kozuh, Neil Anderson, of Falmouth Mass.. first reaction was i wonder how he and his wife would handle living adjacent to a railway track and just off a flight path with the airport only 10 minutes drive away ..
Moving on from that initial thought .. he sounds a decent guy and must say in the picture looks stressed, so thinking .. his problems should be looked at seriously .. to see if anyone was ok living close to a wind turbine i googled .. i live close to a wind turbine .. no problem . . australia ..
Second looked at, problems similar to those of Neil Anderson and his wife ..
“I feel very depressed. Some days I could just curl up and cry” (Australia) .. excerpt ..
The closest wind turbine is 900 metres from our house, and we have 5 wind turbines within 1500 metres from our family home, where I live with my wife Samantha and three children, Jacob, Courtney and Joshua. There are about another 6 wind turbines within 2000 metres of our land, at another location on our farm. We can see nearly all the wind turbines from most areas of our farm.
The first day the turbines started operating closest to our home, my wife started feeling ear and head pressure. Similar to flying in an aeroplane, she said. About six months after, I started feeling similar effects.
As the weeks went on it has gotten worse and worse.
We now suffer headaches, chest pains, a feeling of heart palpitations, and continuous lack of sleep. Every night we can’t sleep. We go to sleep, then wake and just never settle into a good night sleep.
The third.. Wind turbine health warning More from the Portland Observer .. 10 January 2011
SOME people who live close to the wind farms at Cape Bridgewater and Cape Nelson may need to start monitoring their blood pressure, according to a South Australian doctor who visited Portland last week. http://www.spec.com.au/?sp=2&id=11654
The fourth .. in toto ..
The Nocebo Effect: Does Living Near Wind Turbines Really Make You Sick? December 8th, 2010 | Author: Tracey Schelmetic
It’s one of those arguments you hate to get into, since both sides are so equally convinced they are right. As the U.S. and the rest of the world begin to see more wind turbines cropping up in rural areas, the arguments for and against so-called “wind turbine syndrome” have been heating up. Noise and sunlight flicker experienced by people who live near the turbines have been blamed for a host of problems, including sleep deprivation, high blood pressure, headaches, depression, panic attacks, migraines, nausea and tinnitus.
Problems experienced by people living near turbines are generally blamed (by those who believe the disorder is real) on something
Maybe Don Quixote had a point?
called vibroacoustic disorder (VAD), which was first identified in individuals flying at high altitudes and at supersonic speeds. VAD results from constant vibration that supposedly causes changes to the organs – heart and lungs are most typically affected. There have also been suggestions that the so-called “flicker” effect from wind turbines – light being thrown off the turbine’s blades – can induce migraines and aggravate epilepsy, perhaps causing seizures in susceptible people.
The wind industry isn’t buying it, and has funded a number of studies that debunk the claims. The British Wind Energy Association, which has run up against some resident opposition in the UK, has issued a statement that said,“Wind turbines are quiet, safe and sustainable. It is not surprising that…94 per cent of people who live near wind turbines are in favor of them. There is no scientific research to suggest that wind turbines are in any way harmful, and even many of the detractors of wind energy are honest enough to admit this. Noise from wind farms is a non-problem, and we need to move away from this unproductive and unscientific debate, and focus on our targets on reducing carbon emissions.”
Easier said than done.
Dr. Nina Pierpont, a New York pediatrician, has made it her specialty to study the effects of wind turbines on humans. Her findings, aggregated after five years of study, have led her to declare that wind turbine syndrome is real. WTS is supposedly caused by “a disruption or abnormal stimulation of the inner ear’s vestibular system by turbine infrasound and low-frequency noise.” The probably result of it, says Pierpoint, is a host of symptoms she calls “visceral vibratory vestibular disturbance,” or VVVD. The physiologic effects can supposedly manifest as a sense of internal pulsation in the ear, quivering, nervousness, fear, a compulsion to flee, chest tightness and increased heart rate, or tachycardia. The noise from turbines, says Pierpoint, can even cause nightmares and disruptions in cognitive development in children.
Pierpont’s notes that fish and other amphibians are known to be affected through their ear bones by low-frequency noise and vibrations, and likewise, so are humans. Her claims are supported by some recent findings of research teams at Manchester University in the UK.
