Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova – The floodgates might be about to open on wind farm health litigation; an Irish family who claim they suffered health impacts from a wind farm which opened 700m from their home just received a €225,000 payout.
Cork brothers and sister who lived close to windfarm settle actions for €225k
TUE, 25 FEB, 2020 – 16:42ANN O’LOUGHLIN
Two brothers and a sister from the same family who claimed they suffered illness as a result of noise, vibrations and shadow flicker from a Cork windfarm have settled their High Court actions for a total of €225,000.
Laura David and Jack Kelleher claimed their family had to leave their farm at Gowlane North, Donoughmore, Co. Cork, four years ago after a 10-turbine wind farm began operating just over 700 metres from their property.
In the High Court today Laura (aged 15), David (aged 17) and Jack (aged 10) who now live eight miles away from the family farm settled their actions for a total of €225,000.
The settlements which were without an admission of liability were approved by Ms Justice Leonie Reynolds and occurred after mediation.
…
They claimed the noise, vibrations and shadow flicker from the turbines, located just over 700m from their family farm, resulted in them suffering from various illnesses.
…
Read more: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30983997.html
My heart goes out to the Kelleher family. Infrasound from wind turbines is strongly suspected to cause significant health problems.
From a 2018 study;
A Review of the Possible Perceptual and Physiological Effects of Wind Turbine Noise
Simon Carlile,John L. Davy,David Hillman, and Kym Burgemeister
This review considers the nature of the sound generated by wind turbines focusing on the low-frequency sound (LF) and infrasound (IS) to understand the usefulness of the sound measures where people work and sleep. A second focus concerns the evidence for mechanisms of physiological transduction of LF/IS or the evidence for somatic effects of LF/IS. While the current evidence does not conclusively demonstrate transduction, it does present a strong prima facia case. There are substantial outstanding questions relating to the measurement and propagation of LF and IS and its encoding by the central nervous system relevant to possible perceptual and physiological effects. A range of possible research areas are identified.
Read more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6081752/
Obviously it would have been better if the Kelleher family had never suffered this awful intrusion into their lives, but a substantial payout may help their recovery.
The payout is to finance their relocation. Seems sensible.
Surely there are journal articles analysing the effects?
I stayed in a friend’s “head-neck-body” house near Harlingen in the Netherlands with a dreadful. early model flat-bladed wind turbine literally across the road. It whooshed mightily day and night. Nothing “infra” about it.
It was loud, invasive and awful. My friends moved to Cyprus.
700 meters or 0.42 miles and this is affecting their health? Pull my other leg.
One km from our house ran a railway with heavy traffic of steam and diesel-electric goods and passenger trains. You could sometimes hear the trains from outside the house. However, the incandescent light bulbs we had back then in the 1950s and 60s, were short lived due to infra sound.
Considering that huge industrial wind turbines produce this infra sound continuously through the ground, I would not so easily dismiss the health effect.
Just a the vibration from the traveling trans was effectively transmitted in the ground, so is also wind turbines transmitting their vibrations effectively through their concrete foundations and through the ground.
All noise requires energy. Putting sufficient energy into the ground to travel kilometres is not what producing electrical energy is about – The blades should be balanced the generator is balanced so the only source would be the pressure differential as blades pass the tower. Too much vibration would lead to early failure.
Ghalfrunt, whoever you are, try reading the National Institute of Health (nih.gov) review of LF (low frequency) and IS (infrasound) effects from wind turbines. One surprise to me was the resonant response of house structures from the IS energy, producing a strong secondary effect.
Wind turbine infrasound pulses are produced when each blade passes and compresses air against the pylon. 3 pulses per revolution.
For few years I had wind turbine mounted above my house, just for curiosity how much energy it can create. It was small 1.2m diameter turbine. 99% of time it was barely rotating, making no energy, but sometimes when there was storm or high wind it just started spinning uncontrollably. In those moments all brick walls of house were trembling you could feel it in guts. Hearing nothing but infrasound was incredible. Multiply this ten thousand times for commercial wind turbine. I just can not imagine that. Intensity of infrasound must be immense.
Write the paper on it chum, can’t wait to read it.
I had to leave my home of 30+ years in Wales because of the Low Frequency Noise produced by the increasing number of windfarms around me. I lost everything. I’m now homeless. Living in a van.
