Mount Mercer’s 64 turbines became operational in the middle of this year and a family living about one kilometre away is unsure “what the fuss is all about”. “We barely hear them,” said Stephen Kent, who, after co-existing with the turbines for almost six months, likened their sound to a distant freeway.
Wind Noise, Health, & Safety
“Dr. Studzienny pled guilty to professional misconduct in four complaints,” said Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario Registrar Irwin Fefergrad when contacted Monday. Dr. Fefergrad said that Dr. Studzienny was fined $4,000, must write a letter of apology and has been ordered to take a course in professional ethics, a sentence largely congruent with that handed down by the Ontario Human Rights Commission heard earlier this fall. “He has also been reprimanded,” said Dr. Fefergrad. “That stays in the online registry.”
The worldwide expansion of wind energy has met with opposition based on concerns that the infrasound generated by wind turbines causes health problems in nearby residents. In this paper, we argue that health complaints are more likely to be explained by the nocebo response, whereby adverse effects are generated by negative expectations.
To date, the evidence has been insufficient to support the revocation of a wind facility approval. This article reviews the legal basis for the dismissal of human-health based appeals.
Instead Forest has spent over $500,000 of its taxpayers’ money to fight close to $600,000 in annual increases in local wealth. Does anyone really think that the citizens of Forest were fully informed and agreed to spend over 80% of a year’s property taxes to make their town poorer?
Stephen Ambrose and Robert Rand are US acousticians who believe that wind turbine noise is somehow uniquely making people sick. In 2011, they were contracted by Bruce McPherson, a Falmouth Massachusetts resident, to do a study of the noise from one of the turbines on the municipal water treatment plant. They produced a consulting report which continues to be cited by anti-wind organizations worldwide. So how does it stand up?
“The highest percentage believing [claims about wind turbine syndrome] (21 percent) was in Wisconsin, a state which has far fewer wind farms and where some political leaders have in recent years been hostile to renewable and distributed energy”
California parents are deciding against vaccinating their kindergarten-age children at twice the rate they did seven years ago, a fact public health experts said is contributing to the reemergence of measles across the state and may lead to outbreaks of other serious diseases.
Wind health impacts have been dismissed in courts across the globe. This Energy and Policy Institute report assesses legal cases in five English-speaking countries pertaining to wind energy. The intent is to provide clarity in assessing potential legal liability, and to identify the weaknesses of evidence and expertise that are common in health-related suits against wind farms.
. . . suggest that these wind turbines have not significantly impacted nearby property values. Thus, these results do not corroborate the concerns raised by residents regarding potential negative impacts of turbines on property values.
