Ballarat-based sleep specialist Dr Wayne Spring first spoke on wind turbine sickness 18 months ago, comparing it to cigarette smoking’s connection to cancer back in the 1950s.
As reported in The Courier, Dr Spring said he had been treating patients living near the Waubra and Hepburn wind farms.
“Research needs to be done into the whole concept of wind farms,” Dr Spring said.
“It’s like cigarettes in the 50s; people didn’t believe they caused lung cancer and now we’ve got people living near turbines coming in early with all sorts of conditions. We’ve got to acknowledge the facts.
“Some of these people are called hysterics or it’s psychosomatic or they’re labelled as jumping on the bandwagon. People in industry and government dismiss these people but this is an important issue.”
Hepburn Wind chairman Simon Holmes a Court has consistently blamed residents suffering WTS on “misinformation spread by anti-wind activists”.
But Dr Spring said the problem was anecdotal evidence was not regarded as scientific.
“We do not have evidence,” he said. “I can’t be dogmatic but we do not have evidence to refute there is a problem.
“Patients present with a complex array of symptoms. You hear it once, then a second person comes along with something similar. By the third or fourth person, you’re starting to think there’s something here.
“Bad sleep is bad for you, regardless of whether it’s caused by noise or anxiety about a situation.”
Dr Spring has called for research into the symptoms caused by living near wind turbines.
In our investigation, doctors who speak out come under attack from the wind industry.
In a future post, we will look at one local doctor who had to move away from her home when nearby turbines began operation – and was subject to an ongoing campaign of intimidation by the local wind farm operator.
Earlier posts on doctors:
This has to stop soon, they have destroyed to much beautiful land already all over the Globe, in the name of Green free Energy, where are all the real Greens ? why aren’t they out there protesting against this distraction of Mountain’s, wild life,
people homes and health, where ??????they sound more like watermelons to me, ” Green on the out side and Red in the middle ” Thank you Dr Wayne Spring.
Same same same, cigarettes, James Hardy now wind. But the truth comes out in the end. It is just a matter of time. Lets hope the country side hasn’t been totally ruined while we are waiting.