frequency vibrations produced by wind turbines. Here’s where I take issue with the idea, but I don’t want to take up the whole front page with my reservations. Click below for why I think this is nothing but a healthy dose of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Let’s do a little experiment. Yes, right now! Turn off the music and listen. Do you hear anything? Listen harder. Can you hear those power lines buzzing? Can you hear the fridge hum? Can you hear the freeway rumble? We are saturated with noise and hardly notice it. Even in remote parts of the country you are exposed to it, and if constant noise at any frequency were as harmful as Pierpont suggests, those of us in urban areas would all be long dead.
Even if there is a secret frequency that causes all these vague and overreported symptoms to increase, what’s the mechanism? How could a (dis)harmonic frequency be the same for men, women, children of all sizes with different inner ears, different susceptibilities? The symptoms reported are like a laundry list of the most commonly reported problems all over the world since long before wind turbines started spinning.
And even if we grant this secret frequency and that the symptoms reported are related, just how little respect is being given to our bodies and brains? Your brain and inner ear are fabulously elegant and self-repairing; we naturally adapt to a constant stimulus over a period of time, it’s built into neural hardware going all the way back to sea snails. A low-frequency hum somehow cuts through defenses that have held up in the brains of sailors in nuclear submarines for months? Go watch Das Boot and tell me that you’d prefer a month of wind turbines.
I’ll acknowledge that the hum from a wind turbine might be noticeable, and might even bug some people until they got used to it, but I have to object to the idea that they could cause the medical problems suggested, by any mechanism whatsoever. Let me offer my own professional diagnosis of the people suffering from windmills being put in nearby: acute NIMBYitis.
[via Daily Tech]
benjaminx (Who am I?)
3 months ago
Those things are monstrosities. Small wonder no one wants them nearby.
Eric (Who am I?)
3 months ago
I’ve always thought that wind turbines were kind of graceful and majestic. I wouldn’t mind living near one, given the fact that it’s providing clean and renewable energy.
That low frequency sound stuff is such rubbish. I live about a quarter mile or less from some train tracks that freight trains use several times a day. We get some pretty serious rumble going on in my neighborhood, and nothing bad has happened. Granted, these noises aren’t going on 24/7, but as Deven mentions, we are already exposed to all sorts of noise pollution. People are just looking for any way they can to slam wind turbines.
Jonathan Lee (Who am I?)
3 months ago
Interesting, here is what I’ve read about the topic.
Importantly, the frequencies that are being discussed are much lower than those made by passing trains. I think the issue at hand is that of infrasonic sound waves, which are at a very low frequency. Continuing, it is said that animals have an innate ability to hear or detect infrasonic waves, which we can’t detect, at least not consciously. In fact, many speculate that the common ‘ability’ of animals to detect coming natural disasters very quickly such as earthquakes, large wave events, mudslides, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc, is due to this ability, as it is said that often infrasonic waves accompany such events.
You can wiki infrasonic waves, or infrasound (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound). Also what is interesting, is that for the US Express, or Cannonball Run, or Gumball 3000, someone had installed an infrasonic wave generator on their car. Someone else mentioned that it was some sort of high powered mil-spec “radar jammer.”
However, a lot of the speculation about human responses to infrasonic sound is mixed. Many believe that exposure to infrasonic waves lead to a sense of uneasiness, depression, anxiety, etc, in humans, even though we cannot consciously hear or detect them. Others feel that this is all bruhaha.
My two cents (man, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here). My belated birthday congrats, it’s being a cool 2 years reading your work!
Devin Coldewey (Who am I?)
3 months ago
Oh, infrasound is totally real and interesting, I just think it’s being blamed in error. It may be _there_, but I just can’t swallow that it’s causing this so-called syndrome. Speaking of infrasounds, though… you ever heard tell of the “brown note”?
Tom Woolf (Who am I?)
3 months ago
After 9/11 many folks commented on a strange silence when they went outdoors. With no planes flying that week, some of the normal background noise outside was missing. This seemed to be mainly in rural areas (I didn’t notice it, but I was marooned across the country in Oakland - which is not a bad place to be marooned).
Maybe the lower frequency of the turbines is more of an issue than the other background noise we deal with daily. I’d like to see other studies back this one up before making any judgment. I usually don’t blindly trust a single study - hopefully, if this is a problem, another study that backs this up is done shortly.
Michael Haser (Who am I?)
3 months ago
Without actually experiencing living next to a Wind Turbine your opinion on this issue is useless. Go live next to a Wind Turbine for a few months 24/7 and then give an opinion based on experience..not conjecture.