Ghalfrunt is the one telling people to drink bleach. Pretty soon Simon will be along to tell us it’s Trumps fault that Ghalfrunt said that.
I suggest you move that close to one to see for yourself. I’m sure you’ll like it.
That’s close for infrasound, which can travel hundreds of kms.
Home Wreckers: Finnish Study Finds Wind Turbine Infrasound Unsafe For Residents Living Within 15 Km
https://stopthesethings.com/2019/02/01/home-wreckers-finnish-study-finds-wind-turbine-infrasound-unsafe-for-residents-living-within-15-km/
Wind turbine syndrome: a classic ‘communicated’ disease
Remember people 5 G signals cause COVID. </b?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9ckNLI9dRc&vl=en
https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/handle/2123/10501/Wind_Disease_List.pdf;jsessionid=9325E674E04BC79AAA25C7CD9991F9F9?sequence=5
My wife and I have aged over five years in the past two years
… Abnormalities in farm animals near current large wind turbines, [include] chickens that are hatching
with crossed beaks and other abnormalities.
Cows suffer spontaneous abortion, problems calving, birth defects such as missing eyeballs and tails – all
since the wind turbines.
"Transmission of long wave-length sound creates biophysical effects, nausea, loss of bowels, disorientation, vomiting, potential organ damage or death may occur," the report found
Unusual malignant tumours were seen in the lungs, colon and brain… [and were caused by] low
Frequency vibrations.
Unexplained mass die-offs of livestock have occurred near some wind farms. In New Zealand, 400 goats dropped dead.
Of the few eggs I did get, most had NO yolk and the shells were like jelly.
Hey I bet there is some cheap real estate available near wind farms. You should be buying it up and becoming ultra rich if it’s all just a myth.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Magda_Havas/publication/254080437_Wind_Turbines_Make_Waves_Why_Some_Residents_Near_Wind_Turbines_Become_Ill/links/542cab5a0cf27e39fa93ee4d/Wind-Turbines-Make-Waves-Why-Some-Residents-Near-Wind-Turbines-Become-Ill.pdf
Sounds like Climate Change that causes all those sorts of problems and millions of other conditions that makes millions of climate refugees.
People live next to freeways, airports, railways, factories, sea shores, and all sorts of other environs that make noise. But Oh my God! Wind mills can’t be tolerated. I also doubt that they kill that many birds. You know, our side of the coin doesn’t have to resort to bullshit to win the argument and shouldn’t do it. The other side will gleefully point it out. The problem is it’s politics and not science.
I had to leave my home of 30+ years in Wales because of the Low Frequency Noise produced by the increasing number of windfarms around me. I lost everything. I’m now homeless. Living in a van.
Beverley,
You are not alone. Others have suffered the same fate.
This is known in rural areas but maybe not in urban areas.
Due to lack of MSM news coverage?
Got good internet in the van then?
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, when I say ‘house’ it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
We were evicted from our ‘ole in the ground; we ‘ad to go and live in a lake
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t’ shoebox in t’ middle o’ road
Case
The infrasonic noise problem is real. I have personal experience with infrasound frequencies produced by custom subwoofers designed by audio club members on yhr 1980s and 1990s. One had 8 long throw 15 inch bass drivers that were equalized flat to 12 Hz. Some audio club members loved the feeling of infrasound, but a minority, including me, got nauseous and had to leave the house. And that was with music from carefully selected CDs, not constant infrasound from a windmill.
Studies have shown infrasound can travel for miles and it can excite bass resonances within a house, making it louder inside the house than it is outside the house, where it is almost always measured.
The measurements are also a problem because noise ordinances specify sound pressure level with A-weighting, which significantly rolls off the bass frequencies. But bass and infrasound measurements require C-weighting, as every do it yourself subwoofer designer knows. I have two homemade six cubic foot subwoofers in my living room capable of loud enough 15Hz. sound from a test tone to pop nails out of nearby plasterboard. Infrasound is unpleasant with audio, although rare, and also near windmills, especially the new huge windmills, for most people.
Richard:
While I was initially skeptical of claims of health problems from infrasound, after some research and pondering, I think there is a plausible mechanism akin to motion sickness that could be in play here.
Your story of the oversized subwoofers affecting some people but not others could be an example of this — people have very different sensitivities to this.
Your internal organs have “resonant frequencies” (due to their mass and springy “suspensions”) right in the range of the frequencies wind turbines put out. Setting your internal organs “humming” like that is a surefire way of making at least some people feel very bad.
