Do you live within 5 km of wind turbines?

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If you do, this medical doctor thinks you should take early morning blood pressures.

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Sarah Laurie, MD
Medical Director
Waubra Foundation
Australia

November 28, 2010

Just in the last week, I have become aware that there appears to be a connection between turbines operating and some people experiencing raised early morning blood pressures. This is highly significant, as early morning raised blood pressures are a well known independent marker or risk factor for heart attacks.

What is being noted is that people’s blood pressures are “normal” when the turbines are off first thing in the morning (and have been off overnight), and are elevated when the turbines have been operating. Early morning blood pressures are best measured immediately upon waking, before any food or drink, particularly stimulants like tea or coffee.

I have been made aware of a number of heart attacks & strokes occurring in the population north of the Waubra wind development since the turbines started operating, and just this morning I have been advised of two heart attacks occurring in apparently previously healthy men who live adjacent to the Waterloo Wind Development in the Mid North Region of South Australia.

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Are you fighting an industrial wind turbine project and finding, to your horror, that you’re getting nowhere with state & federal regulatory agencies?

• State Department of Environmental Conservation (aka Ministry of the Environment)
• State Department of Health
• State Attorney General’s Office
• Army Corps of Engineers
• and so forth

Are you discovering that Big Wind operates in collusion with the state and federal government, and there is no way to legally prevent these corporate knaves from getting their permits to destroy your community?

In sum, have your community rights been usurped by state or provincial law (witness the Green Energy Act in Ontario, Canada, and equivalent legislation in Wisconsin and Maine, and pending legislation in Massachusetts)?

If the answer’s “yes,” you’d better watch this video.  It describes the exciting, grassroots work of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). The video is about pesticide use in Santa Cruz, California, but you can just as well plug in “wind turbines” for “pesticides.” (more…)

Editor’s note:  Don Smith is 82.  A native Mainer.  A veteran and a grandfather. In his words, “I was arrested and charged with criminal trespass at the Rollins Mt. wind project site in Lincoln, Maine, on November 8. Five were arrested as we formed a human barricade to the site. Dozens of others braved the cold rainy November day to protest First Wind’s project.”

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But here is what the newspapers didn’t tell us:

“Don said the handcuffs were put on quite tightly before he was loaded into the police cruiser.

“After a few minutes, he complained that they were hurting and asked that they be removed. Of course, they couldn’t do that. Law enforcement officers have standard operating procedures. Understandable, even if Don is an 82 year old man.

“He then asked if the cuffs could be loosened a little. An officer complied, but Don told me it felt like the officer tightened them, instead. Another cop noticed that Don’s wrist was bleeding, and [Don] informed them that he took medication to thin his blood. At that point, the officers decided to take Don to the hospital in Lincoln, where his cut wrist was bandaged.”

“The Wind Farm Eruption”

Editor’s note:  Excellent article!  A must-read!  A clear-eyed look at the Big Wind scam.  Containing such gems as the following. (The guy’s a terrific writer, by the way.)

“The largest wind lobby, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), is a strong supporter of centralized government control. If you want one-sided propaganda about the benefits of wind energy, and how to get in cahoots with the manufacturers, this organization is your one-stop shopping mall. It represents itself as a scientifically based organization, but always avoids the real question regarding wind energy: Can electricity be delivered when it is needed?”

Click here to download the entire article, by Ed Hiserodt, The New American 11/8/10

“An Ill Wind Blowing?”

Editor’s note:  Another excellent article, showing the irreducible absurdity of industrial wind energy, a political exercise kept alive by “government manipulation and deceit.”

“Politicians, their scientific lackeys, and environmental activists can lie, and people can be taken in by smooth-sounding propaganda about “free energy” and “green jobs.” But eventually the laws of physics will show that charlatans have hoodwinked a country into wasting its capital on structures that one day will be toppled like the statue of Saddam Hussein: torn down in protest of government manipulation and deceit.”

