“A waste of time and money”
The Guardian, March 22, 2016
An Australian research council has given two grants worth $3.3m to research the impact of wind turbines on human health despite concluding last year there was no evidence turbine noise was harmful.
Prof Anne Kelso, the chief executive of the National Health and Medical Research Council, said it had made the grants because “existing research in this area is of poor quality and targeted funding is warranted to support high-quality, independent research on this issue”.
A Flinders University associate professor, Peter Catcheside, will get $1.36m for a study that will compare wind farm noise to traffic noise to determine if low-frequency sound from wind farms could potentially disturb sleep through chronic sleep disruption or insomnia.
In February 2015 the National Health and Medical Research Council concluded there was “currently no consistent evidence that wind farms cause adverse health effects in humans”.
But it noted “the character of the emissions and individual perceptions of them are highly variable”.
“Given the poor quality of current direct evidence and the concern expressed by some members of the community, high-quality research into possible health effects of wind farms, particularly within 1,500 metres, is warranted,” it said.
The council then made a targeted call for research into wind farm noise and human health.
Kelso said: “These grants directly support the Australian government’s commitment to determine any actual or potential effects of wind farms.”
The Australian Wind Alliance’s national co-ordinator, Andrew Bray, said the grants were a waste of time and limited research funding.
Bray said: “The NHMRC’s own review failed to find reliable evidence that wind farms have a negative impact on health.
Bray said exhaustive international studies had also failed to find links between health and wind farms, including a $2.1m study by Health Canada that studied 1,200 households and measured 4,000 hours of wind turbine noise to calculate indoor and outdoor noise levels at different homes in the study.
The Australian Solar Council CEO, John Grimes, said claims of negative health impacts from wind turbines were “the worst pseudo science nonsense” and had been “completely discredited by reputable medical bodies here and around the world”.
Read the full story here.
1 Comments
Sommer
We all have to make sure that the purpose of research studies and investigations is genuinely designed to protect people who are being harmed. In the words of Psychiatric Physician, William Hallstein MD, from Falmouth MA:
“The human nervous system is the most sensitive instrument available to date for evaluating the impact of the Falmouth wind turbines on residents who live close to them. The ONLY experts in the discussion are the people who are sensing the sound, vibrations, pressure waves, etc emitted by the turbines. There is no one more “expert” than these people. No so called expert has either equipment nor information more accurate and sensitive than the affected residents’ nervous systems. NO instruments more sensitive than people have been invented! Others who claim to be experts are peddling smoke and mirrors in an effort to invalidate and discredit the affected residents.”
People who are already being impacted and refuse to be forced to abandon their homes need the necessary changes to be made immediately.