While not much gets past WUWT, this story from Portugal has only recently gotten some press, well after its posting in March, and I think it warrants attention here. While I don’t know much about horses, I’ve known several people who do, so I do know that just because a horse will let you ride it, it may look for a low hanging branch to walk under to scrape you off.
Not surprisingly, I had never heard of “Acquired flexural deformity of the distal interphalangeal joint,” but I came across a web page, Can Wind Turbines Cause Developmental Deformities In Horses? about a stud farm where horses developed downward pointing front hooves after several wind turbines were built nearby.
If I were a horse, I would not want my feet to look like the one on the right:
No other changes in rearing the Lusitano horses (a famous Portuguese horse breed that I never heard of) were known. In the ensuing investigation, “two of the affected foals were placed in a pasture away from the initial one and two others were admitted at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Lisbon. In those animals, except for one that had to be euthanized for humane reasons, an improvement was observed on their condition, with partial recovery of the deformity.”
The stud farm was studied as part of a masters thesis by Teresa Margarida Pereira Costa e Curto and it surmised:
Cellular Mechanotransduction is the mechanism by which cells convert mechanical signals into biochemical responses. Based on the mechanical effects on cells it was proposed in this research project that the ground vibrations were responsible for a increased bone growth which was not accompanied by the muscle-tendon unit growth leading to the development of these flexural deformities.
That sounds reasonable to me, I know that stressing human bones increases their calcium uptake, and I wouldn’t be surprised that something like that could affect feet in other animals.
The wind turbines are obvious prime suspect, they were built nearby:
So, WUWT readers who actually know something about horses, have you heard of this case or similar cases at other farms with new wind turbines? Or, if you live near wind farms that are near farms with horses, cattle, etc, have they had problems like this?
This is just one study, involving one farm and not very many horses, clearly more research is warranted. If it’s confirmed, it would be interesting to know if other animals are susceptible to a similar problem.
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I can think of a few reasons why this cannot be:
1. Horses POUND on their hooves just trotting around. This has to be thousands of times stronger vibration than turbines produce, just living their normal lives.
2. Our horses were often driven around in horse trailers, sometimes for hours. There is huge vibration then. No problems.
Do I really need to remind you that correlation does not imply causation?
This really feels like quackery. I know y’all don’t like turbines, but I really feel sick to my stomach seeing something this poor on wattsupwiththat. Do you really want people to laugh at you?
TimTheToolMan;
I would think a paddock next to a reasonably busy road with heavy truck
>>>>>>>>>>
Or a railway line. Or a cargo shipyard. Or a strip mining operation. Or a large waterfall. Lotsa stuff induces vibrations into the ground, one would think that there would be deformed horses all over the planet if such a report were true.
Stop thinking only ground vibration, people, there’s more to wind turbines than that and plenty of health/stress problems associated with them. I thought the whole point of any scientific investigation is to look at all aspects and not dismiss something out of hand based on one aspect alone.
It’s great that ground vibration can be thrown out, or seems unlikely. It’s a fair point. What about the rest of it? Putting blinkers on and dismissing a claim as preposterous without even bothering to consider it is what the other side does. Can we at least have a scientific open mind?
Dunno. Plausible from a long distance if you squint just right. But for now I’m calling this one a Texas Sharpshooter.
I have to add and it may (will) be very politically incorrect and revolting for some people, but not too long ago when the economy was flying high in many countries owning horses was a status symbol. When those economy cratered, horses became a liability for, not only the owners, but for all of those countries economies (the farmers, for hay lost, stable crews lost jobs, veterinarians, transport companies, race tracks the dominoes just kept on falling). The owners fled their responsibilities and in many cases left the horses.
There are some gruesome stories associated with this and may have led to some of the “tainted meat” scandals in the past few years.
And I know I am going to offend A LOT of people here but after WWII ( not the only situation), when all food was scarce, just about “anything ” to survive was done. My parents and many others used horse flesh to survive and I am sure in some areas many still do.
