Doctor reviews ‘potential hazards’ of exposure to wind turbine emissions
December 11, 2018
A physician who is a specialist in environmental health has written a letter to the Ontario government demanding action on the health impacts of Ontario’s industrial-scale or utility-scale wind turbines,
Dr. Riina Bray, Director of the environmental Health clinic at Toronto’s Women’s College Hospital, listed various health impacts from wind turbine noise emissions and electricity issues, providing background resources for her statements. Her comments were directed specifically at the Niagara Region wind power project but are applicable throughout Ontario.
Dr. Bray said research has shown that noise emissions and other products of wind turbine operation can have multiple effects on human health.
“This cumulative effect of these various health impacting factors combined with the prevalence of IWTs across the province suggest that significant steps at various levels and in various areas need to be taken to:
1) widely acknowledge the potential risks that IWTs represent
2) fully respond to the thousands of demonstrated complaints of adverse effects of IWTs across the province
3) carefully measure noise, infrasound, and electromagnetic emissions in and around all of Ontario’s IWT installations
4) follow mitigative steps around electromagnetic pollution (high frequency distortion, ground current/stray voltage) as suggested by the wind industry’s own publications and by other noninvested experts
5) re-site IWTs to other locations without human populations when mitigation cannot be effectively undertaken.”
Dr. Bray, who is also an assistant professor in community health at the University of Toronto, concluded that “The risks for the short and long-term health of Ontarians of not undertaking such mitigating and remediating steps is significant.”
The letter was addressed to Sam Oosterhoff, MPP for Niagara West, several medical officers of health in Ontario, and officials at Hydro One Networks.
Read the letter here: Riina_Bray_IWT_Niagara
11 Comments
Sommer
This is such good news!
This government cannot afford to delay responsive action, given the urgent development, as published in the CMAJ blog’s recent comment by Professor Richard Mann.
https://cmajblogs.com/health-canada-and-wind-turbines-too-little-too-late/
There is now medical evidence, after investigations by medical doctors, of harm.
This harm is described by Dr. Mariana Alves-Pereira, who has studied the impact of LFN and infrasound for three decades. Her most recent presentation, given to professionals in Slovenia in May of 2018, must be viewed by everyone. She has publicly declared that, knowing what she now knows, she would not live within 20 km of a wind turbine. There are homes in Ontario surrounded by arrays/clusters of turbines much closer than 20 km.
People in Ontario are willing to use their relevant medical evidence to prove the human rights violation that this is. These turbines need to be turned off, in order to prevent any further harm to all of the innocent men, women and children who are not aware of what is happening to them in their own homes…while they’re trying to sleep in their own beds.
Grant Mckenzie
studies of mega wind in wildlife preserves in India show bellweather species health difficulties…entire foodchains are distorted..breeding patterns perverted with certain lizards studied,,,very encouraged that thare are at least claims of mitigation possible…be nice ifthe dross of this infasound could be transmuted into greater efficiency..Deep pristine acquifiers are being polluted for the meg deep piledriven footings..And as well…questions of the questionable targets for the profits of this industry are wide rangingly critical..in most
cases
Grant Mckenzie
comment above
Tom
Honestly, the science does not support the claims. Complaints nearly always come back to individuals that don’t have any medical evidence other than the complaint itself, and generally come back to lack of sleep from worry and stress. Learning to cope with stress is important in life. Ignoring the mountains of evidence and cherry picking what satisfies a belief is doing a disservice. Ignoring Health Canada and the countless reviews and studies that refute these ludicrous health claims is strange indeed.
Notinduttondunwich
Seriously Tom!!! You a leaseholder?? Tobacco companies told us that cigarettes were harmless too eh!!?? Took 20 years for the government to acknowledge that smoking tobacco was detramental to human health…. I spoke to leaseholder in Chatham Kent and was told the wind turbine company there was very accommodating…. installing automatic shutters on their windows so that the shadow flicker was blocked…… one family with infrasound issues house was physically relocated to another area away from turbine site… sounds like they recognize the problems Tom… sounds like you are on the dole Tom… good luck…
Richard Mann
Tom writes: “Honestly, the science does not support the claims. Complaints nearly always come back to individuals that don’t have any medical evidence other than the complaint itself, and generally come back to lack of sleep from worry and stress.”
