Wind Industry in Fresh Panic: German’s Deliver ‘Smoking Gun’ Infrasound Research

From ignition to ashes in 32 seconds …

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To say that the wind industry is having a ‘tough’ time of late, is to downplay what is odds-on to be the biggest and fastest implosion, since the Hindenburg took less than a fiery minute to burn its way into the pages of tragic history.

In Australia, the wind industry has been belted with evidence from highly (and relevantly) qualified noise and health experts – like Dr Bruce Rapley and Dr Malcolm Swinbanks – laid out before the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud.

The ‘battle’ by the wind industry’s propaganda parrots to hold the line on the noise, sleep and health front has been reduced to high farce; with the ‘best’ of its number sounding more desperate and silly by the day.

The latest is a derisory attempt – by near-bankrupt wind power outfit, Infigen’s head PR parrot (the infantile nonsense, available here) – to characterise its victims as ‘nincompoops’, who harbour utterly irrational fears about these things, which would all disappear with a little ‘community engagement’ – probably of the kind Infigen metes out, with malicious glee, to its contracted farmers:

Unwilling Turbine Hosts Tell Senate: Australia’s Most Notorious Wind Power Outfit – Infigen – a Team of Bullies, Liars & Thugs

What’s getting to them, is the fact that – despite efforts to cover up both the work and the results – highly skilled people are working flat out around the world to discover the precise mechanism that causes the adverse health effects from incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound, including sleep deprivation.

It’s not only the fact of their rather obvious conclusions that has the wind-spinners in apoplexy, it’s the fact that they’re looking at all.

You see, the line being run is that there is NO problem – a tobacco advertising guru said so – so why on earth should anyone be looking?

For the wind industry and its parasites, the problem is, that there IS a problem: teams of highly skilled scientific investigators don’t generally devote their every waking hour to chase answers and solutions, when there’s nothing to chase.

Here’s just another example of what properly qualified people can do when looking for answers to real problems.

Brains ‘excited’ by wind turbines: study
The Australian
Graham Lloyd & Annabel Hepworth
16 July 2015

Groundbreaking research from Germany on low-frequency “infra­sound” adds to the recent body of work that is challenging wind energy proponents’ insistence that turbines are not linked to health complaints reported by those living close by.

The international project led by the National Metrology Instit­ute of Germany (PTB) concludes that exposure to infrasound below the range of hearing could stimul­ate parts of the brain that warn of danger. It finds that humans can hear sounds lower than had been assumed and the mechanisms of sound perception are much more complex than previously thought.

The researchers do not claim the results are definitive regard­ing wind turbines and health impacts, and say more work is needed.

But the research builds on recen­t work in Japan and Iran — and investigations by NASA dating back to the 1980s — that suggests the health science of wind energy is far from decided and would benefit from further inquiry, though it is unlikely to persuade prominent wind farm advocate, Simon Chapman.

Dr Chapman, who did not respond to questions from The Australian about the German work, told a Senate inquiry into wind farms and health last month that he was not persuaded by other recent­ research.

“I believe there is much evidence that belief in the harms of wind farms is the cause of harm from wind farms and that those who are intent on spreading this fear are largely responsible for that harm,” he told the inquiry.

The Clean Energy Council was unavailable to comment. But others in the renewables industry say they are open to further inquiry.

Oliver Yates, the chief executive officer of the Clean Energy Finan­ce Corporation, which has less than 20 per cent of its portfolio invested in wind farms, said that “environmental considerations” were critical in any project.

Asked at a conference in Sydney yesterday if the corporation was concerned about increased health risks, he replied: “I encourage any necessary additional support or research people feel that they need to have in relation to this matter to get clarity and satisfaction within their own mind.”

The National Health and Medical Research Council is currently reviewing the evidence on wind turbines and health. The Australian Medical Association will review its position on the issue once the NHMRC reports. Until then, its position is that available Australian and international evidence does not link adverse health effects to wind farms.

The AMA’s vice-president, Geoffrey Dobb, said there was “no accepted physiological mechanism where sub-audible infrasound could cause health effects”.

The German study suggests the impact of very low frequency noise on some people is poorly understood. Scientists in Japan measured brain function and reported last year that it showed the brains of Japanese wind turbine workers could not achieve a relaxed state.

In a similar vein, a study of 45 people in three groups by Tehran University, published earlier this year, said “despite all the good benefits of wind turbines, it can be stated that this technology has health risks for all those exposed to its sound.”