And tell me why not??
Are these people just looking for a way out of a serious personal economic problem and using excuses? Or do we need to change a way of thinking?
REMEMBER we eat::
Steer, cow, veal,, sheep, lamb, deer, moose, caribou, reindeer, bear, grouse, elk, fish, shark fins,( just one piece of an animal and the rest thrown out as happens with other species), urchin, oysters, clams, whales, dolphins, chickens, turkeys, pigs and piglets , birds, squirrels, beavers and in some areas, monkeys, elephants, giraffes, dogs, cats, mice, rats etc. etc.are all consumed by humans .( I forgot worms, grubs caterpillars, spiders etc, etc.) If the horse population for what ever reason becomes an issue we need to look at options.
I truly apologize to anyone upset by my comments.
But just looking at some of the totally illogical thinking on this planet at times, it kind of just came stumbling out, Tobias Smit.
Study group of four. Three got better except for the one that died.
Apply a little selection bias and eliminate the ‘outlier’ as ‘unsuitable for the study’ and we have 100% of the study subjects showed signs of recovery when they were removed from the area affected by wind turbines.
Control group size = errm, zero.
Ric this is HORSE SHIT.
If you can not smell that a mile away may I recommend a nasal decongestant.
Please send Dr. Chapman a note about that too.
[One of the reasons I posted this was to give it a good airing. Besides, Anthony has posted worse recently. I suspect many commenters haven’t bothered to follow the link to the full story, you included. That refers to eleven horses, unfortunately it doesn’t mention the total number, presumably the full paper does, but it’s in Portuguese.
Another reason to post this was to see if the WUWT community knows of similar situations elsewhere. If there are, that would be interesting. So far, just a useful negative suggestion from milodonharlani.
While there certainly needs to be a control group, but for a preliminary study, I deemed it interesting enough to post here.
Suppose you owned a small horse farm and several horses started developing deformities. Presumably you’d talk to your vet, let’s say he could find a reason worth recording. Then what would you do? Commission a study with dozens of farms with and without wind farms, cart horses between farms and look for impacts to extremities and internal organs? Experiment with different feeds in case the feed companies hadn’t done adequate development work on that? In this case, it appears the farm’s owners asked the local Ag school to take a look and see if they could identify the problem. -Ric]
[Oh yeah, I suggest you not take a look at Chapman’s site. :-)]
Those wind turbines are very far away from the stables to be able to produce a vibration which could hurt a horse foot. Besides, it is a not really a relevant story for this site.
It must be obvious to anyone with any objectivity that the cause of this affliction in portugese horses is the dramatic increase in atmospheric CO2.
How blind can you all be?
I find it hard to believe like most of you that the turbines could be causing this. But that being said a Lusitano is a huge horse, often 6′ at the shoulder when full grown.(Think the horse from The Black Stallion, that was a Lusitano) These were foals, which means they were under a year in age. Big horses like the Lusitano ,especially purebreds do not fully develop their bones, muscles and tendons, etc. until they are about 3 years old. These are very expensive horses, the stud farm owner is not going to willingly do anything that will damage their legs. Nor is he worried about getting $20 an hour to take tourists on a horseback ride. These horses do Dressage and Grand Prix jumping, not trail rides.
It is really odd that they would have 4 foals all at the same time develop this infirmity.
tobias says (September 26, 2013 at 11:06 pm): “REMEMBER we eat::
Steer, cow, veal, sheep, lamb, deer, moose … caterpillars, spiders etc, etc.)”
Not to mention rabbit:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3os78_merrie-melodies-bedevilled-rabbit-1_fun
Things that are wrong with wind turbines.
1) They are uneconomic
2) Variable in their power production.
Fantasises about wind turbines.
1) They are major Bird and bat choppers, as a cause of bird and bat mortality they come way down the list. If you really worry about birds try campaigning about cars and cats, Hunters and a host of other things before you get to wind turbines.