Will you please read the following list of 26 statements from citizens in Huron County, presented January 26, 2016.
https://cmajblogs.com/health-canada-and-wind-turbines-too-little-too-late/#comment-78885
Health harm is real. Our government has failed to respond to numerous warnings.
Richard Mann
University of Waterloo
Stan Thayer
Hey, green energy lovers, read this and weep!
The Global Climate Change Summit just ended in Poland with about 200 different country delegates making promises they have no intention of keeping. The similar Paris Summit turned out to be an expensive vacation for very important people who had no power to change anything including what they promised. The countries that refused to attend are being chastised and I think these are the ones that should be admired for being realistic.
So, what do these expensive world class meetings have to do with Industrial Wind Turbines!
LOTS.
Canada has many regulations and actual laws that prohibit the use of some toxic chemicals and procedures that produce hazardous situations for workers and the environment, BUT, we can buy the end product.
The air quality in parts of China, Korea and India is so bad that some days visibility is measured in meters not kilometers. The IWT’s sold in Canada are promoted as clean and green but the manufacturing pollution is simply created in another country with no concern for health or climare affects.
Whatever small amount of electrical power for a short period in history the IWT’S produce will in no way offset the permanent damage to people and the environment that is forever.
We are all witnessing this concerted crime against humanity!
IWT’S in Canada are not necessary now and will create more future hazardous areas that will never get cleaned up.
Reality bites!
Stan Thayer
EricJelinski
I sent the email below, however no response yet from the government
From: Eric Jelinski [mailto:eric_jelinski@sympatico.ca]
Sent: November-29-18 10:24 AM
To: ‘peter.bethlenfalvy@pc.ola.org’; ‘steve.clark@pc.ola.org’; ‘christine.elliott@pc.ola.org’; ‘vic.fedeli@pc.ola.org’; ‘doug.ford@pc.ola.org’; ‘ernie.hardeman@pc.ola.org’; ‘monte.mcnaughton@pc.ola.org’; ‘rod.phillips@pc.ola.org’; ‘laurie.scott@pc.ola.org’; ‘todd.smithco@pc.ola.org’; ‘lisa.thompson@pc.ola.org’; ‘bill.walkerco@pc.ola.org’
Cc: eric_jelinski@sympatico.ca
Subject: Wind Turbines -Malfeasance and Breach of Contract
The author grants permission to post this email for public viewing and sharing.
Dear Honourable members of the 42nd Parliament of Ontario;
I am writing to urge you to cancel all wind turbine contracts in Ontario immediately and I hereby provide you with reasons for doing so.
First; introducing myself. I am a Professional Engineer having been schooled in Ontario and worked and payed taxes in Ontario all of my life. I have a B.A.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 1976, and a Master of Engineering degree in Chemical and Nuclear Engineering from the University of Toronto in 1992. I have worked for Ontario Hydro, now OPG, for 31 years in positions of engineering and management, and have spent the past ten years teaching nuclear and other engineering courses at Georgian College, UOIT, including eight years of teaching engineering at the University of Toronto. For example my teaching duties at the U of T include teaching in classroom as well as oversight of senior year student capstone engineering design projects. From my perspective of over 40 years of work in industry and academia, I find that the most important aspect for success of students, corporations, and members of government, and collectively the government is making science based decisions, creating trust, and being ethical. Engineers need to write an exam on ethics. What other groups of people are required to write an exam on ethics? It is from this point of view that I feel well justified to write this email to be submitted to you the Honourable Members and to the public for consideration.
The Green Energy and Economy Act of 2009 was at that time touted to be the panacea and growth opportunity for Ontario in terms of jobs and quality of life and a future for the children of all citizens. In fact, and as you all, and we all know, after ten years of ‘implementation’ the GEA has been a dismal failure and created the opposite of what was intended; eg. high hydro rates, loss of jobs, businesses closing and businesses moving south, astronomical provincial debt, bleak future for students graduating year after year, life has become much harsher for the average person, and for some in rural areas where turbines are being built and operating, life is impossible due to high energy low frequency noise/acceleration of structures including skeletal and inner ear structures, not just adults, but infants, dogs, cats, cattle, and the other issue is the adverse impact on water quality caused by recent turbine construction involving pile driving and disturbing the ground from which residents need to draw water for themselves and for farming, the water in some of the wells have become brackish and undrinkable and requires expensive filtration systems to be installed, paid for the affected residents. Please see jpeg file of a sample of water. The residents have brought this to the attention of their MOH, and the MOH’s involved are discounting this as a non-issue. Another issue: This link describes cardiac instability,
https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~mannr/Letter-ChristineElliot_28Oct2018.pdf
Of course cardiac instability is high concern for cardia arrest, ie. death. This should come as no surprise that infrasound is dangerous as the military has done experiments on how infrasound may be use as a weapon. The attached JPG file lists some of the links that provide evidence of harm from infrasound.