Work by Neil Kelley and NASA in the 1980s on early model wind turbines found impacts from infrasound and led to design changes.

It identified a direct causal link between wind turbine infrasound and low-frequency noise and neighbours’ health problems including sleep disturbance, collect­ively described as “annoyance”.

As the number and size of wind turbines has increased, the number and spread of complaints has also grown. The German research says infrasound is pervasive and generates from an increasing number of sources, including renew­able energy sources such as wind parks and heat pumps.

“Although commonly declared as ‘non-audible’, the number of complaints about infrasound expos­ure has been increasing expon­entially in Germany and also in other countries serious problems exist,” the research paper says.

“It has been agreed that infrasound is perceived by humans and it represents an almost unknown hazard to human health.” Project leader Christian Koch told The Australian the intention of the PTB researc­h was to investigate how infrasound can be perceived by humans.

“We think this is a contribution to the many questions we have within this field but it is too early to conclude seriously about wind turbines­ and their impact,” Dr Koch said.

As part of the German research, laboratory tests were conducted using very pure low-frequency signals.

Test subjects were asked to describe their experience and their brain responses were measured using magnetoencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging technologies.

The results showed that human­s could hear sounds of eight hertz, a whole octave lower than had been previously assumed, and that excita­tion of the primary auditory cortex could be detected down to this frequency.

A PTB report on the research findings said all participants had explicitly stated that they had heard something.

Clinical observations showed a reaction in certain parts of the brain which play a role in emotions. “This means that a human being has a rather diffuse perception, saying that something is there and that this might involve danger,” Dr Koch said.

PTB said the wind energy sector and authorities had often tried to appease concerns of health impacts from wind farms by declaring that the sounds generated were inaudible and too weak to be the source of health problems.

But Dr Koch said the issue must be taken seriously. “Neither scaremongering nor refuting everything is of any help in this situation,” he said. Investigations were only beginning and further research was urgently needed.

The Australia-based Waubra Foundation has long been recommending independent research into the effects of industrial sound and vibration from wind turbines and other sources. The foundation said the German research had helped “demonstrate objectively and visually via functional MRI scans that an infrasound stimulus triggered physiological responses that were hard-wired into the mammalian brain”.
The Australian

The full research paper is available here: Full_paper_Koch V2-1

The AMA are a disgrace to the profession they claim to represent (see our post here); and have become – along with the NHMRC – little more than the worst kind of apologists for the wind industry (see our post here).

And now – the clowns that people those outfits – have set out to discredit the NASA research referred to in the piece above and covered here:

Three Decades of Wind Industry Deception: A Chronology of a Global Conspiracy of Silence and Subterfuge

As an aside, we note that Graham’s article gives the impression that the ‘design’ changes may have overcome the infrasound problem; check out the post above, and it’s clear that the shift of blades from ‘downwind’ to ‘upwind’ made little difference (see the timeline linked in the post above).

The NASA research was …  well … NASA research: first tier, multi-discipline, well-funded and involved a stellar cast of physicists, meteorologists, geophysicists, seismologists, engineers (both mechanical and acoustic), and psycho-acousticians. The Senate has just heard evidence that it’s as relevant today as ever (see our post here).

Now, however, the wind industry’s propaganda hit-squad has been set to work by the ABC’s Ministry of Truth to discredit what was clearly the “Gold-Standard” in wind farm noise, sleep and health research.

Apparently, the NASA team – and their decades’ work – can be discounted because they weren’t card-carrying Greens; they all drove big-American-gas-guzzlers; voted Republican; and the data was gathered, in person, from human beings (probably, Republican voters) living in homes powered by BIG COAL.

The hit squad have also attacked the NASA work for being carried out by – HORROR – people NOT equipped with critically relevant journalism or sociology degrees. But, boldest of all, is the hit squad’s claim that the sleep deprivation reported by NASA’s subjects (and included in the definition of “annoyance”) is NOT an adverse health effect. That little assertion will come as news to the World Health Organisation, which has given it precisely that tag for over 60 years:

SA Farmers Paid $1 Million to Host 19 Turbines Tell Senate they “Would Never Do it Again” due to “Unbearable” Sleep-Destroying Noise

STT thinks that the Gare’s evidence, coupled up with the German infrasound research, is so close to a smoking gun you can smell the cordite. If you’ve read it, and still don’t believe that wind farm noise is a BIG problem, then you’re probably one of the wind industry’s paid spruikers – or suffering from some other similar mental defect.

‘Invisible’: only to those paid not to see it …