2) They are damaging to horses hooves, yeah right. Constant vibration? I thought they were not working most of the time.
3) They are dangerous for Father Christmas on his rounds, well, that’s as likely.Hopefully you get my drift.
I know many people hate wind turbines, but be reasonable in your rationales otherwise you end up as a laughing stock when you site horses hooves and bird choppers.
Wow, amazing. It’s been discussed here before, in comments etc, how animals are “alerted” before earthquakes. Low frequency waves transmitted through the ground are suspected.
It’s also been learned how animals like elephants communicate with low frequency sound, which travels farther than high frequency, at frequencies below human hearing.
http://swa.com/members/publications/garstang%20jcp.pdf
Yet the possibility of the turbines generating low-frequency sounds, that can be transmitted through air and/or ground, that the animals are sensing and it’s causing them health problems, with many of them often attributed to stress when humans get them,
Is casually dismissed out-of-hand, can’t possibly be true.
Is what’s really going on, is certain individuals prefer to ignore this possibly Inconvenient Truth?
“Is there an equine version of wind turbine syndrome?” There is indeed; both ideas are made up and not supported by any real research.
Seeing there is general agreement that the horse hoof / wind turbine study is complete tosh, I thought it may be useful to also put the bird chopper idea into perspective with some mortality figures. It may upset the alarmists, but it’s useful info.
Bird and bat mortality from man-made structure/technology
Associated bird deaths per year (U.S.)
1) Feral and domestic cats, Hundreds of millions [source 1=”AWEA” language=”:”][/source]
2) Power lines 130 million — 174 million [source 1=”AWEA” language=”:”][/source]
3) Windows (residential and commercial) 100 million — 1 billion [source 1=”TreeHugger” language=”:”][/source]
4) Pesticides 70 million [source 1=”AWEA” language=”:”][/source]
5) Automobiles 60 million — 80 million [source 1=”AWEA” language=”:”][/source]
6) Lighted communication towers 40 million — 50 million [source 1=”AWEA” language=”:”][/source]
7) Wind turbines 10,000 — 40,000 [source 1=”ABC” language=”:”][/source]
I think this is a windup to get ‘deniers’ excited and then warmists can chortle over it.
It may not be the ground which is shaken, but the horse. Has much smaller mass with large cavities in its body, therefore a good receiver of low frequency aerial vibrations. Even then, if there is a connection, I would suspect the vestibular system to be affected, not the entire body. If anything is wrong with the sense of balance, that can bring about persistent behavioral changes, which in their turn may be responsible for developing bone deformities.
Anyway, wind turbines are unbelievably noisy at frequencies below 0.1 Hz. These vibrations are inaudible, nonetheless have a huge effect on the workings of the inner ear, including the vestibular system. Low frequency vibrations can also travel large distances unattenuated in the atmosphere, circumvent obstacles and penetrate buildings freely.
The biggest problem is we do not have regulations whatsoever for low frequencies. Standard noise control equipment is not even suitable to measure them (low frequency infrasound is not picked up by microphones), one needs a microbarometer to do that, which authorities do not have.
We clearly need regulations on industrial environmental infrasound emissions along the entire frequency range, extending well below the threshold of hearing, down to 0.01 Hz, which is not even considered “sound” by some. There is a wealth of literature on the detrimental effect of high infrasound levels on the cochlea and the vestibular system, but they are regularly dismissed by wind farm companies on the basis that these emissions are not against the law. Which is, unfortunately, true.
Cows would have the same symptoms and I never heard anything like this around here. And believe me, there are a lot of cows and a lot of windmills overhere. But, time will tell.
I’d say this was highly suspicious as a confirmed link, certainly from the ‘evidence’ presented! However, it must be said that turbines do produce both noise and vibration, possibly even very low frequency rumbles and ultrasonic type vibes (think of the air vortices at the tips of fast moving blades)?
