An Australian study has identified the source illnesses reported around wind farms: activists circulating health warnings around wind farms they’ve targeted.
The study, spearheaded by Simon Chapman, professor of public health at Sydney University, has found that health complaints are mainly prevalent in communities where anti-wind farm activists are active. 63% of wind farms in Australia have never seen a single noise or health complaint.
The authors write that: “The large majority (82%) of health and noise complaints commenced after 2009 when anti wind farm groups began to add health concerns to their wider opposition. In the preceding years, health or noise complaints were rare despite large and small turbined wind farms having operated for many years . . . In view of scientific consensus that the evidence for wind turbine noise and infrasound causing health problems is poor, the reported spatio-temporal variations in complaints are consistent with psychogenic hypotheses that health problems arising are ‘communicated diseases’ . . .”
Opposition groups have pointed out that a lack of evidence doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, simply that it hasn’t been collected yet.
Photo courtesy of Davie Dunn.