“It has been gospel among acousticians for years that if a person can’t hear a sound, it’s too weak for it to be detected or registered by any other part of the body,” Pierpont told the British newspaper The Independent. “But this is no longer true. Humans can hear through the bones. This is amazing. It would be heretical if it hadn’t been shown in a well conducted experiment. There is no doubt that my clinical research shows that the infrasonic to ultrasonic noise and vibrations emitted by wind turbines cause the symptoms which I am calling wind turbine syndrome.”
Dr. Pierpont noted that the wind industry will likely “disparage” and try to “discredit” her, and likened the situation to the way tobacco companies tried to debunk early research linking smoking to a whole host of health problems. However, she will be hard to dismiss. She is no quack, and her research is peer-reviewed, adheres to correct research protocol and draws on the work of respected otorhinolaryngologists (ear, nose and throat physicians) and neurologists. Pierpont is not advocating for abolishing wind turbines; rather, she is pushing to establish a minimum safe distance of two kilometers between turbines and homes.
In Australia, a recent report commissioned by the country’s Clean Energy Council [NOTE: WHO IT WAS COMMISSIONED BY .. just saying] has suggested the opposite of Pierpont’s conclusions: that health impacts from wind farm noise are psychosomatic. This report, which was prepared by a noise consultant company called Sonus, concludes that there is a large body of evidence that noise from wind turbines “developed and operated in accordance with the current guidelines and standards” do not, in fact, have any direct adverse effects on human health.
The Sonus report indicates that most perceived negative health symptoms “may be exacerbated by rhetoric, fears and negative publicity.” Scientists refer to the fear of negative consequences actually causing those negative consequences to occur “the nocebo effect” (it’s the opposite of the placebo effect). It’s defined as “a worsening of mental or physical health based on fear or belief in adverse effects.”
Many Australians who firmly believe in “wind turbine syndrome” have criticized the report. Dr. Sarah Laurie, a physician and medical director of the non-profit Waubra Foundation, has said that the Sonus report “lacked integrity” for not considering that some Australians had indeed become very ill due to living and working in close proximity to turbines. The Foundation is a non-profit that studies the effects of turbines on humans.
“The reality for some neighbors of wind farms in Australia is that they become extremely unwell,” said Laurie. “Some have been forced to leave their family homes, farms and livelihoods as they can no longer work on their land. Others are unable to leave as their main asset is their house and land, which becomes unsaleable.”
A number of other nations have begun studying the legitimacy of the claims of negative health effects. The Japanese Environment Minister recently commissioned a report to study whether wind turbine syndrome is real. His agency will conduct a four-year examination of 1,517 wind turbines in the country. The Ministry was spurred to action, it said, because “people living near wind power facilities are increasingly complaining of health problems.”
So which side is right? Maybe both of them.
A guest editorial that appeared in 2008 in Environmental Health Perspectives, a publication put out by the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the NIH stated that, “Even seemingly clean sources of energy can have implications on human health. Wind energy will undoubtedly create noise, which increases stress, which in turn increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer.”
Note that the culprit here is not low-frequency vibrations, but stress, which gives credence to the nocebo effect: perceptions of negative consequences lead to stress, which in turn actually causes the negative consequences. A reported sponsored by the EU and carried out in the Netherlands found that, “the sound of wind turbines causes relatively much annoyance. The sound is perceived at relatively low levels and is thought to be more annoying than equally loud air or road traffic.” Researchers noted statistically significant levels of insomnia and annoyance in residents who lived near turbines, and the report found that “annoyance with wind turbine noise was associated with psychological distress, stress, difficulties to fall asleep and sleep interruption.”
In a similar vein, a report on the problems and complaints of residents living near turbines in Sweden concluded that, “Annoyance is an adverse health effect.”
In 2009, a report commissioned in the U.S. and Canada by two wind-industry groups and based on extensive research concluded that turbines do not “directly” cause health consequences, which leaves the door open to negative health consequences from the annoyance factor. The study did admit that some people could become anxious and stressed from the noise by turbines. “A small minority of those exposed report annoyance and stress associated with noise perception,” said the report. But it also concluded (in conflict with the Swedish study) that “Annoyance is not a disease.”