Click here to download the entire article, by Ed Hiserodt, The New American 11/8/10

—Eric Bibler, WTS.com guest editor

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The other day I was contacted by a woman from Bourne, Massachusetts, who wrote to say that she and her neighbors feel ambushed by a wind turbine project – or, at least, that, as is typical, they were late in understanding the implications of the proposed project there (six 500 foot wind turbines) and that they are scrambling to head it off.

I thought that this list of relatively simple “things to do” might be helpful to people in Brewster, Wareham, Plymouth–all in Massachusetts–and anywhere else projects are currently proposed.

The operative theme here is that you live in a community and that a community is a collective enterprise. You’ve gathered yourselves together and established an intricate town government to manage your affairs. Why? Because you have all committed to the idea that you have a shared interest in achieving certain goals and providing certain services – health and safety, education, transportation, EMS and fire, police, regulation of hazards, building codes, environment, historic preservation, land conservation, parks, and so forth – all of which contribute to the quality of life in the community and all of which are fundamental to your decision to make your homes there.

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· . Click here to download this article in PDF (color)

· . Click here to download this article in PDF (B&W)·
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—Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD (11/15/10)

*The following is the text of Pierpont’s keynote address before the “First International Symposium on the Global Wind Industry and Adverse Health Effects: Loss of Social Justice?” in Picton, Ontario, Canada, October 30, 2010. It is followed by a discussion of several other relevant talks at the symposium by Drs. Alec Salt, Michael Nissenbaum, Christopher Hanning, and Mr. Richard James.

Abstract

The latest research, as discussed below, suggests the following mechanism for Wind Turbine Syndrome: air-borne or body-borne low-frequency sound directly stimulates the inner ear, with physiologic responses of both cochlea (hearing organ) and otolith organs (saccule and utricle—organs of balance and motion detection).

Research has now proved conclusively that physiologic responses in the cochlea suppress the hearing response to low-frequency sound but still send signals to the brain, signals whose function is, at present, mostly unknown. The physiologic response of the cochlea to turbine noise is also a trigger for tinnitus and the brain-cell-level reorganization that tinnitus represents—reorganization that can have an impact on language processing and the profound learning processes related to language processing.

New research also demonstrates that the “motion-detecting” otolith organs of mammals also respond to air-borne low-frequency sound. Physiologic responses and signals from the otolith organs are known to generate a wide range of brain responses, including dizziness and nausea (seasickness, even without the movement), fear and alerting (startle, wakefulness), and difficulties with visually-based problem-solving.

Increased alerting in the presence of wind turbine noise disturbs sleep, even when people do not recall being awakened. A population-level survey in Maine now shows clear disturbances of sleep and mental well-being out to 1400 m (4600 ft) from turbines, with diminishing effects out to 5 km (3 miles). ··

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“The only thing standing between predatory wind multinationals and the integrity of the environment of Maine are the patriots willing to be arrested to defend our most precious assets, rights and the public trust”

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Barbara Durkin, Portland Press Herald (11/15/10)

In response to the editorial “Anti-wind protests undercut their own case” (Nov. 10): There will come a time when perception becomes reality.

What once held promise as a cure for harmful emissions as an energy source that could reduce our dependency on foreign countries and fossil fuels will be recognized as a bad trade.

Wind energy is a low-value, high-cost, unreliable non-solution to our energy needs. Its massive environmental footprint is the antithesis of “tread lightly and leave a small footprint” Earth-friendliness.

The three dozen protesters who stood out in the biting rain and who were arrested will in time be vindicated in the eyes of the editors and others in the aftermath and awakening of the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the public and the environment.

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“Fueled by renegade doctor Nina Pierpont’s controversial book, Wind Turbine Syndrome, more groups are lobbying against new turbine developments”
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Beware of Renegade Doctors!

—Brendan Gullifer, Ballarat Courier (11/13/10)

Member for Ripon Joe Helper says he has no respect for their campaign tactics. The Member for Ballarat East Geoff Howard says their aggressive approach and angry faces don’t help their cause.

In some political circles, their name is met with eye rolling and accusations of being “flat-earthers”. Many of them are middle-aged or older, and are traditionally from conservative groups – farmers, small landholders, tree-changers.