My feedback controls professor in the 1980s — one of the giants in the field — had designed aircraft autopilot control systems. He told us that one of the most important, and challenging, aspects of the design of these systems was to suppress vibrations at these frequencies to keep passengers from getting airsick.
In my first year of engineering school we experimented with body resonances responding to test tones. Diaphragms seemed to resonate between 75 and 150 hz. depending on the size of their chest cavity. Guys thought this was fun although it interfered with breathing. We recruited coeds for our experiments but they did not like their chests resonated at all. This really happened in 1971. The speakers we used did not go below 30hz. so we couldn’t test infrasound, which seems to resonate the whole body rather than the diaphragm.
A quick web search yields a link claiming “abdominal” and “lung” resonant frequencies of 4 to 8 Hz.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Resonance-frequencies-of-human-body-organs_tbl1_229051486
Ed Bo
It’s very difficult to produce sound below 10 Hz so I doubt if the 4 and 8 Hz claimed organ resonances are more than guesses from a computer model.
At infrasonic frequencies the whole body vibrates along with EVERY organ inside. The air in the chest cavity and the diaphragm have a different bass resonance frequency, not infrasound.
Every physical object has a resonant frequency. When I was designing my subwoofers using a slow sinewave sweep tone from 10 Hz to 100 Hz. it was fascinating to hear different objects in my home resonating at different frequencies, from a stack of dishes inside a kitchen cabinet, to the plasterboard in my living room behind the subeoofers where a few nails popped out as the panels resonated. The wife went berserk too, and left the house for a while. She did come back however.
Tomorrow I will post a combined version of two of my wind turbine infrasonic noise articles originally from 2019 on my climate science blog: http://www.elOnionBloggle.blogspot.com
ask the boeing 727 )a/c affected more than others) pilots how they liked following noise abatement procedures due to people moving next to an airport then complaing about noise.
ever see a noise abatement ruling sunset itself? no.
I understand it was Tex Johnston who did ground breaking research into noise abatement maneuvers in a B707.
Steve, I agree. The people closets to the wind mills never complain because they own the land the wind mills are on and get paid handsomely for the privilege. Those who don’t get any money are the ones complaining.
The wind turbine contracts have “gag provision/provisions” so host landowners can’t complain or talk about problems caused by wind turbines on their property.
That is absolutely correct Barbara — non disclosure agreements!
And noise ordinances use sound meter A weighting which rolls off the bass frequencies?
C – WEIGHTING IS NEEDED FOR BASS AND INFRASONIC FREQUENCIES. … and they measure outdoors when the noise can be louder indoors from positive feedback from room and whole house bass resonances.
People live next to freeways, airports, railways…??
Not be choice they don’t.
Never heard someone who has moved out of the city claim “It is so quiet and peaceful here”? You think these people are all being paid off by Big Evil(tm) to spread anti renewable conspiracies?
Seriously, Steve, if you honestly don’t believe that ultra sound is a factor then you really need a better argument.
Yes 700 meters is very short distance. Here in Finland minimum distance is 2,5 kilometers. It was 2 kilometers, but that wasn´t enough. People couldn´t sleep, more suicides, etc. problems.
Here is:
INFRASOUND AND LOW FREQUENCY NOISE – Ljubljana 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXCZ3OyklrE
Sick from infrasound, they fight against wind turbines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuI-56rg9d4
And there´s much more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVU8QIMrX88
Wind turbine illness cluster: Arkwright NY
https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2020/01/30/wind-crisis-iowa-cardiologist-shares-health-concerns-over-wind-turbines/
Wind Crisis: Iowa cardiologist shares health concerns over wind turbines
I am a couple of hundred miles from the nearest wind farm, and they are making me sick all that distance away. Just thinking about them is enough to make one sick. Where real wealth goes to die, and some schmucks make off like bandits, and other suckers are still inflating the price on renewable stocks. Going to be the short of the century when these contracts aren’t renewed. Stupidity abounds.
Ignorance on your part is not Bliss. Your comment is like saying: Rich people have problems? Pull my other leg! If you haven’t walked a mile in their moccasins, you might want to be very careful with what you say.
Never criticize a person until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you’ll be a mile away, and you’ll have his shoes.
— Jack Handey
All the evidence and research shows, you haven’t a leg to stand on.
