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rfmcdonaldMetro Toronto this morning included a report by an Australian researcher arguing that claims wind turbines are associated with ill health are products not of biological illness but social contagion.
For balance's seek, Metro Toronto included an interview with a local anti-wind turbine activist.
Krogh's claims seems less credible to me in that strong belief--the sort that would lead people to sell their houses--is not in itself automatically proof of anything, while her citing the feelings of people who identify themselves as sufferers is problematic. Against this, there are peer-reviewed studies claiming otherwise, while Chapman's ScienceDaily announcement of his paper is worded rather confrontationally.
Professor Simon Chapman, an associate dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney, mapped out the history of health-related complaints about wind turbines in Australia and found they don’t follow logically from the development of wind farms, but instead follow the growth of anti-wind turbine activism. The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed.
He found the majority of complaints — 68 per cent — came from just five of the country’s 49 wind farms, which are also at the centre of activism. There were no complaints from all of Western Australia and many other very large wind farms.
Chapman collected health-related complaints about the country’s wind farms made to Australia’s government, directly to wind companies and in Australian media finding that 120 people complained between 1993 and 2012. That is the equivalent of one in every 272 residents living within five kilometres from a wind farm.
“I find it implausible that if wind turbines in themselves were harmful, there would be whole farms using the same equipment, mega-wattage, everything, where people weren’t saying they were affected,” he said.
Wind farms have been in operation in the country since 1993, but health complaints didn’t start in earnest until 2009, when anti-wind activists began widely publicizing health-related concerns and a controversial American doctor dubbed the phrase “Wind Turbine Syndrome”, said Chapman.
[. . .]
“I don’t doubt that when people say, ‘I’m suffering,’ that they’re suffering,” he said. “But the problems that people speak of are very common in all communities. The question becomes not whether they have those problems, but what’s causing those problems.”
He argues people have mis-attributed their common health problems to wind farms because of activists’ campaigns. Some may have even become more ill because they believe that wind farms make them sick — a phenomenon called the “nocebo effect“, he said.
For balance's seek, Metro Toronto included an interview with a local anti-wind turbine activist.
Ontario anti-wind farm activist and researcher Carmen Krogh says she’s received calls and emails from many people who are upset to hear Australian professor Simon Chapman’s claims that wind turbines don’t make people sick.
“I feel profound grief and sorrow about that,” she said. “This is upsetting already vulnerable people who are hurting.”
According to Krogh, one of the major failings of Chapman’s study is he did not base his research on the personal accounts of Wind Turbine Syndrome sufferers. When she sees people willing to abandon their homes over the issue, it is powerful proof of real suffering, she said.
Krogh, a trained pharmacist who lives in a rural area north of Ottawa, said she also experienced acute sickness from wind turbines on a vacation in Northern Ontario.
“The main thing was this feeling of general unwell. It felt like there was something wrong with my heart,” she said. “It was beating funny, and there was a vibratory sensation, a very unpleasant sensation.”
Those feelings went away shortly after she left the area, accompanied by a very severe headache, which took a few days to dissipate, she said.
It was only years later, when she heard about other people’s symptoms, that she connected the dots, she said.
Five years ago when a wind project was proposed for her area, Krogh began researching Wind Turbine Syndrome and reaching out to other people who have become ill. She said their symptoms are caused by wind turbine noise, including audible noise and inaudible infrasound. In many cases, it’s the noise and vibrations that keep people up at night, taking a serious toll on their health.
Krogh's claims seems less credible to me in that strong belief--the sort that would lead people to sell their houses--is not in itself automatically proof of anything, while her citing the feelings of people who identify themselves as sufferers is problematic. Against this, there are peer-reviewed studies claiming otherwise, while Chapman's ScienceDaily announcement of his paper is worded rather confrontationally.