But, around country kitchen tables, in shearing sheds and over paddock fences, they are increasingly at the centre of one of the most divisive issues to hit rural and regional Australia.

The Landscape Guardians are a loose collective of groups (they claim up to 70) across Australia with an expressed interest in fighting the spread of wind farms.

They mirror similar groups overseas. In the UK more than 230 campaign groups across the country are active in putting plans to generate more than a quarter of Britain’s electricity in jeopardy, according to a recent report.

In America and Canada, fuelled by renegade doctor Nina Pierpont’s controversial book Wind Turbine Syndrome, more groups are lobbying against new turbine developments.

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“Doctor calls for halt to Leonards Hill wind farm development”

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—Rachel Afflick, The Advocate (11/10/10)

A South Australian doctor who believes wind farms are making people ill says building works on the Leonards Hill wind farm should be halted until independent medical research is conducted.

Dr Sarah Laurie, medical director of the newly formed Waubra Foundation, has forwarded to executives of Hepburn Wind a letter she wrote to Premier John Brumby, in which she says she’s shocked at the extent and severity of symptoms in patients she has encountered with “wind farm sickness.”

In the letter she also calls for a 10 kilometre buffer distance between wind farms and houses.

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“They said they conferred with their doctor but felt there was no other option but to move out”

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—Brendan Gullifer, The Courier (11/12/10)

Glenbrae farming couple Carl and Sam Stepnell walked away from their nine-year-old home last week, claiming turbines near their property were making them sick.

Mr Stepnell, 39, said the family had bought a second home in Ballarat, and now return to the property during the day to run the family farm.

“Our parents are in their seventies and live at the other end of the place,” Mr Stepnell said yesterday.

“For Dad to pull over at the shed, come over here and have a cuppa… and his grand kids aren’t here.”

“The heart and soul has gone out of our home, which was us and our kids.”

Mrs Stepnell, 37, said she began to suffer symptoms immediately after turbines were turned on near her house 14 months ago.

“I’ve never suffered anything like it before,” she said.

“Instant pressure in the ears and in the head, inability to sleep.”

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—Cheryl Lindgren, Portland Press Herald (11/12/10)

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VINALHAVEN—A year ago, Fox Islands Wind began operating wind turbines on Vinalhaven Island. As a result, a community effort that began with eager anticipation is now tarnished.

As a neighbor of the wind turbine farm, this year has been a journey from hope to anger and disgust. Fox Islands Wind continues to misrepresent and mislead our community while using its authority to bully state regulators on the issue of violating noise standards.

Our experience has forced me to look into the deeper issues of industrial wind—the technology, the economics and the politics. It has been an uncomfortable journey that has changed my once honey-eyed vision of easy, green power to a view that industrial wind energy is, at present, bad science, bad economics and bad politics.

I add my voice to the growing number of Mainers who are demanding a moratorium on wind projects all over Maine.

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“Infrasound: Your ears ‘hear’ it but they don’t tell your brain”

—Alec Salt, PhD, Department of Otolaryngology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, at the “Symposium on Adverse Health Effects of Industrial Wind Turbines,” Picton, Ontario, October 29-31, 2010.  (See the Cochlear Fluids Research Laboratory site, and “Responses of the Ear to Infrasound and Wind Turbines.”

Highlights:

“Physiologic pathway exists for infrasound at levels that are not heard to affect the brain. The idea that infrasound effects can be dismissed because they are inaudible is incorrect.”

“A-weighted measurements tell you NOTHING about infrasound content.”

“A-weighted spectra totally misrepresent the effects of wind turbine noise (that includes infrasound components) on the ear.”

“A-weighted level readings (e.g., 42 dBA) are totally meaningless for assessing whether turbine noise is affecting the ear.”

Click here to download a PDF of Dr. Salt’s PowerPoint slides, from which the following text was taken.

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We are pleased to announce that an abridged edition of Nina Pierpont’s “Wind Turbine Syndrome” has been translated into French, German, Italian, Polish, Japanese and, now, Turkish.  In all cases, it was done by qualified native-speaking volunteers in each of these countries.  Our thanks to each of them!  The translations are powerful testimony to the global outrage over the reckless siting of industrial wind turbines.