I would doubt these can have a direct physical effect on animals, but if anyone has been and sat next to a turbine for a while, the thwop thwop thwop can be somewhat disturbing. Without trying to be too dismissive or ultraserious, if I were a standing hooved animal getting disturbed by this type of thing, I might be lifting or pawing my feet more than usual? (Think of the equivalent of white finger syndrome in humans).
[Ultrasonic sounds are likely way down on the list, as they dissipate fairly quickly, even in the distance suggested in the aerial photo. I was a little surprised that they seemed to lean toward ground vibrations, since that’s one possibility for what four footed animals may sense for earthquake precursors, what the heck. At least it was a change of pace from the common references to infrasonic sound. -Ric]
I’m not quite sure why people are so quick to pull a warmist on this and deride it without consideration. For the record, my gut feeling is that it’s extremely unlikely that the turbines have anything to do with this, especially given the many more plausible possibilities.
Not least, the fact that there’s a previously suspected genetic component and this is a stud farm, which is in the business of manipulating genetic traits – including, at times, the unwitting “selection” of undesirable ones.
However, most of the arguments put forward above as “proof” that the story is horse manure are no better than the warmist claim that “natural variation can’t explain the warming”. Just because one aspect (ground vibration) appears to be too weak to have an effect doesn’t mean that other aspects can’t be involved.
Even the apparently weak ground vibrations could turn out to have an effect far out of proportion to their magnitude – you can go to the gym and repeatedly hit a punch-bag without damaging your wrists, or you can type gently at a PC keyboard and develop RSI.
I say again so there’s no misunderstanding, I suspect that the bat-killers aren’t to blame here, but if we want to champion open-minded science then we should champion all open minded scientific enquiry, including that which we suspect is flawed or which challenges our preconceptions.
That doesn’t mean we need to spend much time on it, but we should respect those who choose to (the authors of this study, for example) and we should be willing to consider their results impartially and see if they’re borne out by further investigation.
Why not just ask the horses?
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Ed )
From just a few days ago, 9/22/2013, from Forbes by James Conca, Contributor (bold beyond title added):
Gareth Phillips, that Wildlife Society Bulletin mentioned is linked at the organization’s name. Please review so you can report more accurate numbers next time. 😉
Gareth Phillips says:
Seeing there is general agreement that the horse hoof / wind turbine study is complete tosh, I thought it may be useful to also put the bird chopper idea into perspective with some mortality figures. It may upset the alarmists, but it’s useful info.
===
Thank you Gareth. So to all those who have suddenly and conveniently become bird preservation advocates and unbearably concerned with the longevity of bats:
please cover all your windows with sticky tape and stop driving , or shut the hell up about “bird-choppers”.
Would one horse suffering from the same simptoms and not raised in the presence of wind generators falsify the theory?
When one of my apprentices was confronted with the AGW theory, his first question was: Has it ever been this warm before?
When it is not a pure lab situation, the right question can save a lot of money 🙂
negrum — “Would one horse suffering from the same simptoms and not raised in the presence of wind generators falsify the theory?”
In fairness to the authors, or not, this is a grant funding request more than a study. They found a plausible, to them, mechanism for causality and a statistical whoopsie. They have done no more than note this and state that future work would be needed to put it one way or the other. But it is a statistical model. Given known rates of the condition in question, it’s a matter now of collecting enough samples near turbines to see if there’s any statistically significant difference. Establishing causality through lab replication of the conditions is also possible, natch. Just not the typical approach for such things.
Way too much epistemic ignorance at this point for anything more than a “Huh, weird.” No harm in chasing it if you have the money. No harm in waiting for someone else to chase it.
From CFACT, March 18, 2013 by Jim Wiegand:
Whoa. They really did rig the game in their favor, to keep the “wind power” sympathizers and sycophants in the dark, or to at least shield them with plausible deniability.
If these people are willing to slaughter millions of critters every year and cover it up, all for the sake of money, how could we ever trust them to not get rid of a few inconvenient humans and cover it up?