How did we get into this mess? I have been following the implementation of the GEA since its becoming law in 2009 and have written many submission to ERT’s. Some of you MPP’s also know about this since the beginning. Some of you are just now coming up to speed as the 42nd government. As to how this mess got created, Hansard is the official record of Parliament, and key snippets are presented here in this link,
https://yourwardnews.wordpress.com/2014/02/27/liberal-hack-mike-crawley-exposed/
From the Hansard recording, we observe this was un-parliamentary and involved an incestuous and salacious relationship between the proponent and the government, so much so, that the government actually became one with the proponent by eg. waiving the “Precautionary Principle” that is generically in all legislation where there is introduction of new processes into the public domain. The precautionary principal requires the proponent to bear the burden of proof of ‘no damage’. Waiving of the precautionary principle de-facto requires anyone who is damaged to bear the burden of proof of the damage. This has caused each and every Environmental Review Tribunal to be a failure, a farce, and a ‘kangaroo court’ in favour of the wind turbine developers to be allowed to supersede the rights of citizens, so much so, that Municipal Planning was legislated to not be allowed to be involved in turbine location planning. Another example of adverse impact is turbines placed at the ends of airport runways and pilots being told to fly around as they take off and land.
From the Hansard, we observe the self-dealing by liberal party members accessing the blank cheques of the liberal government, while the government turns more than just a blind eye but actively intervenes to disallow the voice of concerned citizens.
Two additional points; in the attached pdf files, one documents what we knew about adverse health effects of wind turbines in 2009. Please read that and compare to the pdf file HGC report copied from the MOEE website originally published in December 2010 by the principal engineering firm HGC commissioned by the government. HGC is a member of CanWea. For your convenience I have commented on just the Executive Summary showing that this report is not a very good work of engineering, but a report slanted to the needs of the client and the industry represent by the author. Such a report, if produced by a student, would be given a Fail if that occurred in my classroom.
And speaking of classrooms. A student design team did a health study in 2014 that was ignored by the government and the wind industry…actually this piece of student work was well received by Faculty, and then it was squashed and never made it past the walls of the university. Please see attached pdf discussing the results of that study. The message given to students by government and industry is disrespectful and inappropriate. The message that was sent by government and industry was that this project result was not politically correct and therefore invalid and not to be used. As a professional engineer I am outraged. As an educator, I am outraged that government is squashing the freedom of thought, idea exchange and speech because it does not fit the government agenda. Ah yes, examples of this has also been in the news at other universities across Canada.
Wind turbines are insignificant to the overall power needs of Ontario only exist because of a subsidy. I do not subscribe to the theory of global warming requiring reduction of carbon dioxide requiring taxes to supposedly control the thermostat of the earth. That is another topic I am prepared to speak to again in the future. The people who believe wind turbines are a necessary solution to reduce CO2 are wrong based on real data, eg. gas turbines back up wind turbines in Ontario, and coal plants back up the wind turbines in Germany, and not including the CO2 produced by manufacturing the steel and concrete for the wind turbines, wind turbines will never be zero carbon nor environmentally friendly due to the very hazardous chemical processes for mining, refining and manufacturing the rare earth for electronics and magnets for the generators. The wind industry has not created any sustaining jobs, in fact the opposite, closing at least one wind turbine manufacturing facility; but in the bigger picture, the high cost of hydro due to subsidy to wind developers is certainly a factor in closing the General Motors plant in Oshawa as announced this week.
In summary, the wind turbines and their contracts are a house of cards propped up by non-science, miss-information, political correctness, malfeasance and a subsidy via the FIT program to achieve a certain ideological and bigoted feel good feeling about the environment.
After almost ten years now we observe failure and a certain breach of contract to deliver electrical power economically competitively by wind turbines, especially breach of social contract by the previous government in collusion with the wind industry.