So now we need to add the litigation costs of infrasound to the substantial cost of renewable energy generation? I wonder if the subsidies/tax incentives cover this? Eventually we will get around to realizing that chopping up and/or cooking our flying friends is not allowed by safety and environmental laws. If the greenies want to go electric they need nuclear power generation. Don’t wait for it.
Good. Now I hope all the Scottish farmers sue over those blights on the landscape in the scottish highlands. Going to Scotland to see the natural beauty is rapidly becoming a joke.
Ireland is a lost cause since before the Lisbon Treaty but certainly more so after. Being inundated with migrants from cultures that simply will not adjust to Irish life. But hey, if ya can get away with a “injury” claim, why not?
I was taken, along with my brother and sister, to Ireland in the mid-70’s after our family split up. We eventually left Ireland in the early 80’s for Belgium with our mother (Who sort of got her shit together by then).
I never visited my Irish family until 1994. My brother and sister and I were met with disrespect, all the way down. One comment my “step-mother” (Divorcees could not marry) made at that time was, I kid you not…”If you were living here in Ireland now you would EARN PUNT45 per week…ON THE DOLE (Welfare)!!!” I was working for IBM at the time.
There is no industry there anymore. Dublin is a wasteland after decades of EU cash injections. Waterford, where I lived, is a ghost town. The crystal factory is now in China (IIRC), the grounds razed.
Ah yes, the joys and benefits of socialism.
The bank bailout, or rather heist, demanded by the EU “blue letter” in 2008, exactly like in Britain, Germany, France, was the “tipping point”. These are still those EU-er’s making high-minded noises.
The US bailouts under Bush and Obama definitely changed everything.
And now the EU wants to go for a green digital currency, and the IT sector will howl “we’re saved”.
Read the small print – the idea , as Mark Carney clearly said, is to finally inflate the D-Euro, and the Dollar. Most have no idea what that means, except Germany who never forgot 1923.
Hi Patrick, and greetings from Dublin.
Now with the Greens in Coalition Gov. (with 7% of the vote) the impact on Irish society has been immediate and hard. But just beginning. Yesterday the Irish Gov. commitment to our ”Green” future was brought into every home and pocket, of the people here.
https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/aecb3-government-publishes-new-climate-law-which-commits-ireland-to-net-zero-carbon-emissions-by-2050/
However, it still doesn’t go far enough for the nuttiest of the gang, as it didn’t include the banning of Petrol and Diesel vehicles.
Effectively now we will be controlled by the ”Climate change advisory Council” in our every day lives, whereby every Gov. dept. will have to comply within the guidelines of these unelected nut jobs.
Yesterday evening as I sat beside my youngest (21y.o.) son, watching the News report on this, it really sank in, the fact that he has no future here. Years ago, when Ireland was still a struggling economy and there was a lot of hardship, as you remember and pointed out, the younger people could emigrate to other parts of the World, where there was greater opportunity to make a life for themselves. The Green lunacy has installed itself everywhere, like a virus, however, and no matter where you turn, the disastrous implications and applications of the ideologies, are devastating .
Every political party here, subscribes to the ”need to tackle the Climate change crisis” Their belief that by reducing our ”Carbon” emissions, we will not just play our part, saving the World, but that we will lead the way. Check out what’s happening in the Agri. sector. Rural Ireland has been destroyed. You know how important that has been for the Irish economy over the years. Farmers are encouraged to reduce herds and plant forests. Our Beef farmers can no longer make a living as prices for them have collapsed. Meanwhile, our Gov. through the EU. negotiated a deal to import cheaper beef, from… Brazil.
To Paraphrase Yates, -Rural Ireland’s dead and gone… Certainly the Ireland you once knew, is no longer recognisable. In fairness, sometimes for the better, but a lot of it is very nasty.
The very best to you, Patrick, and all here at WUWT.
I have some friends in Australia who live near one of these and they hate it. They say the sound drives them crazy, but find it hard to sell their houses. Once someone hears the whoosh, they don’t want to stay.
Wind farms are not for residential locations. Farmers in Illinois seem to love the political pay-offs, though.
The vibrations emanating from the wattswiththat website whenever someone clicks on it, causes microsound waves and atomic resonances that are strongly suspected to cause my ill health. Where do I sue?
Opportunistic nonsense.
Looks like self-inflicted damage there when you clicked… Case closed.
