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James Delingpole James Delingpole Wind turbines ARE a human health hazard: the smoking gun – Telegraph Blogs Page 1 of 9 Thursday 15 May 2014 | Blog Feed | All feeds Website of the Telegraph Media Group with breaking news, sport, business, latest UK and world news. Content from the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers and video from Telegraph TV. Submit Query • Home • News • World • Sport • Finance • Comment • Culture • Travel • Life • Women • Fashion • Luxury • Tech • Cars • Dating • Offers • Politics • Investigations • Obits • Education • Earth • Science • Defence • Health • Scotland • Royal • Celebrities • Weird Blogs Home » News » Environment » James Delingpole James Delingpole James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything. He is the author of numerous fantastically entertaining books, including his most recent work Watermelons: How the Environmentalists are Killing the Planet, Destroying the Economy and Stealing Your Children's Future , also available in the US , and in Australia as Killing the Earth to Save It . His website is www.jamesdelingpole.com . http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100227983/wind-turbines-are-a-hu... 15/05/2014 Wind turbines ARE a human health hazard: the smoking gun – Telegraph Blogs Page 2 of 9 Wind turbines ARE a human health hazard: the smoking gun By James Delingpole Environment Last updated: July 25th, 2013 1886 Comments Comment on this article Yeah, they're, like, really green and safe and good for you….. How much more dirt needs to come out before the wind industry gets the thorough investigation it has long deserved? The reason I ask is that it has now become clear that the industry has known for at least 25 years about the potentially damaging impact on human health of the impulsive infrasound (inaudible intermittent noise) produced by wind turbines. Yet instead of dealing with the problem it has, on the most generous interpretation, swept the issue under the carpet – or worse, been involved in a concerted cover-up operation. A research paper prepared in November 1987 for the US Department of Energy demonstrated that the "annoyance" caused by wind turbine noise to nearby residents is "real not imaginary." It further showed that, far from becoming inured to the disturbance people become increasingly sensitive to it over time. This contradicts claims frequently made by wind industry spokesmen that there is no evidence for so-called Wind Turbine Syndrome (the various health issues ranging from insomnia and anxiety to palpitations and nausea reported by residents living within a mile or more of wind turbines). Until recently, RenewableUK – the British wind industry’s trade body – claimed on its website: “In over 25 years and with more than 68,000 machines installed around the world, no member of the public has ever been harmed by the normal operation of wind farms.” In a section called Top Myths About Wind Energy’ section it claimed that accusations that wind farms emit ‘infrasound and cause associated health problems’ are ‘unscientific’. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100227983/wind-turbines-are-a-hu... 15/05/2014 Wind turbines ARE a human health hazard: the smoking gun – Telegraph Blogs Page 3 of 9 Other pro-wind campaigners, such as Australian public health professor Simon Chapman, have gone still further by insisting that the symptoms reported by Wind Turbine Syndrome victims around the world are imaginary and often politically motivated. But the 1987 report, based on earlier research by NASA and several universities, tells a different story. A team led by physicist ND Kelley from the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden, Colorado tested under controlled conditions the impact of low-frequency noise generated by turbine blades. It found that the disturbance is often worse when indoors than when outside (a sensation which will be familiar to anyone who has heard a helicopter hovering above their house). In subsequent lab tests involving seven volunteers, it found that “people do indeed react to a low-frequency noise environment”. As a result of its findings, the report recommended that in future wind turbines should be subject to a maximum noise threshold to prevent nearby residents experiencing “low-frequency annoyance situations.” However these recommendations – widely publicised at the Windpower 87 Conference & Exposition in San Francisco – fell on (wilfully, it seems more than plausible) deaf ears. It found that the disturbance is often worse when indoors than when outside (a sensation which will be familiar to anyone who has heard a helicopter hovering above their house). In subsequent lab tests involving seven volunteers, it found that “people do indeed react to a low-frequency noise environment”. As a result of its findings, the report recommended that in future wind turbines should be subject to a maximum noise threshold to prevent nearby residents experiencing “low-frequency annoyance situations.” Rather than respond to the issues raised, the industry devised a code of