As you may be aware, Mothers Against Wind Turbines Inc. filed an appeal in response to the approval of the Niagara Region Wind Corporation. Please see attached notice and take note of dates.
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We will be counting on your support.
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As well, please consider donating to our legal fund if you have not already done so. We can only continue the fight if resources permit. Donations can be mailed to:
MPP Jim Wilson introduces a bill to amend the Planning Act in Ontario, to return municipal planning authority removed by the Green Energy Act. “Imperative” at this time, Wilson says.
The people of Ontario have been waiting for more than two years for Health Canada’s report on itsWind Turbine Noise and Health Study. On November 6, 2014, a summary of the results were released but still, no report is available or published. Similarly, no article has yet been published and the data and analysis are also not available. Higher research standards are expected for the $2.1-million, publiclyfunded study that is completed for Health Canada by Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety, the regulatory body.
It is our view that the issues of process are important as, on the surface, the Health Canada summary eport appears to provide contradictory results. In some parts of the study results, it is claimed that no association between wind turbine noise and health effects were found. However, in other parts, high evels of annoyance were significantly linked statistically to wind turbine noises, with this annoyance then being linked to health effects.
In response to the release of the summary, Wind Concerns Ontario (WCO) immediately convened an expert panel1 of reviewers to analyze the summary report, as well as other available material including a PowerPoint presentation provided to us in a briefing session with Health Canada in Ottawa, on
November 7, 2014.
The following report summarizes the conclusions that this panel has reached, based on the available information.
This week, the town of Caitlin, south of Watkins Glen, got cold feet over a proposal to build a wind farm.
The town board was poised to pass a local law that would open the door for a Florida company to build a wind-driven electrical generation facility in this sparsely populated, mostly agricultural Chemung County area. The company has 30 leases already signed by landowners allowing for placement of an undetermined number of wind turbines.
But the town reversed course and now has asked its attorney to draft a law to ban such wind farms.
This sudden political wind shift has its roots in local citizen opposition based on concerns about noise, visual blight and environmental issues. It also springs from fears the state could usurp town authority to set conditions on the wind farm — conditions that might be far less stringent than what town officials would require.
But at the bottom of it all is a sense of unease — shared by many Finger Lakes residents — over any project that seems, well, just way too big, too complicated or too difficult to control.
Wind power facilities, landfills, casinos, hog farms, or liquid propane gas storage — take your pick. It seems like very little proposed development is set to a scale that would seem reasonable, appropriate or often even controllable.
You are probably aware that at the October 14, 2014 Brown County Board of Health meeting a motion was made to declare the Shirley Wind turbines a Human Health Hazard. The motion was unanimously approved by the Board:
“To declare the Industrial Wind Turbines at Shirley Wind Project in the Town of Glenmore, Brown County, WI. A Human Health Hazard for all people (residents, workers, visitors, and sensitive passersby) who are exposed to Infrasound/Low Frequency Noise and other emissions potentially harmful to human health.”
BCCRWE is requesting your words of support for this action which can be sent to BOHsupport@bccrwe.com
This is public and can be shared and redistributed.
All the best,
Carmen
Shirley Wind Human Health Hazard Declaration
* BCCRWE Requests Your Words of Support *
At the October 14, 2014 Brown County Board of Health meeting a motion was made to declare the Shirley Windturbines a Human Health Hazard. The motion was unanimously approved by the Board:
“To declare the Industrial Wind Turbines at Shirley Wind Project in the Town of Glenmore, Brown County, WI. A Human Health Hazard for all people (residents, workers, visitors, and sensitive passersby) who are exposed to Infrasound/Low Frequency Noise and other emissions potentially harmful to human health.”
Research indicates that industrial wind turbines can negatively affect the physical, mental and social well-being of individuals if placed too close to homes. BCCRWE has been working intensively for the past 5 years with professional researchers, physicians, acousticians, and legislators to protect citizens of Brown County, the state of Wisconsin, the United States, and those in other countries from the negative health impacts resulting from industrial wind turbines being built too close to people.