Mechanotransduction is scientifically well documented. The cyclic pressure produced by mechanical ventilators causes lung cells to secrete inflammatory cytokines, so it’s no stretch to conclude that the mechanical force of infrasound might produce similar neurological effects.
When you have a 4 megawatt wind turbine running at a maximum theoretical efficiency of 59.3%, that leaves 40.7% of the wind energy doing other stuff. In other words, up to 2.745 megawatts is going unused, or into other modes. Say only 1% of that is dissipated as infrasound. That’s a 27.45 kW loudspeaker. Rock concerts blast an entire stadium with as little as 15 kW.
This is not a trivial matter.
Isn’t the whole idea behind this about these things?
A – Destroy people’s lives, make them miserable
B – Destroy vital industries and become dependapotamuses on other countries for vital needs (like steel)
C – Ensure that everyone (except the Upper Uppers) has just enough money to pay the rent and put food on the table and not much more
and (my favorite)
D – Get those walls built around cities so that everyone can be herded into them
“Brave New World”, here we come… or not.
“D – Get those walls built around cities so that everyone can be herded into them”
Centuries ago, in Europe, cities were exactly like that. If your papers were not in order, you were not allowed in through the city gate. The excuse was that the city needed a wall* around in order to defend itself against the “enemy”**.
wall*: Many old cities still have very visible remains from ditches and banks surrounding the them.
enemy**: Today’s enemy would would be the freedom loving down-to-earth rational thinkers.
Ironic, isn’t it, how the so-called “progressive” among us want to proceed to a state of affairs reminiscent of the Middle Ages?
Ummm… Not completely.
Not defending the Globalists, but the function of walls was not that simple.
Remember that for great periods of history the risk of a (cough) ‘Peaceful Protest’ suddenly sweeping into the area was very real. Warning systems were often only worked as fast as a person could scream in terror. Death at the hands of outsiders was very real.
Also remember that the social structure was different. Nobles owned the land by right of the King (or similar) and the great unwashed worked this land under the protection of their lord. However the merchant class worked for themselves. They didn’t owe loyalty to their lord. Cities were powerful enough in their own right to obtain charters from the monarchy and in many ways the city walls were built to keep the nobles out.
Remember the noble class typically didn’t live in cities. Cities were crowded and dirty. So the relationship between the cities and the noble classes was often complex. A fact that utterly bewildered me when I first discovered it was that during the War of the Roses the economy of England actually grew steadily. The noble class (literally in many cases) gutted each other, but the walled cities had the ability to close the city gates and tell the nobles and their supporters to jog on.
I get your basic point, but history was a bit more complex than that.
(the other fact that takes a while to get your head around is just how small a ‘city’ actually was. Australia post dates the City Wall Era, but Europe did not. In Dublin for example you have Christchurch Cathedral. These days it is a very casual tourist stroll from the river. Maybe 20 minutes walk I guess. Back when the city was walled this cathedral was outside of the city walls surrounded by fields. Scale changes)
(also, I believe the word ‘suburb’ originally meant below (sub) the walls. In other words the areas outside the city walls. Open to correction. I swear I read this but have not been able to find the reference again despite multiple attempts.)
I think this map may help alleviate some of the historical confusion you cite:
SARA: Now that comment hits the nail on the head. These are nonsensical political creations designed to help in the “greens” undying quest to destroy capitalism- nothing else, never was about CO2. How else could the greens be quiet on nuclear (the ONLY CO2 free option) and support the bird choppers and eco destroying solar? The ongoing BS to tell us there are such things as “free” energy is feel good crap they are feeding to the masses that they count on (mostly correctly) being too busy surviving to spend the required time to sift the mountains of BS spewed by the watermelons.
Boris a disappointment!
6 Oct: BBC: Boris Johnson: Wind farms could power every home by 2030
Speaking to the Conservative party conference, the PM announced £160m to upgrade ports and factories for building turbines to help the country “build back greener”.
The plan aims to create 2,000 jobs in construction and support 60,000 more.
He said the UK would become “the world leader in clean wind energy”.
“Your kettle, your washing machine, your cooker, your heating, your plug-in electric vehicle – the whole lot of them will get their juice cleanly and without guilt from the breezes that blow around these islands,” he said…
The PM also repeated his pledge for the UK to become the “Saudi Arabia of wind power”, adding: “As Saudi Arabia is to oil, the UK is to wind – a place of almost limitless resource, but in the case of wind without the carbon emissions and without the damage to the environment.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54421489
one family will be happy:
14 Oct 2019: UK Times: Queen to make millions from wind farms auction
by Graeme Paton
The Queen is in line to benefit by hundreds of millions of pounds from the expansion of offshore wind farms around England and Wales.