Serhat Elfun Demirkol

Frankly, a Turkish translation was not one we expected.  Yet it turns out that turbines are a highly contentious issue in Turkey.   (more…)

Editor’s note:  The following article was published on this site in March 2010, when the Town of Wellfleet, Mass., was careening toward installing a huge wind turbine on the edge of town.  Happily, the Town Selectmen stopped the project dead in its tracks when they learned of the health hazards and other manifold shortcomings of this screwball plan.  We are reposting the article because, alas, it somehow got misplaced when we created our new website.  It now appears on the present website, again, for the first time.  We are reprinting it, as well, because we get many questions from communities and individuals facing the prospect of one, two, or three turbines, wondering if one or two turbines pose a problem to health.  The answer is, “yes”!

—Calvin Luther Martin, PhD (3/15/10, reprinted 11/7/10)

Wellfleet, Massachusetts.  Nice town out on Cape Cod.  Ever been there?

Me neither.  But it’s gotta be nice.  National Seashore.  Outstanding bird-watching.  (Big migratory corridor; zillions of shorebirds come through.)  Plus there’s marshes and ponds.  And loads of really interesting people.  What’s not to like?

Coming soon is one colossal wind turbine.  Then it won’t be so nice.  At least for people living within 2 km (1.25 miles) of that thing’s acoustic shadow.

The plan is for a Vestas V90 1.8/2.0 MW.

Photo from Vestas website, with human figure added for perspective

What’s not to like?  “Clean, green, renewable,” after all.  Right?

I’ll try to be brief and keep it simple.  (This isn’t going to be a happy story.  If you don’t like sad stories, better bail out now.)

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“Eastern Oregon residents near wind farms express health concerns over noise, lights, stress”

—Richard Cockle, The Oregonian (11/5/10)

LA GRANDE — If there’s anything that worries Linda Bond, it’s the prospect of living in the shadow of hundreds of wind turbines with their noise and blinking lights.

“I am really concerned about their proximity to the schools,” said Bond, a 59-year-old retired Oregon City teacher who now lives in Union, where a huge wind-energy project is proposed. She attended one of several Oregon Public Health “listening sessions” this week in eastern Oregon.

“There will be some people adversely affected,” she said.

Bond isn’t alone in her nervousness. For scores of residents, the luster of renewable green energy has all but disappeared behind an unwelcome march of gigantic, rolled-steel wind towers.

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Editor’s note:  The following is a creditable summary of some of the high points at last weekend’s “Wind Turbines & Health” symposium held in Picton, Ontario, by the Society for Wind Vigilance.
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Leading experts pool their most recent understanding of the harm of industrial wind turbines on human health

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—Rick Conroy, Wellington Times (11/5/10)

Piece by piece, presentation by presentation, the foundation upon which industrial wind industry and much of Ontario’s Green Energy Act sits was taken apart and dismantled this past weekend.

The industrial wind turbine business was always on shaky ground. It has been promoted by governments eager to be seen to be doing something about the western world’s reliance on fossil fuels—oil, gas and coal. In many respects wind energy policy has been a public relations exercise fuelled by governments’ willingness to spill billions of taxpayer dollars into developer’s pockets. They do so with a mix of wishful thinking and willful blindness in the expectation that technology leaps will fill in the significant operational gaps before most folks realize intermittent generating sources don’t work on a large scale.

None of these folks anticipated, however, that industrial wind turbines would actually make people sick. After the first international symposium in Picton on the weekend, there can be little doubt remaining.

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“Lost in the Wind: A Closer Look at Developing Wind Power in Maine” (WGME Maine)

Editor’s note:  The following was submitted by Friends of Lincoln Lakes.  WTS.com urges you to participate in this action.  Wherever you live, whether Maine or outside Maine, consider attending this performance of civil disobedience in the tradition of M.L. King and Gandhi and H.D. Thoreau.

Click here to learn more about Rollins Rally!

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“Mr. McConnell said Democrats were already at risk of not grasping the lessons of the 2010 election.

