Wind Turbines Need Wind
Somebody from the Nova Scotian media finally raises a couple of critical questions about windmills. First, the wind must be, er, blowing in order for them to generate energy:
…on the day of the big announcement, there was barely a breeze, underscoring the unfortunate fact that wind turbines produce electricity only about a third of the time, often when there’s little demand for it.
Second, wind-turbine health effects are not clearly understood at this time.
Ward and Mae Brubacher, a couple in their 50s, who live 750 metres from two turbines on remote Fitzpatrick Mountain, Pictou County. Ward says when strong winds blow, the noise vibrations are like the booming of car stereo speakers. “Many times we have laid awake in bed with all the windows shut in the house listening to the whompf, whompf, whompf,” he says. “You get up, you read, you wait until you’re exhausted so you can sleep through it.”
"What could possibly go wrong?"
Wind-turbines produce extreme low-frequency noise pulses (infra-noise). Anecdotal reports are to be taken with a grain of salt and can be employed by the media to personalize any agenda. But the effects of ”regular” noise exposure from, say, industry or hobbies are well documented: these include cochlear hearing loss, tinnitus, hypertension, anxiety, headaches, and sleep problems. It’s reasonable to assume that intense, pulsating, sub-sonic blasts of noise could have similar effects.
Nina Pierpont has written a book about “Wind Turbine Syndrome” which attempts to define a cluster of health problems that may be caused from living close to these windmills.
You’d think that this issue would have generated a plethora of research, but a quick search of a university library database resulted in only a few articles. This might seem surprising, but the truth is that research funding schemes have resulted in university cultures which are enthusiastic about green-friendly endeavours. Also, transducer limitations make it difficult to study this issue in the lab since most microphones and receivers (speakers) do not function well in the extreme, low-frequency range.
Whatever the case, it’s interesting to watch authorities scramble over one another to get these projects going. The Coast and editor Bruce Wark aren’t exactly from the right-wing, climate-denier caste. So it’s refreshing (and a credit to Mr. Wark) to see these issues brought forward.