An auction of rights to establish a new generation of wind projects will be opened this month by the Crown Estate, which manages the seabed around much of the coastline…
Profits from the Crown Estate go directly to the Treasury but the Queen receives a 25 per cent share through the sovereign grant, the annual payment to fund the monarchy that was introduced in 2012 by George Osborne when chancellor to replace the civil list…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/queen-to-make-millions-from-wind-farms-auction-0k0ffmsjz
Wasn’t there a song about that?
We are doing our best for Nigel (Royals), they must be happy, they must be happy…
I wonder what BoJo will do next – The EU currency is going digital, as is the FED, many crypto reports out there.
What about Digital Sterling?
D-pound?
Of course a green Euro, green Dollar and green Pound, strictly enforced….
The humor is the UK is going to put in more bird choppers in the hope of actually being able to generate all their own electricity rather than having to sponge off neighbor by 2030. So by 2030 they might manage to do what other developed countries have managed for years because we don’t have neighbor countries we can sponge off. Obviously all the bird choppers will have to be sea based because of planning and litigation like this.
Communication towers – estimates of bird kills are impossible to make because of the lack of data, but totals could easily be over 5 million birds/year, and possibly as many as 50 million.
Electrocutions kill tens of thousands of birds per year. This occurs mainly when large birds such as raptors make contact between a live electrical wire and a ground such as a pole. The relatively small number of birds affected belies the significance of this threat, since species such as Golden Eagle are more susceptible.
Cars may kill 60 million birds per year.
Wind turbines may kill 33,000 birds per year, and, as in the case of electrocutions, these birds tend to be large and scarce (e.g. raptors)
Pesticides may kill 72 million birds per year or possibly many more.
Oil spills kill hundreds of thousands of birds a year or more
Oil and wastewater pits may kill up to 2 million birds per year.
Lead poisoning – kills unknown numbers of birds each year, but Bellrose (many years ago) estimated that about 4% of the waterfowl population dies annually due to lead poisoning, and the California Condor recovery team stated that lead poisoning was the primary cause of the condor population decline over the last 50 years
Hunting – as a point of reference the carefully-managed annual waterfowl hunt kills about 15 million birds a year in North America. This, of course, is balanced by extensive and well-funded management and conservation efforts so hunting is not a threat to the population of any North American bird,
Domestic and Feral Cats – may kill 500 million birds per year or more.
Relevance?
Obviously need to explain to greentards it’s just a nickname in the same way a helicopter is called a chopper.
Grapefruit
You are clueless about how many birds are killed by windmills.
“A second focus concerns the evidence for mechanisms of physiological transduction of LF/IS or the evidence for somatic effects of LF/IS. While the current evidence does not conclusively demonstrate transduction, it does present a strong prima facia case. There are substantial outstanding questions relating to the measurement and propagation of LF and IS and its encoding by the central nervous system relevant to possible perceptual and physiological effects.”
This study considers neurological effects triggered by infrasound (transduction), which differs from Dr Mariana Alves-Pereira’s research that shows infrasound causes vibroacoustic disease through thickened soft body tissues (e.g., lungs, heart, vascular) produced as an immunological response to repeated mechanical impact force. Excellent video below of her describing the process.
Dr Mariana Alves-Pereira – how to test for the effects of low-frequency turbine noise
https://stopthesethings.com/2014/02/14/dr-mariana-alves-pereira-how-to-test-for-the-effects-of-low-frequency-turbine-noise/
Vibroacoustic disease
https://www.noiseandhealth.org/article.asp?issn=1463-1741;year=2004;volume=6;issue=23;spage=3;epage=20;aulast=Castelo
An interesting clip very much spoiled by non scientific statements:
Sound insulation does not only rely on wavelength – the most important method is mismatch of density
Air will not move bricks much so a good insulator. follow this with an air layer (good coupling) and another brick (Very bad coupling to air) and you have a good noise isolation at most frequencies including infrasound (providing no air leaks) – double glazing not so good glass flexible and air is a seale pocket. However airports will provide triple glazing to people living under flight path
The comparison between x-rays and sound is silly – both are invisible so both can harm humans.