“’They may have missed the message somewhat,” he said. “I think the group that should hopefully get the message out of yesterday’s elections is our friends on the other side of the aisle. And we hope that they will pivot in a different direction [and] work with us on things like spending and debt, and trade agreements, and nuclear power and clean-coal technology and other things the president has said that he’s for that most of my members are for.’”

—NY Times (11/3/10)

Editor’s note:  We just got word that Dr. Salt’s and Dr. Hullar’s Big Wind myth-busting article, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in the peer-reviewed journal, Hearing Research, is the #1 Most Downloaded article in the journal.  This suggests their work is being noticed by fellow scientists.  It’s only a matter of time before Big Wind’s tissue of orchestrated lies about Wind Turbine Syndrome collapse—and the “damages” lawsuits begin.

Salt, AN and Hullar, TE, “Responses of the ear to low frequency sounds, infrasound and wind turbines.” Hearing Research online 16 June 2010.

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Oregon County Tells Wind Farm To Quiet Down

—Tom Banse, National Public Radio (10/28/10)

HEPPNER, Ore. – An Oregon county is telling the owner of a big wind farm to quiet down so neighbors can sleep at night. The operator of the Willow Creek Energy Center southwest of Boardman objects to the unusual noise enforcement. Another wind farm developer active in the area has reportedly paid neighbors “hush money” to head off similar trouble. Correspondent Tom Banse has been traveling through eastern Oregon this week for a two part series on how wind power is seen by those closest to it. Here’s his report from Morrow County.

General contractor Dan Williams lives in a hexagonal house designed to let in panoramic views from all directions. Two years ago, this northern Oregon big sky scenery changed dramatically.

Williams: “White sticks and propellers everywhere!”

A wind power developer put up dozens of towering wind turbines on the other side of the Willow Creek valley. The blades spin about three-quarters of a mile away. Retired firefighter Dennis Wade lives even closer to the windmills. Wade drops by the Williams’ place for a chat.

Dennis Wade: “It sounds like a train or a jet that never arrives, that just keeps going in one place.”

Dan Williams: “The sleeplessness…that’s the major thing for us.”

Dennis Wade: “I have woken up at night and it’s like somebody beating on your chest from the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.”

Dan Williams: “For me, it makes me feel uneasy.”

Dennis Wade: “I have migraines. This has kicked the migraines up.”

Tom Banse: Do you get used to it, like if you live on the ocean you get used to the sound of the waves?

Dan Williams: “I haven’t, no. This sound is different. I think it affects my body.”

Dennis Wade: “The feelings that Dan was talking about, once you leave and go away for a day or so, they recede and you feel back to your normal self.”

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—Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD, CounterPunch Magazine (10/31/10)

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Wind turbines majestically threshing the wind—what marvels of human engineering! To stand beneath one is breathtaking. To live near one can be hell on earth. So I have been told by countless people who suddenly find themselves grievously ill from the subtle yet devastating infrasonic jackhammer generated by these “clean, green, renewable energy” giants.

The explanation may be tucked away in the inner ear in a cluster of tiny, interconnected organs with a remarkable evolutionary pedigree. The vestibular organs—the semicircular canals, saccule, and utricle—function as Mother Nature’s gyroscope, controlling our sense of motion, position, and balance, including our spatial thinking. (Remember when you got carsick as a kid? Or seasick?)

Humans share these enigmatic organs with a host of other backboned species, including fish and amphibians. Some scientists indeed see them as a kind of pan-species master key for an extraordinarily broad range of brain function—amounting to a sixth sense.

One of those functions, it now appears, is to register and respond to the sounds and vibrations (infrasound) we don’t consciously hear, but feel—as from wind turbines. For many people, the response is swift and disastrous.

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Brief video from The Society for Wind Vigilance international symposium on Wind Turbines and Health, October 29-31, 2010 (Ontario, Canada).

The Society for Wind Vigilance, at its First International Symposium on “The Global Wind Industry & Adverse Health Effects” (October 29-31, 2010), presented Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD, with its Award for Excellence for Research & Leadership 2010.