BCCRWE welcomes and encourages individuals, organizations, and governmental agencies from around the world to send their words of support regarding the Board of Health’s action. BCCRWE will pass your emails on to the Brown County Board of Health as support for their courage, integrity, responsibility, intellectual honesty, and care in declaring the industrial wind turbines at Shirley Wind to be human health hazards.
If you or others you know have experienced negative health impacts from living in close proximity to industrial wind turbines and would like to share that experience along with your words of support with the Brown County Board of Health, please do so.
Send your words of support, and if applicable your experiences, to: BOHsupport@bccrwe.com
This article, the final of three installments, discusses the relationship between various health effects and our current understanding of the processing of infrasound by the ear and brain. [Part 1: Some Background; Part 2: The Evidence.]
As noted in the second installment of this series, Dr. Geoff Leventhall, a co-author of the 2009 AWEA/CanWEA report, attributes the health complaints of people who live near industrial wind turbines (IWTs) to psychological stress, but does not acknowledge that IWTs can be detrimental to health because infrasound and low-frequency noise (ILFN) emitted by wind turbines are largely inaudible to humans. He stands on the argument, therefore, that what we can’t hear can’t hurt us.
We know that things we cannot see, touch, taste, or smell can hurtus, so why is it unreasonable also to believe that what we can’t hear might also hurt us?
Dr. Nina Pierpont, in describing Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS), has expressed her belief that many of the symptoms comprising WTS are mediated by overstimulation of the vestibular system of the inner ear by ILFN. Recent evidence supports the general view that the functioning of both the vestibular and cochlear components of the inner ear, and their interconnections with the brain, mediate the type of symptoms that Pierpont and others have described.
INFRASOUND: MORE OF A PROBLEM THAN WE THOUGHT?
Industrial-scale wind turbines generate peak sound pressure levels at infrasonic frequencies, especially between 0.25 and 3 Hz, as the blades pass in front of the tower. Most of us do not experience the energy in this lowest of low-frequency regions as sound; instead, we perceive a variety of other sensations. When present, infrasound can be more of a problem than audible sound.
Recent basic research on the inner ear conducted by Dr. Alec Salt and colleagues at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has provided a feasible and coherent explanation of how sound that is normally not audible can result in the kinds of negative reactions reported by people who are exposed to wind turbine noise. That research has shown that extremely low-frequency sound is largely inaudible to humans because the outer hair cells (OHCs) in the inner ear detect and effectively cancel it before it reaches the inner hair cells (IHCs). The IHC stereocilia, which do not contact the tectorial membrane, are fluid-coupled and sensitive to stimulus velocity, while the OHC stereocilia are sensitive to displacement. IHCs rapidly become less sensitive as stimulus frequency is lowered.
Cross-section of the cochlea (left), with illustration of IHCs and OHCs (right). Used by permission of Alec Salt, Washington University School of Medicine.
Readers familiar with the anatomy of the ear know that approximately 95% of the fibers innervating the IHCs lead to the brain as afferent fibers, while only about 5% of the fibers innervating the OHCs are afferent fibers. Thus, we hear through our IHCs, and our hearing sensitivity is comparable to the calculated IHC sensitivity. The OHCs, which respond physiologically to infrasound, serve as a pathway for infrasound to reach the brain. Infrasonic signals that reach the brain are normally not perceived as sound, but are believed to stimulate centers other than auditory centers, resulting in perceptions that may be unfamiliar and disturbing.
Similar pathways to various centers of the brain also exist through the vestibular, or balance, mechanisms of the inner ear, meaning that it is biologically plausible for infrasound to produce the variety of sensations described by Pierpont, sensations such as pulsation, annoyance, stress, panic, ear pressure or fullness, unsteadiness, vertigo, nausea, tinnitus, general discomfort, memory loss, and disturbed sleep.
Salt and colleagues have also found that when higher-pitched sounds (150-1500 Hz) are present, they can suppress infrasound. This means that the ear is most sensitive to infrasound when higher-frequency sounds are absent. This occurs at night when wind turbine noise is present, ambient sound levels are low, and higher-pitched sounds are attenuated by walls and other physical structures.