So what to do? Most players on both sides of the issue agree that pulling turbines further back from resident properties and workplaces is a good idea. Offshore turbines are generally proposed for both reasons of aesthetics and to prevent noise annoyance to nearby humans. Finally, the wind industry may be able to solve some of the problems with technology. Researchers from the University of Twente in the Netherlands and the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory have found that altering turbine blades by adding “saw teeth” to the trailing ends of the blades may reduce the noise output by as much as 50 percent.
Whopper of a wind farm opens off Britain World's largest offshore project has 100 turbines — so far msnbc.com staff and news service reports updated 9/23/2010
LONDON — The world's largest offshore wind farm had its grand opening Thursday — and its location on the estuary of the Thames River makes it a showcase for Britain's push to move beyond fossil fuels.
A huge, green victory occurred today when the United States federal government gave the green light to the nation's first offshore wind farm. The controversial plan has been under review by the government for over nine years. The plan is to install 130 turbines off the coast of Cape Cod. The program will harness the strong ocean breezes and provide electricity to homes and businesses. The US is currently behind Europe and China when it comes to providing this renewable and affordable energy. The Cape Cod plan is the first of many proposed wind farms that will be built along the Atlantic coast. “America needs offshore wind power, and with this project, Massachusetts will lead the nation,” Governor Deval Patrick declared at the Statehouse on Wednesday. While there are differences of opinion, he said, “on balance, Cape Wind is good for our environment and good for our energy needs.” [NYT] http://www.passportmagazine.com/blog/index.php?/archives/900-US-Government-Approves-First-Offshore-Wind-Farm.html
Wish you had given me one of these first .. didn't think of it earlier .. sometimes we just don't think as well as we should .. eh? .. nudge nudge ..
These two are a bit of a let-down for me ..
Sustainable Energy Research: Offshore Wind Energy * Dr. Dong Jeng
Innovative approaches for wind, waves, offshore wind farm and seabed interaction: a coupled model
Renewable energies have considerable potential and could theoretically provide a nearly unlimited supply of relatively clean and mostly local energy. In general, renewable energy supply has been growing strongly; the annual growth for wind energy, for example, has been around 30% recently, albeit from a very low base. Onshore wind energy has grown enormously over the last decade to the point where it generates more than 10% of all electricity in certain regions. However, due to the limitation of land-use for onshore wind farms, offshore wind energy promises to become an important source of energy in the near future: it is expected that by the end of this decade, wind parks with a total capacity of thousands of megawatts will be installed in European seas.
Although numerous offshore wind farms have been constructed in EU and USA, no such a facility is available in Australia. Development of green (renewable) energy has been recongised as an alternative and favor option in Australia. It is expected that offshore wind energy will be an important renewable energy in Australia in the next decade. Thus, it is desired to develop the technique of Offshore Wind Farms (OWF) now.
The innovation of this project lies in the extension of the existing models for OWF from individual aspects to a coupling model. Most existing models have been limited to either fluid-soil or fluid-structure or soil-structure interaction. Thus, the major objective of this project is to integrate them into one model, which allows engineers to have a better understanding of the full process of the flow, soil and structural problem of offshore wind farms.
Should have checked old reliable earlier .. darn .. seems no off-shores in Australia yet ..
Offshore wind farms
Offshore wind turbines near Copenhagen.
Europe is the world leader in offshore wind energy, with the first offshore wind farm being installed in Denmark in 1991. As of 2010, there are 39 offshore wind farms in waters off Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom, with an operating capacity of 2,396 MW. More than 100 GW (or 100, 000 MW) of offshore projects are proposed or under development in Europe. The European Wind Energy Association has set of 40 GW installed by 2020 and 150 GW by 2030.[10]
As of November 2010, the Thanet Offshore Wind Project in United Kingdom is the largest offshore wind farm in the world at 300 MW, followed by Horns Rev II (209 MW) in Denmark. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_farm
Now, kozuh, listen up, eh .. next time give me the HAPPY NEWS, FIRST .. please .. nudge nudge .. remember now .. happy news first. .. chuckle ..
Thanks for bringing the topic up .. it's been good to catch up on it.
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