In light of the recent announcement by General Motors, high costs has certainly been a factor in the irreversible decision to leave Ontario, Ontario needs to swiftly curtail any further losses.
Of course cancellation will stir up emotions and ire of many. The response to all in this light, this is my recommended response. that they need to:
• review Hansard ie. history
• review the interaction between government and industry
• review the gap between actual vs expected performance of the GEA
• review the health impacts, ie. actually listen to citizens
Actions that I recommend for the Minister of the Solicitor General is to communicate with the Professional Engineers of Ontario organization to initiate an engineering investigation into, for example the errors and omissions of the HGC report that I observe is the underlying instrument for the forced installation of wind turbines and the systematic program to ignore citizen complaints.
Another action I recommend is on the Cabinet Ministers for Health and also MOEE, and perhaps in conjunction with the Ontario Medical Association to review culpability of some of the Medical Officers of Health particularly those MOH’s who received complaints for not responding appropriately, ie. what was their response, and was their response appropriate.
And finally, to answer some of the media reporters ‘whinning’; they may be sent away by simply asking them how much money have they accessed from the trudeau announced $600 million subsidy for ‘trusted journalists’ that would pay them to ask their questions and then write their articles. One of the worst things that the federal liberal government has done is to undermine the independence and credibility of those media who participate in the subsidy and I think we have a good idea of who those are or might be. If those media drown, it is because it is self inflicted. To bad, it becomes so necessary to deal with corruption, and this email about the GEA points to corruption that must be undone, and be undone quickly.
I provide my views for th public good and for the public record. Be advised that for privacy reasons I have also sent blind copies to various folks whom I know are like minded and would support this government in cancelling the contracts for the wind turbines.
Fair notice to all who stand in the way of shutting down the turbines, you are aiding and abetting the continuation of harm.
Eric Jelinski M. Eng. P. Eng.
11450 Simcoe County Road 10
RR1 Stayner Ontario
L0M1S0
416-697-9965 cell
eric_jelinski@sympatico.ca
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/eric/jelinski
https://canteach.candu.org/Pages/Welcome.aspx
“The Future is Nuclear”
“Knowing is easy; it is the doing that is difficult. The critical issue is not what we know but what we do with what we know. The great end of life is not knowledge, but action.” Admiral Hyman Rickover
Stan Thayer
Wow, wow, wow, Eric, thank-you!
Next April I will have 50 years in the electrical industry. I have also taught in a classroom setting but enjoy the job site mentoring with apprentice electricians and I still look forward to the everyday happenings.
The repairs at the Merivale High Voltage Transformer Station after the tornado was my recent endeavour as an employee of Hydro One and before that, I replaced the 500,000 volt breakers for OPG at the Lennox Generating Station along with the electronic controls, multi-plex communication networks and battery back-up systems.
I am a proud experienced member of the Power Workers Union and my reputation speaks for me.
Industrial Wind Turbines are a specialty product and the regulations for such are written as needed with an accompanied permitted payment.
I know, I have been a Health and Safety liason between the out of province installers and OPG. It was the worst position I have ever tried to deal with! Obviously to me now, some of the disputes were not meant to be resolved. I was more naive then!
The IWT’s, because of their inefficient, unreliable and low average output over time, have logically always been the back-up to the gas plants.
Enough said!
Stan Thayer CET
19300 Conc 6 RR5
Alexandria On
K0C 1A0
613 551 1280
P.S.—What Eric said!
Sommer
With the body of information regarding harm from LFN and infrasound from these turbines, coming from experts like Dr. Mariana Alves-Pereira, as well as the medical evidence people are willing to show Minister Elliot, how on earth could these projects ever be merely ‘grandfathered in’ as a solution to such serious harm. Dr. Mariana Alves-Pereira says that knowing what she knows about the cumulative and irreversible harm to the nervous system as well as to vestibular system, she would not live within 20 km from a wind turbine.
In Ontario, we have peoples’ homes surrounded by turbines, many in arrays/clusters with some turbines closer than a km. What could the MOE ever do to resolve this situation so that people don’t have to be exposed to this harm for the rest of the duration of the contracts?
Anyone thinking that ‘grandfathering in’ these turbines is going to lead to real protection for these innocent men. women and children is wilfully blind or collaborating in some way.
Sommer
How did we get into this horrible situation in Ontario?
http://www.ncceh.ca/sites/default/files/Western_MOH_2009_Wind_Turbines.pdf