As utility-scale wind turbines increase in size and power, the blade-pass frequency goes increasingly deeper into the nauseogenic zone.
Another relatively recent discovery is that there is likely a cause-effect relationship between AHEs and ILFN that mirrors that occurring in motion sickness. An experiment in the late 1980s, conducted using training-mission scenarios with Navy pilots, showed that motion sickness was associated with significant amounts of acoustic energy inside the flight cabin over the frequency range from just under 1 Hz to as low as 0.05 Hz (the nauseogenic range). Maximum sensitivity occurred at approximately 0.2 Hz. That experiment resulted in the conclusion that flight simulator sickness may be, to a significant extent, a function of exposure to infrasonic frequencies. This phenomenon is akin to seasickness, except that the acoustic energy causes nausea without body movement or visual stimulation.
wind noise
Dr. Paul Schomer, nationally and internationally known for his work in acoustics and acoustic-standards development, has suggested that because the Navy test subjects responded to acoustical/vibratory energy with symptoms similar to motion sickness, many of the similar symptoms reported by people living near IWTs can be explained by exposure to infrasound from wind turbines at frequencies similar to those observed in the Navy’s test environment. Persons affected by wind turbine noise appear to be responding directly to acoustic stimulation of the same nerves and organs affected in that experimental environment.
DATA SUPPORT REPORTED SYMPTOMS AS BIOLOGICALLY PLAUSIBLE
These research efforts of Salt and colleagues, Schomer, and others are leading the way in establishing the biological plausibility of the harmful effects of ILFN generated by wind turbines.
Dr. Salt dismisses the common perception that what we can’t hear can’t hurt us and has stated unequivocally that “Wind turbines can be hazardous to human health.”
Decisions regarding the siting of industrial wind turbines deserve careful attention to limiting noise exposure levels in community residents through specified restrictions on either distance or noise levels, or both. The right of the public to enjoy health and well-being should be paramount to the economic and political interests of the wind industry and governmental bodies. These rights need to be protected on a proactive, and not just on a retroactive, basis. Industrial-scale wind turbines should be sited only at distances from residents that are sufficient to minimize sleep disturbance and that do not put them at risk for a variety of other serious health problems.
Jerry Punch is an audiologist and professor emeritus at Michigan State University in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders. Since his retirement in 2011, he has become actively involved as a private audiological consultant in areas related to his long-standing interest in community noise.
Richard James is an acoustical consultant with over 40 years of experience in industrial noise measurement and control. He served as an adjunct instructor in Michigan State University’s Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders from 1985-2013 and currently serves as an adjunct professor in Central Michigan University’s Department of Communication Disorders.
The provincial Ministry of Energy will launch an investigation into reports that an 18-inch chunk of a wind turbine blade came loose and flew some 400 feet before landing in a field in the former Howard Twp.
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Chatham-Kent-Essex MPP Rick Nicholls raised the matter during question period Wednesday at Queen’s Park, calling it a significant safety issue that must be addressed immediately.
“Will your government do the do the right thing and put a moratorium on turbine developments until there is a thorough review of safety standards pertaining to industrial wind turbines,” he asked Premier Kathleen Wynne.
Energy Minister Bob Chiarellli said he was unaware of the problem but will raise the issue with his staff as well as those at the ministries of environment and climate change.
The right to be free from chronic annoyance is at the heart of a legal challenge that could shake Ontario’s multibillion wind-energy business, and limit other industrial development in rural areas.
Wind turbines spin at a wind farm on November 17, 2014 near Brieselang, Germany. Ontario has 62 separate wind farms approved or proposed, under rules that allow them to be built 550 metres from homes, and at a noise level of up to 40 decibels in rural areas – the level at which the adverse health effects of annoyance set in, according to the World Health Organization. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
It pits a family whose farming history goes back a century in Southwestern Ontario against the provincial government, and a consortium known as the K2 Wind Power Project, which includes global companies such as Samsung Renewable Energy Inc.
