Weather: Hi 4°C / Lo 2°C
Is it dangerous to live close to wind turbines?
Monday, 3 August 2009
Print
Email
Northern Ireland’s potential to lead the way on green power could be threatened by fears of health dangers to people living near wind turbines.
Renewable energy experts have pointed out that Northern Ireland is ideally placed to capitalise on wind and wave energy, cutting its heavy reliance on imported power — but the race to go green could be held up by damning new research from a leading New York paediatrician.
Dr Nina Pierpoint has warned that living too close to wind turbines can cause heart disease, tinnitus, vertigo, panic attacks, migraines and sleep deprivation in groundbreaking research due to be published later this year.
Following studies of people living near wind turbines in the US, UK, Italy, Ireland and Canada for the past five years, she has identified a new health risk called wind turbine syndrome (WTS).
She says the disruption of the inner ear’s vestibular system by low-frequency noise from the turbines is causing problems ranging from internal pulsation and quivering to nervousness, fear, a compulsion to flee, chest tightness and increased heart rate.
To date, the Government and wind companies have denied any health risks associated with powerful noise and vibration produced by wind turbines, backed by recent research by acousticians at Salford University, who argue that earlier claims by Dr Pierpont are “imaginary”.
Scientific orthodoxy has been overturned by the discovery that like fish, humans are affected by vibrations through their ear bones, Dr Pierpont claimed.
“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. But this is no longer true,” she said.
“Humans can hear through the bones. This is amazing. It would be heretical if it hadn’t been shown in a well-conducted experiment.”
It will be of concern to the Government which has plans for around 4,000 new wind turbines across the UK. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has made wind power a central part of his green policy to encourage renewable energy sources. Another 3,000 are planned offshore.
Northern Ireland’s Environment Minister Edwin Poots is also in favour of exploring more sources of renewable energy, and experts in the industry have tipped the province as ideally situated to take advantage of the global move towards green power.
At present, Northern Ireland imports more than 98% of its energy but has the potential to derive a lot more grid energy from wind and wave power. Dr Pierpont has recommended at least a 2km set-back distance between potential wind turbines and people’s homes.
“It is irresponsible of the wind turbine companies — and governments — to continue building wind turbines so close to where people live until there has been a full epidemiological investigation of the full impact on human health,” she said.
“What I have shown in my research is that many people — not all — who have been living close to a wind turbine running near their homes display a range of health illnesses and that when they move away, many of these problems go away.”
The British Wind Energy Association said there is no scientific research to suggest that wind turbines are in any way harmful.
“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,” a spokesman said.
Post a comment
Limit: 500 characters
View all comments that have been posted about this article
Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP address logged and may be used to prevent further submissions. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by BelfastTelegraph.co.uk's Terms of Use.
Posts submitted in UPPERCASE letters will be rejected.
Dear Jock,
All commercial UK wind turbines have ice sensors in their blades, much like an aircraft wing. When ice forms they turn themselves off. There have been very rare, but well documented occasions of failure in ice detection systems (this is much the same rarity factor as with aircraft) and these have been addressed, sometimes with auto heating systems, again much like an aircraft wing.
However if ice were to form on a turbine blade, the airflow over the blade would change, this would reduce/prevent the Bernoulli effect - which would prevent the turbine from turning and ice from being flung (in an airplane you’d fall out of the sky!).
Blade failure is extremely rare: UK turbines are maintained to a schedule on a monthly/quarterly/yearly basis to prevent/preempt damage, and have built in replacement intervals of the low cost fiberglass blades; this regular safety and performance maintaince is built into the cost price of the turbine. Work is ongoing to improve life of blades.
Posted by ATM | 06.08.09, 14:52 GMT
Not dangerous? What about the ice throw from turbine rotor blades in cold climates? Those massive chunks of ice that smash windows, slates & roof tiles as they fly off the rotor blades like stones from the catapults of ancient warriors. Of course they are bloody dangerous and particlarly during gusty wind conditions that cause extreme blade flexing that fractures and loosens the ice, not to mention the blade metal fatigue that constitutes the largest portion of repair costs embody in the price to consumers of the electricty generated.
Posted by jock | 05.08.09, 21:36 GMT
Expert scientists once predicted that trains travelling at 25 mph would cause severe nose bleeds and the passengers would suffocate going through tunnels. Their American colleagues added that we'd need more mental institutions because people would go mad when they saw the first trains. Similarly, shipping experts once insisted that iron boats would never float, and that even if they did all that metal would wreak havoc with the compass readings so they'd get lost anyway! So please excuse my scepticism of such unfounded propagated nonsense from so called experts!! Low frequency noise is not a new phenomenon and turbines have been with us for many years now without incidence of low frequency impact on health. Next they’ll be telling us that the natural oscillation or movement of trees in our gardens is a health hazard! We've got wind; let’s embrace it to our collective benefit. Wind power to the people...
Posted by Peter Craig | 05.08.09, 13:33 GMT
Expert scientists once predicted that trains travelling at 25 mph would cause severe nose bleeds and the passengers would suffocate going through tunnels. Their American colleagues added that we'd need more mental institutions because people would go mad when they saw the first trains. Similarly, shipping experts once insisted that iron boats would never float, and that even if they did all that metal would wreak havoc with the compass readings so they'd get lost anyway! So please excuse my scepticism of such unfounded propogated nonsense from so called experts!! We've got wind, lets embrace it to our collective benifit. Vote wind power...
Peter Craig
Whitehead
Co. Antrim
Posted by Peter Craig | 05.08.09, 13:23 GMT
This is an interesting bit of research but Dr Nina Pierpoint covers many points in her scholarly research which have not made it to this news article:
The study was of 10 families who lived close to wind farms - a very small sample, open to all sorts of statistical oddities.
There are lots of sources of low frequency noise: Central Heating Pumps, Fans, Vents/Cooling Systems, Boilers, Industrial Machinery, some Domestic Goods, Electrical installations, Road, Rail, Sea and Air Traffic, Amplified Music… oh and Explosions are all noted by Dr Pierpoint but not by this article!
This report recommends wind turbines should be built well away from people’s homes: but this is in the building regs for Northern Ireland. The report was based at building legislation in the US, we in the UK have been aware of this issue since 2001 and the DEFRA report for Dept. of the Environment, NI “Low Frequency Noise” covers it before developers even look at getting planning for a wind farm!
Posted by ATM | 04.08.09, 16:46 GMT
Effects on people's health caused by low frequency noise are recognised by the shipbuilding industry. I have also seen references made to the low frequency noise from heavy lorries in urban areas. There must be quite a bit of information already in the public domain about this.
Posted by Colin Clark | 03.08.09, 16:17 GMT