“Wind turbines and public health: It’s time to act!” (Australia)
Dec 12, 2011
Print Article.
Press Release
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Wind Turbines and Public Health: It’s Time to Act1
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Waubra Foundation (Australia)
12-11-11
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It is now 6 months since the Australian Federal Senate inquiry Report into Rural Wind Farms was tabled.2 This Inquiry made 7 recommendations, including to:
(1) “Initiate as a matter of priority thorough adequately resourced epidemiological and laboratory studies” (recommendation #4).
(2) Develop noise standards which “calculate the impact of low frequency noise and vibrations indoors at impacted dwellings” (recommendation #1)
There has been no action on any of the recommendations.
Since then, the Clean Energy Legislation has been passed, which will inevitably result in many more rural residents being driven from their homes and farms, as “wind farm refugees.”
Governments in Australia have been warned about these consequences with the Explicit Cautionary Notice issued by the Waubra Foundation on 29th June, 2011.3
There is willing blindness on the part of the politicians and the bureaucrats, and fraudulent denial on the part of the wind developers who know only too well about the adverse health problems which are being reported globally.
These rural residents are being openly referred to as “collateral damage” or “policy roadkill” by developers, and their supporters, some admitting they know people are becoming ill, but state it is “for the greater good.”
It is yet another lie that “there are no problems anywhere else in the world,” and that “things are fine in Denmark.” Distinguished Danish acoustician, Professor Henrik Møller, has been driven to speak out publicly at the current collusion between the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, the wind developers and the Danish Government regarding the proposed new low frequency noise guidelines.4
Lousy photo of Dr. Henrik Møller
All is not “fine” in Denmark, nor anywhere else where wind turbines have been built too close to homes.
On the eve of the commencement of the Australian Wind Industry’s “talkfest” in Melbourne (Australia), where no doubt the usual denials of any health problems will be evident, it is time for the Australian Federal and State Governments to address these serious and growing health problems in rural residents living within 10 km of current wind developments.
The latest victims are from the Daylesford region, casualties of Hepburn Wind’s community wind farm, and AGL’s wind development at Glenthompson, not yet commissioned.
The time for denial of serious health problems is over.
The time to act is now.
References
1. http://www.youtube.com/user/WaubraFoundation
2. http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/clac_ctte/impact_rural_wind_far ms/report/index.htm
3. http://media.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/caution.pdf
4. http://www.epaw.org/media.php?lang=en&article=pr4
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Media Enquiries: Sarah Laurie, MD, Medical Director, Waubra Foundation, sarah@waubrafoundation.com.au
Comment by Marsh Rosenthal on 12/12/2011 at 10:31 pm
Those who seek the safe distance to locate industrial scale wind turbines are following a dark alley, one that ends in a wall trapping them into accepting that they can ever be safe. THEY CANNOT.
Windpower is not sustainable. A recent Dutch scientific study that looks at the smoke pipe effluents that are produced by the preferred gas fired back up power generation plants finds that the unpredictable start ups and shut offs of these plants, paralleling the intermittant presence of the wind, makes the plants run inefficiently, very much the way your car engine runs when you start it up and the engine is cold. They found that MORE carbon and organic pollutants are emitted because of the presence of wind turbines than IF THEY WERE NEVER THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
The whole idea of sustainability in energy generation is directed toward a method that does not increase air pollution while it utilizes natural forces to drive it. Windpower is not that.
Sane engineering and public policy must completely reject industrial wind power. It must ban its construction. It must shut down operating wind plants. It must dismantle them. It must restore the sites they occupied to as near their original condition as possible.
In today’s “climate change” enthralled world these must be the words of a madman, a revolutionary, a reactionary, a terrorist. Such schizophenia has become the norm. What a pity!
Marsh Rosenthal
Comment by steph 519 on 12/13/2011 at 9:44 am
Thank you, Mr. Rosenthal.
But with only ~ 2 % of the world’s population GETTING i.e. UNDERSTANDING your message, the other 98 % being both illiterate and innumerate in the 21st century meaning of those words, it will probably be long after my compromised immune system has given up and I’m long turned into ashes but the IWT developers will be swilling their drinks on some secluded turbine free island.