Wind turbine syndrome

Wind turbine syndrome
Pseudomedical diagnosis
Risks	Nocebo

Wind turbine syndrome or wind farm syndrome is a psychosomatic disorder primarily caused by anxiety generated by heightened awareness of turbines – the "nocebo effect" – prompted by proponents of the idea that wind turbines have adverse health effects. While proponents claim that a number of effects including death, cancer and congenital abnormality have been caused by wind farms, the distribution of recorded events correlates with media coverage of wind farm syndrome itself, and not with the presence or absence of wind farms. It is not recognised by any international disease classification system and does not appear in any title or abstract in the United States National Library of Medicine's PubMed database. The Center for Media and Democracy's SourceWatch website has identified at least one Australian fossil fuel industry funded astroturfing group as involved in promoting the idea of wind turbine syndrome. An investigation led to the foundation being stripped of its status as a health promotion charity.

There is some evidence of localised low-level adverse psychological effects due to low-frequency noise from wind turbines, but this effect is poorly understood. Nonetheless, a 2009 expert panel review concluded that wind turbines do not directly make people ill. The study did allow that some people could experience stress or irritation caused by the swishing sounds wind turbines produce. "A small minority of those exposed report annoyance and stress associated with noise perception..." [however] "Annoyance is not a disease." The study group pointed out that similar irritations are produced by local and highway vehicles, as well as from industrial operations and aircraft. The 2009 study panel members included Robert Dobie, a doctor and clinical professor at the University of Texas, Geoff Leventhall, a noise vibration and acoustics expert in the United Kingdom, Bo Sondergaard, with Danish Electronics Light and Acoustics, Michael Seilo, a professor of audiology at Western Washington University, and Robert McCunney, a biological engineering scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. McCunney contested statements that infrasounds from wind turbines could create vibrations causing ill health: "It doesn't really have much credence, at least based on the literature out there".

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