Not sure about those harmonics from infrasound 1Hz to 10Hz Obviously the noise generated by the blade sweeping past the tower is not going to produce sinusoidal noise but the harmonics as indicated seem incorrect (could be wrong )
The mechanism matters.
If you’re trying to dissipate the energy to attenuate it, she’s probably right.
If you build a hermetically sealed inelastic structure, pressure waves should not be able to penetrate it. It would be the audio equivalent of a Faraday cage.
The first time I heard about the effects of infrasound was on a CBC documentary that described the different phenomena that might lead people to believe that a place was haunted.
One example was about a haunted laboratory. The mystery was solved when one scientist had his fencing foil clamped in a vise. It started vibrating like crazy. That led him to find an out of balance ventilation fan that was creating infrasound at around 18 Hz. That’s around the frequency where the human eyeball resonates. When the fan was fixed, the hauntings ended. link
The other example involved a Tibetan monk whose chanting produced infrasound. That caused visual distortion in his audience. One person said the monk’s face started looking like the demons in Tibetan paintings.
Very interesting. Really unusual sound here :
Mongolian throat sing-ing, Khoomei
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCrzsKqPRWA
but note Youtubes warning – Whaddaya know – infrasound is a Chinese plot!
Richard Feynman’s great desire was to travel to Tana Tuva in Mongolia to visit the throat singers. He never made it but a book and video documentary were published posthumously.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuva_or_Bust!
Trump says if a windmill is constructed within sight of your home, your property value drops by over 50 percent.
Trump is a real estate guy so he knows what he is talking about. 🙂
Trump has also been known to indulge in hyperbole … just a little bit. 🙂
On the other hand, if you’re rich and famous, you may try to save your beautiful, natural, scenic vistas from being despoiled by swarms of ugly giant windmills. Between their lawyers and their publicists, these celebrities are far more effective than Don Quixote was.
All this for a system that doesn’t even work properly. Only government could come up with such nonsense.
‘Infrasound from wind turbines is strongly suspected to cause significant health problems.’
Only by people who don’t like wind turbines. There are dozens of studies and no evidence of this.
griff, List just one dozen studies. If there are dozens (plural), as you claim, it wouldn’t be hard to do. I suspect that you’re lying so prove me wrong.
Infrasound, period, is known to produce damaging health effects. Just not a mainstream idea – yet.
Gotta agree with you this time griff as I haven’t heard of anyone getting paid rent for turbines on their farm having problems. Just the envious Bs next door. Then look at what people pay to live on the seafront so they can listen to the waves breaking on the shore.
Still if you stack the Courts with lefty victimhood judges and it’s David vs Goliath and the latter has the bucks it’s all over. After all leftys are hard wired to think plenty more where that came from.
I wonder if it is more or less dangerous than 0.1 degree of climate change temperature shift.
What do you think, why LF weapons may exist and be in use ?
Non-Lethal Acoustic Weapons
The research about goes back to 1968.
Look for a patent on Infrasonic-wave weapon
The link is to a patent application which is unexamined and never granted it has the same status as junk or claims from the bloke down the pub.
This was a cheap settlement, probably not even covering the cost of their move. It does not account for the disruption in their lives in having to move away from their family farmstead, nor the visual blight on the countryside. They should have gotten 10x this amount.
If half runt and others think wind turbines are so safe and innocuous, then I have the solution. Since cities use the electricity and wind blows in the city, then build the turbines IN the city. Place a turbine atop every high rise, low rise and no rise from downtown to the suburbs. Let the city dwellers live with their “green” energy. Health effects and the occasional catastrophic failure? Too bad. Part of the price you pay for being a green city dweller.
The settlement probably didn’t even cover the cost of their move. The turbine operator got off cheap. The family should have received 10x this amount to cover their suffering and inconvenience of being forced from their family farmstead. Not to mention the general blight on the landscape.
As for Griff, half runt and others who think wind turbines are safe and innocuous, I have the solution. Since electricity is largely consumed by city dwellers and wind also blows in the cities, place a turbine atop every high rise, low rise and no rise from downtown to the suburbs of every city. The mayors of San Francisco, Boston and NewYork should be fine with that. Not to worry about those supposedly non-existent health effects and the occasional catastrophic turbine failure. That’s just part of the risk/cost of being a “green” city dweller.
