Check out this answer from Consensus:
The current body of evidence suggests that wind turbines can cause annoyance and sleep disturbance, particularly due to noise. However, there is no conclusive evidence linking wind turbine noise to more severe health effects such as tinnitus, hearing loss, vertigo, or headache. The perception of wind turbines, including visual and auditory factors, plays a significant role in the reported health effects. Further high-quality research is needed to better understand the complex pathways of annoyance and the potential long-term health effects of wind turbine exposure.
Wind turbines have become a prominent feature in the landscape as the world shifts towards renewable energy sources. However, the potential health effects of wind turbines on nearby residents and workers have sparked considerable debate. This article explores whether wind turbines can make you sick by examining the current scientific literature on the subject.
Health Effects in Working Environments
The health effects of wind turbines on workers in the wind industry have been studied to some extent. A scoping review highlighted that substances used in rotor blade manufacture, such as epoxy resin and styrene, can cause skin disorders, respiratory ailments, and eye complaints. Additionally, exposure to onshore wind turbine noise has been linked to annoyance, sleep disorders, and lowered general health. The review also noted a considerable accident rate associated with working in the wind industry, resulting in injuries or fatalities1.
Health Effects in Residential Settings
Several studies have investigated the health effects of wind turbines on residents living near them. A review of the literature between 2010 and 2020 found that the most common problems reported by residents include noise annoyance, sleep disturbance, and general health symptoms. The study concluded that the knowledge of and attitude towards wind turbines could turn into annoyance and symptoms if the audio-visual effects of turbines limit daily life activities2.
Another scoping review focused on residential settings found that wind turbine noise is associated with noise annoyance, which is moderated by variables such as noise sensitivity, attitude towards wind turbines, and economic benefit. However, the review found no relationship between wind turbine noise and stress effects or biophysiological variables of sleep. The findings on sleep disturbance, quality of life, and mental health problems were heterogeneous3.
Noise and Sleep Disturbance
Noise generated by wind turbines has been reported to affect sleep and quality of life. A systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies revealed that the odds of being annoyed and experiencing sleep disturbance are significantly increased by wind turbine noise. The visual perception of wind turbine generators was also associated with a greater frequency of reported negative health effects4.
Annoyance and Psychological Effects
Wind turbine noise exposure has been linked to various symptoms such as sleep-related problems, headache, tinnitus, and vertigo. A systematic review found evidence of a dose-response relationship between wind turbine noise and noise annoyance, sleep disturbance, and possibly psychological distress. However, no statistically significant evidence was found indicating an association between wind turbine noise exposure and tinnitus, hearing loss, vertigo, or headache5.
Visual and Auditory Perception
The visual and auditory perception of wind turbines can significantly impact residents’ health and well-being. A study conducted by Health Canada found that self-reported health effects such as migraines, tinnitus, dizziness, sleep disturbance, and perceived stress were not related to wind turbine noise levels. However, high annoyance towards several wind turbine features, including noise, blinking lights, shadow flicker, visual impacts, and vibrations, increased with higher wind turbine noise levels8.
Low-Frequency Noise and Infrasound
The potential health effects of low-frequency noise (LFN) and infrasound from wind turbines have also been examined. A narrative review found no evidence of a specific effect of the low-frequency component or infrasound on health. However, annoyance due to aspects like shadow flicker, visual appropriateness in the landscape, and blinking lights can add to the noise annoyance. Personal characteristics such as noise sensitivity, privacy issues, social acceptance, benefits, and attitudes also play a role in reported annoyance9.
Can wind turbines make you sick?
Simon Chapman AO has answered Extremely Unlikely
An expert from University of Sydney in Health
Our free, open-access book, Wind Turbine Syndrome: a communicated disease (Sydney University Press 2017) will take you through the evidence on this issue across 115,000 words.
It reviews why it is clear that adverse reactions to wind turbines are casebook examples of psychogenic illness which spread by exposure to negative publicity. I’ve counted 247 different diseases and symptoms in humans and animals attributed by opponents to windfarms. These include lung cancer, skin cancer, haemorrhoids, gaining and losing weight and my favourite, disoriented echidnas. But most are classic symptoms of anxiety: things that can happen to you when you are very worried.
The nocebo effect, the evil twin sibling of the healing placebo effect, is documented in a vast research literature. When some people are exposed to frightening information about agents or exposures, expectancy effects just as powerful as placebo effects can operate to make people feel sick with worry or anxiety.
25 scientific reviews since 2003 have concluded there is very poor evidence for any claim that wind turbines are the direct cause of any disease. Rather, a herd of uncontested elephants in the room point unavoidably to a conclusion that “wind turbine syndrome” is a communicated disease: you catch it by hearing about it and then worrying.
We know that:
- A few windfarms have a few residents who claim to be affected. The direct causation hypothesis would predict that all wind farms should affect some people.
- The great majority of complaints occur in English-speaking nations, despite the proliferation of windfarms globally. A disease that only speaks English?
- Farms targeted by opposition groups attract more complaints. Just six farms in Australia have had 74% of all complaints.
- Those paid to host turbines rarely complain. The drug “money” may be a powerful preventive.
- Claims about only “susceptible” individuals being affected (as with motion sickness), can’t explain why there are apparently no susceptible people in all of Western Australia or Tasmania with records of health complaints.
- Experimental subjects randomised to view negative news footage about windfarm harms and then exposed to infrasound show that prior exposure to anxiety producing messages increases reporting of symptoms, even to sham infrasound.
And then there are the agitators. In 2011, Sarah Laurie from the Waubra Foundation told an Adelaide court that turbines can make people’s lips vibrate 10 kilometres away. She believes these vibrations are “sufficient to knock them off their feet or bring some men to their knees when out working in their paddock”. The Mythbusters TV series may find that an interesting claim.
Laurie also claims some Australians are “so exquisitely sensitised to certain frequencies that their perception of very, very low frequency” can “perceive an earthquake in Chile.” Chile is a mere 11,365 kilometres from our east coast.
Pharmacist George Papadopolous may be such a person. He claims that “the problem had dissipated when arriving at Young about 100km from the closest turbines”
Noel Dean, an Victorian objector once told an anti–windfarm meeting, “I’ve had my … mobile phone go into charge mode in the middle of the paddock, away from everywhere.” Apple and Samsung are apparently unconvinced.
Ann Gardner, perhaps Australia’s most prolific windfarm complainant, believes she is adversely affected by wind turbines even when they are switched off.
And New Zealander Bruce Rapley warned the 2015 Senate windfarm enquiry, “the health effects of wind turbines will eclipse the asbestos problem in the annals of history.” The WHO estimates that today 125 million are occupationally exposed to asbestos and about half of all occupational cancers are asbestos caused. No one has ever died from windfarm exposure.
This sort of claptrap is what passes for evidence in the confected “debate” that has now caused the Australian and two state parliaments to investigate windfarms five times between 2011 and 2015. The 2015 Senate enquiry was a travesty of science, failing to even mention the largest, most important longitudinal study run by Health Canada. This study provided no support for the direct cause hypothesis.
Social panics over new technology have a natural history. Few now fear television sets and microwave ovens. They heyday of fearing cell phone towers came and went in the 1990s. Wind farm anxiety is now thankfully rapidly receding, with the desultory complaint volumes submitted to the Wind Commissioner showing the phenomenon has all but passed.
The delays this panic caused in driving Australian renewable energy harvesting were major. Our book’s final chapter explores the lessons in how we might avoid the next wave of “modern health worries”.