practice apparently contrived to ignore those very acoustic levels of most concern. ETSU-R-97 – the UK industry standard, which became the model for wind developers around the world – places modest limits on sound within the normal human hearing range, but specifically excludes the lower frequency “infrasonic” noise known to cause problems. Last month the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) published a report by the Institute of Acoustics examining whether ETSU-R-97 was still adequate to the task. Remarkably, instead of stiffening regulations, it made them more lax, not only continuing to ignore the Low Frequency Noise and infrasound issue, but actually giving wind farms leeway to make more noise at night and to be built even closer to dwellings. John Constable, director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, commented: “The report may represent current wind industry practice but it is very poor guidance and fails in its duty of care.” The industry's response is that turbine design has grown so much more sophisticated since the late Eighties that the problems identified in the 1987 report – which built on work from another report two years before – no longer apply. “We’re often hearing these weird and wacky reports on the effects of wind. It seems anyone can stand up and say anything, which we find somewhat worrying because it gives a false impression. We don’t accept the suggestion that there are any health impacts caused by wind turbine noise, though we welcome any new research into the issue," a spokesman for Renewable UK told me. However this is contradicted by the author of the original reports Neil Kelley. Kelley has told Graham Lloyd – the environment editor from The Australian who (uncharacteristically for an environment editor puts truth before green ideology) broke the story – that research has shown that it is still possible for modern wind turbines to create "community annoyance." Kelley, who served as the principal scientist (atmospheric physics) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's National Wind Technology Centre from 1980 to 2011, told Lloyd: "Many of the complaints I have heard described are very similar to those from residents who were exposed to the prototype wind turbine we studied." http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100227983/wind-turbines-are-a-hu... 15/05/2014 Wind turbines ARE a human health hazard: the smoking gun – Telegraph Blogs Page 4 of 9 He said the original research was performed to understand the "totally unexpected community complaints from a 2MW downwind prototype wind turbine." He said: "While follow-on turbine designs moved the rotors upwind of the tower, the US Department of Energy funded an extensive multi-year research effort in order to develop a full understanding of what created this situation." "Their goal was to make such knowledge available to the turbine engineers so they could minimise the possibility of future designs repeating the experience. We found the majority of the physics responsible for creating the annoyance associated with this downwind prototype are applicable to large upwind machines." The wind industry has resisted demands from campaigners to investigate this problem further. For example, in Australia, Lloyd reports, the wind turbine manufacturer Vestas has argued in a submission to the NSW government that low frequency noise not be measured. But as Kelley said to Lloyd, if low frequency noise from turbines does not influence annoyance within homes, "then why should [the industry] be concerned?" Those readers with an appetite for even more technical detail may be interested in the views of acoustics expert Dr Malcolm Swinbanks: The important aspect to understand is that the old-fashioned downwind rotor-turbines did indeed generate a wider spectrum of infranoise and low-frequency noise, extending from 1Hz to 50Hz or 60Hz. Modern upwind rotor turbines are definitely very much quieter in the 32 and 64 Hz octave bands, but under some circumstances they can be similarly noisy over the frequency range 1Hz – 10Hz. The wind industry denies this aspect, namely that they do not generate impulsive infrasound – I was present at a public meeting, with 400 farmers enthusiastically wanting wind-turbines on their land, when a wind-industry representative argued that I was incorrect to quote NASA research because the NASA research related only to downwind turbines. In fact NASA led the world in developing upwind rotor turbines, with the first, MOD-2 in 1981. They were fully aware of the differences between downwind and upwind configurations as long ago as 1981. Although upwind turbines are indeed quieter in respect of audible sound, NASA was well aware that inflow turbulence or wind- shear could give rise to enhanced infrasound from upwind turbines. In the context of that particular public meeting, the chairman refused to let me respond at that time to correct the wind-industry presentation, and argued that I could only send a letter to the Planning Committee, which I duly did under strong protest.
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