March 7, 2011 | 3:30 PM | By

Extended Interview: ‘You Can’t Be Forcing These On People’

FILED UNDER: Mitigation, health, The Falmouth Experience, wind energy

In Part One of his series, The Falmouth Experience: The Trouble With One Town’s Wind Turbine, WGBH radio reporter Sean Corcoran spoke to Neil Andersen, a Falmouth resident who says the nearby wind turbine has had catastrophic effects on his health. Here’s more of their conversation, plus a series of photos of the log Andersen and his wife keep of the noise and its effects on them.

Neil Anderson sits in his kitchen. Anderson says the noise from the wind turbine near his Falmouth home has caused emotional and physiological problems for he and his wife.

Jess Bidgood/WGBH

Neil Andersen sits in his kitchen. Andersen says the noise from the wind turbine near his Falmouth home has caused emotional and physiological problems for he and his wife.

Neil Andersen: We knew there was a turbine going over there, we were not notified of any meetings or any type of concerns. In other words, there was no input from this residence.

I am an energy conservationist, I’ve had my own passive solar building company for 35 years. I was actually looking forward to that turbine being erected there. Although when it went up it was quite astounding the size of it.

I was proud looking at it from this viewpoint until it started turning. And it is dangerous, Sean. Headaches. Loss of sleep. And the ringing in my ears is constant. Never goes away. That started probably in May. It’s a constant reminder of that thing. I can look at it all day long, and it does not bother me. It’s quite majestic. But it’s way too close.

Sean Corcoran: How long after it started to spin did you start feeling some sort of symptoms?

The sign at the end of the Andersons' driveway, which is just over 1,000 feet away from the turbine.

Jess Bidgood/WGBH

The sign at the end of the Andersens' driveway, which is just over 1,000 feet away from the turbine.

Myself, it took me about a month and a half, maybe two months, to manifest all the symptoms. First it was the pressure in the head. The ears popping for no reason at all. Trying to get the water out of your ears and there was no water there. My wife, the first day, she feels it and notices it, and she feels it and notices it every day.

People talk about the noise, it gets loud. It gets jet-engine loud from this point right here. But the noise is the minimum component of that turbine. There is a pressure involved that gets into your ear, like you’re climbing at altitude in an airplane and your ears pop.

And there is a low-frequency pulse that particularly drives me crazy and some of the neighbors around here. It is a once-per-second low-frequency pulse, and it messes up your vestibular organs in your inner ear. And gives you a sense of off-balance and vertigo.

We both have signs of these symptoms. Headaches. My wife gets headaches three or four times a week, she wakes up with a headaches. She’s actually sleeping in a back bedroom right now with earplugs and a white noise machine trying to mask the sound. But it is really not doing any good because the sound just comes right through the windows, right through the insulation, right through the earplugs. And the pulse is right there.

Can you hear it right now?

You don’t hear it. It’s inaudible. There’s testimony from all over the country of the same thing, people complaining about the turbines. Denmark, Australia, Canada, the United States. But there is really no peer-reviewed medical info, which I hear all the time. Prove it, they’re saying. Prove it. Come down here and hear it yourself if you want.

And do you take that as people calling you a liar or people calling you a fool?

I’m not sure. I think they just don’t want to believe it. It’s so ironic, here I have to try to get that thing knocked down. Basically it’s a good principle, anything that can wean us off the number-two fuel, heating oil, and that type of thing is good for us, but it has to be done correctly. In this case it certainly wasn’t.

They look at us as being the bad aspect of this. But the people in the wind industry, you cannot turn a blind eye to this. You know about it.

I’m sorry we don’t have doctors that have come to prove it. I welcome anybody to come down here with their testing equipment and test what this thing does, but I will tell you, it does hurt the wind industry. And I know there are properly-sited wind projects out there that are getting knocked down because of this. But that’s okay too.

I think everybody should just stop for awhile and figure this out. You can’t just be forcing these on people.

The Andersens decided to keep a calendar to document the turbine’s noise and its effects on them. They let us photograph parts of their log:

Jess Bidgood/WGBH

Jess Bidgood/WGBH

Jess Bidgood/WGBH

Jess Bidgood/WGBH

Jess Bidgood/WGBH

Jess Bidgood/WGBH

  • Wirelessdj

    can they record the sound?

