Bishop Hill Ill wind
Nov 4, 2012 Energy: wind A peer reviewed paper has claimed for the first time that wind turbines can detrimentally affect the sleep patterns of people living nearby. According to Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph:
American and British researchers compared two groups of residents in the US state of Maine. One group lived within a mile of a wind farm and the second group did not.
The findings provide the clearest evidence yet to support long-standing complaints from people living near turbines that the sound from their rotating blades disrupts sleep patterns and causes stress-related conditions.
Both sets of people were demographically and socially similar, but the researchers found major differences in the quality of sleep the two groups enjoyed.
This presumably opens the way for damages claims against windfarm investors.
The study will be used by critics of wind power to argue against new turbines being built near homes and for existing ones to be switched off or have their speed reduced, when strong winds cause their noise to increase.
The researchers used two standard scientific scales, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, which measures the quality of night-time sleep, and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, which measures how sleepy people feel when they are awake.
“Participants living near industrial wind turbines had worse sleep, as evidenced by significantly greater mean PSQI and ESS scores,” the researchers, Michael Nissenbaum, Jeffery Aramini and Chris Hanning, found.
“There were clear and significant dose-response relationships, with the effect diminishing with increasing log-distance from turbines.”
The researchers also tracked respondents’ “mental component scores” and found a “significant” link – probably caused by poor-quality sleep – between wind turbines and poorer mental health.
More than a quarter of participants in the group living near the turbines said they had been medically diagnosed with depression or anxiety since the wind farm started. None of the participants in the group further away reported such problems.
Each person was also asked if they had been prescribed sleeping pills. More than a quarter of those living near the wind farm said they had. Less than a tenth of those living further away had been prescribed sleeping pills.
According to the researchers, the study, in the journal Noise and Health, is the first to show clear relationships between wind farms and “important clinical indicators of health, including sleep quality, daytime sleepiness and mental health”.
Unlike some common forms of sleep-disturbing noise, such as roads, wind turbine noise varies dramatically, depending on the wind direction and speed. Unlike other forms of variable noise, however, such as railways and aircraft, it can continue for very long
periods at a time. The nature of the noise — a rhythmic beating or swooshing of the blades — is also disturbing. UK planning guidance allows a night-time noise level from wind farms of 42 decibels – equivalent to the hum made by a fridge.
This means that turbines cannot be built less than 380-550 yards from human habitation, with the exact distance depending on the terrain and the size of the turbines.
However, as local concern about wind farm noise grows, many councils are now drawing up far wider cordons. Wiltshire, for instance, has recently voted to adopt minimum distances of between 0.6 to 1.8 miles, depending on the size of the turbines.
Dr Lee Moroney, director of planning at the Renewable Energy Foundation, said: “The UK noise limits were drawn up 16 years ago, when wind turbines were less than half the current size. Worse still, the guidelines permit turbines to be built so close to houses that wind turbine noise will not infrequently be clearly audible indoors at night time, so sleep impacts and associated health effects are almost inevitable.
“This situation is obviously unacceptable and creating a lot of angry neighbours, but the industry and government response is slow and very reluctant. Ministers need to light a fire under their civil servants.”
The research will add to the growing pressure on the wind farm industry, which was attacked last week by the junior energy minister, John Hayes, for the way in which turbines have been “peppered around the country without due regard for the interests of the local community or their wishes”. Saying “enough is enough”, Mr Hayes appeared to support a moratorium on new developments beyond those already in the pipeline.
He was slapped down by his Lib Dem boss, Ed Davey, the Energy Secretary, but is unlikely to have made his remarks without some kind of nod from the top of Government. George Osborne, the Chancellor, is known to be increasingly sceptical about the effectiveness of wind power, which is heavily subsidised but delivers relatively little reduction in carbon dioxide.
Wind farms generate about a quarter of their theoretical capacity because the wind does not always blow at the required speeds. Earlier this year, more than 100 Tory MPs urged David Cameron to block the further expansion of wind power.
Whatever the Government decides, however, may not matter.
The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that the EU will shortly begin work on a new directive which may impose a binding target for further renewable energy, mostly wind, on the UK. There is already a target, which is also Government policy, that 20 per cent of energy should come from renewables by 2020.