Two observations about infrasound: in 1993 or so I was farming/ranching in Eastern Wyoming. Over a period of several weeks I kept “hearing” odd sounds that were exactly like a heavy truck driving on a nearby washboard dirt road. Except in a few places there was no nearby washboard road at all. The sound was also noticeably like the “truck” was slowing down as the frequency would drop. No one else I spoke with had noticed. Then one day out in an alfalfa field my 7 year-old nephew was with me and at the sound of the rumble he turned and said to me “What was that?”
Then one day driving south on U.S. Highway 85, about 15-20 miles from my area, I noticed a seismic crew with about 4 vibroseis trucks in a line. I recognized what i had been hearing was the vibroseis “chirp”. This area of eastern Wyoming has a well-known approx. 2 Hz resonance in the stratigraphic column — earthquakes in Utah/Idaho would set off alarms at our nearby missile sites. So infrasound can be very surprising and travel great distances.
In 1984 there was a small (mag 3.5 or so) earthquake at Easterbrook, Wyoming which was barely detectable on the plains to the east, but caused a lot of concern, and even some minor damage, at Golden, Colorado 180 miles to the south. The “infrasound” in this case traveled undiminished through the mountain core of the Laramie and Front Ranges. We have a proposed project involving huge wind turbines which will be installed on the core of the Laramie Range near the Colorado border, and I will be surprised that once these are built, there aren’t lots of people in the Ft. Collins area who notice strange sounds.
Sorry about the double post. I thought the first one failed when I received an error message.
“The floodgates might be about to open on wind farm health litigation; an Irish family who claim they suffered health impacts from a wind farm which opened 700m from their home just received a €225,000 payout.
Cork brothers and sister who lived close to windfarm settle actions for €225k
TUE, 25 FEB, 2020 – 16:42ANN O’LOUGHLIN”
Foodgates ?? More like a trickle . . . if that. FEB 2020. Huh? —> stale news much
That said, still an interesting article and comments (and reference links for my file of infrasound articles)
“……The floodgates might be about to open on wind farm health litigation; an Irish family who claim they suffered health impacts from a wind farm which opened 700m from their home just received a €225,000 payout……..”
That’s OK. Just up the Green Taxes to pay for it…
Hysteria caused the COVID lockdowns and is also fueling the “climate emergency” narrative. Perhaps hysteria about mysterious externalities could also be effective in derailing the climate catastrophe juggernaut?
When all else fails, try to convince people to hit the PANIC button?
where are the parents in this?
each child got a sep award depending on injury/illness.
yet nothing on the parents being affected and nothing to them for the costs of moving.
If these bird choppers get installed in Africa, it’s gonna mess up the Elephants all being able to communicate, since they communicate via ground vibration and infrasound. Probably sea life as well for the offshore turbines, such as whales and an assortment of fish, which low frequency sound waves even travel further under water. Why is there no environmental assessment for these massive wind farms as there is for any other massive industrial project?
“Elephants can communicate using very low frequency sounds, with pitches below the range of human hearing. These low-frequency sounds, termed “infrasounds,” can travel several kilometers, and provide elephants with a “private” communication channel that plays an important role in elephants’ complex social life.”
They would never be installed in Africa because when they are not spinning they would be dismantled for scrap.
Griff, what about if one of us here recorded these infrasounds, then built a bit of kit to duplicate them exactly.
Pop it in a van or lorry, park outside your house, turn it on and leave it for a week or too.
Are you really sure you do not believe the effects of low frequency vibrations?
Some comments from the BMJ website about the effects of wind turbine noise:
https://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e1527/rapid-responses
I have been researching infra sound from Industrial Wind Turbines in Ontario, Canada, since 2013.
Please see the following links for my research and advocacy in this area:
https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~mannr/Wind_Turbines.html
By the way of you wind boosters need to watch Michael Moore’s latest movie, “Planet of the Humans”. Regardless of your views on “Climate change” (the role of C02, or the manmade contribution to that), none of the “Green” technologies (Wind, Solar, Biomass) have been effective at reducing C02 emissions.
Not only that the financing behind this, the so-called “carbon credits” are rife with corruption and manipulation.
Richard Mann
Associate Professor
Computer Science
Faculty of Mathematics
University of Waterloo
Ontario, Canada
Lawfare? I’ll see your Michael Man lawsuits and raise you Erin Brockovich. (Yeah, that’s playing dirty, but it’s their rules.)