  • clarify

    The pressure differences are what cause the pulsating feelings in the ears, I’m sure there are lots of data which is being hidden from the public as this is the pre ordained solution to our energy needs in the green future. So what if it will drive people crazy, maybe these on the left will start to see that they aren’t as smart as they profess and that just proclaiming that a good idea like “wind power” may have its drawbacks.

  • blackeneth

    Seems plausible that the blades are generating infrasound, which is inaudible sound in the 1 – 20 Hz range (wavelength 56 – 1130 feet). [see http://physics.info/sound/ ]

    I think Neil’s description is the best I’ve seen, with the ear popping the the vestibular system. This would fit with the rarefaction/compression of the infrasound wave(s). When the rarefaction portion passes, the ears pop. The other facto here is power – it has to be a “loud” or powerful wave to pop your ears.

    Infrasound can be measured/recorded, but it isn’t easy. A promising approach is measuring particle motion (see http://www.licn.org/Presentations/Infrasound/Infrasound.ppt) – which I would think of as a ultra-sensitive barometer.

    There is some research on the health effects of infrasound:
    1. “Acute Effects of Whole-Body Vibration”, Kjellberg, Anders & Wikstrom, Bengt-Olov, Scandinavian Journal of Work and Environmental Health, 13 (1987), pp243–246.

    2. “High-Intensity Acoustics for Military Nonlethal Applications: A Lack of Usefu…”, James R Jauchem; Michael C Cook, Military Medicine; Feb 2007; 172, 2; Health & Medical Complete, pg. 182.

    3. see also http://goo.gl/Sjxzx

    As for blocking it to Neil’s home, he should consult and infrasound expert. I think the solutions would be quite big, such as:
    A) A giant earthen berm – really really thick, with a 45 degree slope facing the wind turbine. Need a lot of mass to block sound.
    B) Baffles about the size of the wavelength of the infrasound, arranged to create destructive interference.

    Maybe Neil and his wife can get some relief from their symptoms with
    1) drugs used for vertigo
    2) anti-nausea drugs (skip the phinergin and go straight to the zofran)
    3) perhaps creating positive pressure in the bedroom (big fan blowing into room); or get a very powerful subwoofer (think: Velodyne) and a power amplifier and try to create some counter-sound in the bedroom.

  • Mark

    This story is proof that this wind energy is a pipe dream.

  • http://twitter.com/neelasdaddy neelas daddy

    Let’s see … first they want two $5,000,000 generators, now they want them knocked down. Shows you what kooks these green power tree-huggers are. Of course, if it wasn’t bothering them personally, they would be all right with it! I say, leave the generators alone and let them move or deal with it some other way. Wonder how many people they fought to get the generators in the firat place.

  • Lisa

    We live within three quarters of a mile of the THREE wind turbines on Vinalhaven in Maine. We have the exact same problem in Vinalhaven ( see http://www.fiwn.org) that some residents do not believe how the wind turbines have impacted our quality of life and our health. Some neighbors are not as sensitive to the noise as others (or must have music or television on which would help to drown out the sound). Some of these people do not understand or want to understand how turbine noise can impact others. Instead, they accuse those of us who are suffering from the impact of turbine noise of lying. It is a very sad situation in the Vinalhaven community and one that could have been avoided if the turbines had been sited responsibly. As is, those of us who are sensitive to noise have had our lives turned upside down and are also blamed for the problem! I wish the best of luck to the wind turbine neighbors in Falmouth. I am very glad to hear that rather than being called “naysaysers” their community is beginning to reach out to them and is looking for some real solutions. People should not be expected to live under these kinds of conditions. The state needs to step in and help to resolve the grave injustice of siting the wind turbine too close to homes.

  • Scott Brooks

    EXACTLY

  • SiteThemResponsibly!

    Neelas Daddy: your lack of understanding of the situation is so monumental I would bet you are a wind industry employee! How can people move away when nobody will buy their house? Or put your money where your mouth is and YOU buy his house and move in there and pay fair market value. Also, you cannot “deal with it some other way”…. the inaudible lw frequency sound makes other objects, including parts of your inner ear, vibrate. That’s the whole point, which clearly you don’t get!

  • MST

    I don’t think drugging up your residents is a way to mitigate the town’s stupidity.