But Brussels is considering imposing an even higher mandatory target to be met over the following decade, according to Gunther Oettinger, the EU energy commissioner. “I want an interesting discussion on binding targets for renewables by 2030,” he said earlier this year.
Two weeks ago, a senior member of his staff, Jasmin Battista, said that Mr Oettinger was “open to” forced targets, though no decision had been made.
The European Parliament has voted for mandatory increases in renewables by 2030 and Mr Davey has also said he favours them. The issue will be considered at a European Council of Ministers meeting next month.
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Reader Comments (74)
Jiminy Cricket would have you believe that I dismiss windmill noise: "To give the benefit of doubt to there being no effect is quite frankly/bitbucketly disingenuous.". Readers will note that I said no such thing. What I asked for was the same degree of scepticism to this report as you would give to any other report. If this were a climate report, people would be all over it questioning the method, the data, the inbuilt biases and of course the motives and morals of the researchers. We'd probably have an FOI request for the data by now. Yet a report that is essentially about psychology is accepted without question, even though the danger of selection bias is clear. It gives the result you expect, so it must be okay. By all means call yourselves sceptics, but if you do so, be sceptical.
The paper is crap. The authors are all long time anti-wind activists, and the reviewers mentioned are all paid anti-wind activists, one of whom used to shill for the tobacco companies. Bet you this paper gets retracted before the year is out.
LOL "tobacco"
The ultimate argument.
The reviewers are 'paid anti-wind activists'? Details, please.
I suspect that they are like the paid Big Oil shills that allegedly run and infest sceptic blogs. All of their cheques are still in the mail, apparently.
Bitbucket;
People can believe one thing, like the moon landing happened, but be unconvinced of another, UFO's are real. A person sceptical of one thing doesn't have to be sceptical of everything.
A scientist would be more likely to investigate further. He has the means, perhaps the interest, and the ability to dig deeper into any given issue.
Your blanket statement that a sceptic should be sceptical of everything is silly. Everybody has their own focus of interest, experience, and doubts about the validity of specific things. This blog simply accumulates those who are generally sceptical of parts of the inner workings of climate science. It's a collective similarity, nothing more.
Greg, you are right of course. But, if I was unclear, I wasn't suggesting a sceptical assessment of everything, but of the item under discussion (the study).
Nov 4, 2012 at 4:43 PM | Dodgy Geezer
The immediate response of any company faced with that requirement would be to go bankrupt. How do you handle that?
-----------------------------------------
The simplest solution is to make the directors of the wind companies personally responsible for its debts ... and you can be assured that they will chase down any source that could remotely be held contributory to their personal bankruptcy. The fraud of wind generation can be dealt with in the normal way through the courts.
Does this study present better evidence than the usual stuff that gets printed about mobile phone masts? It strikes me, at first glance as more of the same dubious b/s. But no doubt AlecM has the empirical evidence.
Mr Bitbucket says:
"If this was a climate report,
""we'd question "the method, the data, the inbuilt biases and of course the motives and morals of the researchers."
Heaven forfend that this should be a "climate report".
Heaven forfend that we should afford this the same degree of scepticism as we would "any other report. If this were a climate report, people would be all over it questioning the method, the data, the inbuilt biases and of course the motives and morals of the researchers."
It is. You won't.
"We'd probably have an FOI request for the data by now. Yet a report that is essentially about psychology is accepted without question, even though the danger of selection bias is clear. It gives the result you expect, so it must be okay. By all means call yourselves sceptics, but if you do so, be sceptical."
I understand why you do not like the "freedom" and "information" aspects of this legislation. I don't get the "essentially about psychology" part. What isn't? Give us a laugh, and explain your take on "selection bias".
Who has accepted something without question? Where is the "selection bias"? What "result" do you expect?
Since you have not the brains to be sceptical, feel free to call yourself "gullible".
Best regards,
jf
JF, read the thread and the paper. Then come back.
