Page 22 - Winter2014

Alec N. Salt and Jeffery T. Lichtenhan
Department of Otolaryngology Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis, MO 63110
How Does
Wind Turbine Noise Affect People?
The many ways by which unheard infrasound and low-frequency sound from wind turbines could distress people living nearby are described.
Introduction
Recent articles in Acoustics Today have reviewed a number of difficult issues concern- ing wind turbine noise and how it can affect people living nearby (Leventhall 2013, Schomer 2013; Timmerman 2013). Here we present potential mechanisms by which effects could occur.
The essence of the current debate is that on one hand you have the well-funded wind industry 1. advocating that infrasound be ignored because the measured levels are below the threshold of human hearing, allowing noise levels to be adequately docu- mented through A-weighted sound measurements, 2. dismissing the possibility that any variants of wind turbine syndrome exist (Pierpont 2009) even when physicians (e.g., Steven D. Rauch, M.D. at Harvard Medical School) cannot otherwise explain some patients’ symptoms, and, 3. arguing that it is unnecessary to separate wind tur- bines and homes based on prevailing sound levels.
On the other hand you have many people who claim to be so distressed by the effects of wind-turbine noise that they cannot tolerate living in their homes. Some move away, either at financial loss or bought-out by the turbine operators. Others live with the discomfort, often requiring medical therapies to deal with their symptoms. Some, even members of the same family, may be unaffected. Below is a description of the disturbance experienced by a woman in Europe we received a few weeks ago as part of an unsolicited e-mail.
“From the moment that the turbines began working I experienced vertigo-like symp- toms on an ongoing basis. In many respects, what I am experiencing now is actually worse than the ‘dizziness’ I have previously experienced, as the associated nausea is much more intense. For me the pulsating, humming, noise that the turbines emit is the predominant sound that I hear and that really seems to affect me.
While the Chief Scientist [the person who came to take sound measurements in her house] undertaking the measurement informed me that he was aware of the low frequency hum the turbines produced (he lives close to a wind farm himself and had recorded the humming noise levels indoors in his own home) he advised that I could tune this noise out and that any adverse symptoms I was experiencing were simply psychosomatic.”
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