No evidence shows wind turbines directly harm human health.
On Behalf of SWEAR, here is an attached Letter to the Editor which was sent out to various media contacts for publication. Please feel free to bump it along to your local papers or any other contacts you may have. We recognize that it is a fairly lengthy letter but we asked for the media’s indulgence as we believe the letter in its entirety will be of interest to their readerships.
Dear Editor:
The long awaited Divisional Court Charter Challenge of three industrial wind turbine projects wrapped up on Thursday, November 20th. The Appeal went before Justices F.N. Marocco, D.M. Brown and J.R. Henderson at the Courthouse in London. Arguments were made by Julian Falconer and team, counsel for the four families (Drennan, Dixon, Ryan & Kroeplin) objecting to the proximity of industrial wind turbines to their homes in the 140 turbine K2 (Drennan) and 15 turbine St. Columban (Dixon & Ryan) wind projects currently under construction in Huron County, and the 92 turbine Armow Wind Project being constructed in Bruce County. Counsel for the Ministry of the Continue reading On Behalf of SWEAR→
A judicial fight over the future of wind turbines in Ontario wrapped up Thursday with the fate of the province’s green energy law in the hands of judges.
On one side is big money, wind energy giants like Samsung and a Liberal government intent on becoming a world leader in creating green energy.
On the other are four families in Huron and Bruce counties whose homes are close to dozens of proposed turbines.
But while it seems a David and Goliath affair, the underdogs have enlisted a legal pugilist who Thursday seemed to dance circles around the arguments of his adversaries, wrapping up a four-day hearing in London with an emotionally-loaded challenge to three Superior Court justices.
“The system has utterly broken down,” said Julian Falconer. “You have been tasked with keeping these people safe.”
Falconer was the most dynamic of lawyers representing four families in Southwestern Ontario battling the building of wind farms.
It’s not the first time lawyers have challenged the Green Energy Act in court. Three years ago, wind opponents lost in court fighting a decision by an environmental review tribunal to allow a wind farm. But the 2011 effort had a handicap this one does not — it was a judicial review, in which judges must give deference to the tribunal.
This time, Falconer wants the three-judge panel to:
Halt, by issuing what’s called a stay, wind farms that are expected to be tested in January.
Rule the environmental tribunal violated the constitutional rights of wind opponents when it refused to allow new evidence from a Health Canada study.
Allow wind opponents to stop wind farms by showing they might be seriously harmed rather than proving they had been harmed.
The judges expect to issue a decision on the stay soon, and while they didn’t specify a date, it’s likely they’ll act by January.
Environmental review tribunals shield their eyes to contrary evidence, Falconer said.
“They keep the blinders on. They’re not interested in new information. They’re interested in getting the turbines up,” he said.
But lawyers for the government and wind companies disagreed, one arguing the Health Canada study only showed a link between turbines and annoyance and the early results hadn’t yet been peer-reviewed.
“It’s a work in progress,” said Darryl Cruz, who represents St. Columban Energy.
The decision by the environmental tribunal was correct and wind companies should be allowed to complete their wind farms, he said.
That’s a position one Niagara wind opponent has been fighting for about four years, moving from her Welland home to keep away from planned turbines.
“It’s just wrong,” Catherine Mitchell said.
Wind opponents say turbines cause dizziness, headaches, heart palpitations and other illness.
The government says that’s wrong and that neighbours are protected because turbines are placed at least 550 metres from homes.
Ontario has more than 6,000 wind turbines built, planned or proposed, mostly in the southwest. Turbines account for about 4% of Ontario’s power.
As you may be aware, Mothers Against Wind Turbines Inc. filed an appeal in response to the approval of the Niagara Region Wind Corporation. Please see attached notice and take note of dates.
.We will be counting on your support..As well, please consider donating to our legal fund if you have not already done so. We can only continue the fight if resources permit. Donations can be mailed to:.Mothers Against Wind Turbines Inc.BOX 132Wellandport, ONL0R 2J0Thanks very much.
Mothers Against Wind Turbines Inc. 