BB:
I have read the paper.
http://www.noiseandhealth.org/article.asp?issn=1463-1741;year=2012;volume=14;issue=60;spage=237;epage=243;aulast=Nissenbaum
Do you have a point to make?
jf
Well, ask yourself this. If you wanted to study whether elephants walking in someone's garden at night eating lettuces affected peoples sleep patterns, would you start off with the group of people who contacted you because they were aggravated by elephants eating their lettuces at night?
Why don't you find flaws in the paper itself instead of criticizing peoples' comments on it?
Climate papers face criticism because they are full of crap - just like all papers generally are. It is the climateers who behave and believe that their work is golden, and therefore, every bit of criticism stings.
Bitty, the researchers used one group of people whose lettuces were in the range of hungry elephants and another whose lettuces were safe from elephants. They did not single out people who had complained about the elephants.
Where is the selection bias?
BitBucket
It's not the elephants eating lettuces that affect people's sleep patterns, it's their infrasound mating calls.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/aug/02/elephants-deep-bass-tones
A real blind trial...
"Now you have agreed to take part in this study, however we must reiterate whatever you do DO NOT OPEN THE BLINDS. EVER. NO MATTER WHAT YOU HEAR in the garden. Just try to sleep and ignore it. Oh if your vegetables start growing better, just ignore that as well."
Johanna, do you think that is so (not an accusation, just a question)? Have you looked at the maps of the two elephant traps that I posted earlier (Nov 4, 2012 at 2:37 PM). How did the researchers come to study these sites? Was it just be chance or because they had heard of problems? How did they select the participants? Was it by visiting thousands of nearby houses and just by chance finding that some of them had problems? No they visited the 65 people (not houses) nearby and got 38 of them to take part. Count the houses nearby - there really are very few. It would surprise me if there were not multiple participants from the same houses/families, which must add bias too (I mean, would couples report differently?). Can the researchers possibly have recruited families who hadn't already complained, even if they didn't have that intention?
It's like doing a study of mobile phone masts and allowing participants to self-select. You don't start off with a normal population.
To give another analogy, if you wanted to study whether people really can taste fracking chemicals in their water would you start by selecting participants from folks who can see a well from their front door (and are angry) in an area where complaints had already been made and get them to taste their own water?
If you don't see the possibilities for bias then we have to agree to differ.
Are we to seek people 'without bias' then ? That sounds about as productive as polling 'climate scientists' on the viability of 'climate science'....and saying the poll is of neutral parties. Rather we need people who are 'biased' by their experiences. It's rather self evident they have their own interpretations of what is going on...and are rather less vulnerable to the bias of selected questions being presented.
Indications of a disatrous kludge from a financial standpoint include
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/climate-wind-0312.html
http://dgrnewsservice.org/2012/11/05/indigenous-people-in-mexico-organizing-resistance-against-corporate-wind-farms/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9076458/Wind-industrys-extensive-lobbying-to-preserve-subsidies-and-defeat-local-resistance-to-turbines.html
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/06/wind-turbine-gearbox-reliability
Opit, if all you want is to conduct an opinion poll on how many local people believe that a wind turbine upsets their sleep patterns, then biased people is exactly what you want. In the same way, if you want to know how many people believe that mobile phone masts upset them, just ask the people and you will learn. One could do the same with new medicines; forget blind trials and just prescribe the drugs and ask people how they feel. But don't expect to get useful results - a few centuries of experience tells us that.
a campaign against windfarms should be conducted on the bases that they do not give energy security, increase the price of electricity, do not decrease emissions significantly and cannot be relied upon to provide electricity when it is most needed.
This dubious medical stuff and the raptor killings are beside the point, in my view.
BitBucket Polling those who are near windfarms are the only available observers. Saying they are unqualified and biased is ridiculous. Who could be better ?
Opit, we've travelled that path at least once...
Fine Bitty. Others are volunteering their observations . ( But that didn`t have anything to do with what I posted. ) What does have to do with observations and organizing might be
http://windconcernsontario.wordpress.com/
http://soundviewsonwindenergy.blogspot.ca/index.html
http://windfarms.wordpress.com/
Do our centuries of experience tell us more about people who `get the wind up`on their own while refusing to be pacified, I wonder.
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