    Blocking/ reflecting is generally the better idea, but i don’t think anybody will be able to do much: the scale is just too big. With wavelengths above 50 feet, and more likely above a couple hundred feet, you’re going to get diffraction around any barrier you set up that is not approaching height equaling wavelength (which is why your subwoofer doesn’t care where it lives). Since you have a source that is looking down on the houses involved, and diffuse, you just are not going to be able to baffle or block the sound.

    So saving the town $375K a year ought to be offset by the cost of any mitigation, the loss of property values, because you have essentially moved a portion of your tax base into a flightpath to Logan, and the fact that you have removed residents; the very people in whose names you have perpetrated this travesty. “We destroyed the village to save it.”

    It’s going to be much cheaper, in the end, to tear them down.

  • Billslycat

    The AWEA, the main lobbying group for the wind industry, would have you believe the industrial wind turbines are benign. They are not. Here’s a good example of noise and shadow flicker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyOImGHyJtQ

    Plus, with all the thousands of turbines in Europe and the rest of the world, no conventional power plants have been taken offline. They do not live up to the hype. As a result, CO2 and other power plant pollutants have increased in many areas due to wind turbines. I want clean water and air as much as anyone, but since the technology doesn’t deliver the goods our government should stop wasting our taxpayer dollars on wind. Here’s a link to two examples: http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_15081808
    http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/6310/Britains-Wind-Farms-are-No-Spin-Zones-When-Cold-Hits

    As for porperty values, Denmark, home of Vestas Wind Turbines, now compensates property owners for loss for loss of value. Thinks they”ll do this in Massachusets? I think never.
    http://www.ens.dk/en-us/supply/renewable-energy/windpower/onshore-wind-power/loss-of-value-to-real-property/sider/forside.aspx

  • Anonymous

    I would like to know how far the person was living from the wind turbine, since I’ll be forwarding this to a legislature that would be helpful. We need to get some sort of protection for the neighbors to these industrial wind projects. Most communities and counties are following a “faulty” template for an ordinance. Originally these things were never placed near people… People too close to wind turbines is a poor mix!

  • Heather Goldstone

    The Anderson’s home is about 1300 feet – a quarter of a mile – south of the turbine.

  • Willis Montgomery III

    Let’s regulate all noise pollution, not just wind turbines. In Falmouth, we could take them down and then just raise everyone’s taxes a bit to pay for the electricity they will no longer produce. I’ll pay more if everyone else will too. However, for the higher taxes, I want the same “quiet community” signs posted in Teaticket too like the ones they have in the high rent districts in Falmouth where those big houses are that require lots of kWh of electricity. If we are going to take down those turbines at great expense because of the noise, then it seems fair that we should also prevent or reduce noise from other sources. I won’t support taking them down until someone figures out a way to make the leaf blowers, lawn mowers, extra loud motorbikes, the humming of route 28 in Teaticket and thumping car stereos stop. I agree we should make things quieter. Loud pipes may save lives, but they also disturb me when I am gardening in MY back yard. These sounds drive me crazy, make me depressed, lower my property values and give me headaches. What will be done about them? Reduce all noise pollution, not just the noise pollution that bothers you.

  • suehobart

    Or maybe they should take the freaking things down and learn from their mistakes… this is B.S, I am in the same neighborhood and the same thing happens…

  • suehobart

    my property is 1442 feet from Webb turbine… the sister of the falmouth turbine…I have the same effects as Neil … The Webb is a 100% for profit grant funded permitted ( aka bought off) moneymaker He’s loking at 300 to 400 k per year.

    the standard admitted setback is a mile and a quarter internationally in countries that have already learned this lesson. It is ridiculous for us to pretend there is no science here… It’s just that no one cares to look and admit there is .

    I think due dilligence instead of a happy happy green green process would have saved a lot of pain and money for everybody.

    As it is I will fight to have them all removed or have to move myself. I will be financially or physically ruined by this thing unless I can find a legal team I can afford… so furthur financial ruin.

    Webb of course had money and lawyers to put his profits into an LLC … I hate this stuff…

    And i really hate being a poster child for what not to do with
    turbines… I worked too hard to get what little i have for this to happen now…

    The real question is will the people matter more than the money… thats it in a nutshell…

  • suehobart

    hey neelas Daddy…I will let you have my house for the assesed value right now… Its a gorgeous little thing….

  • Pamela Carle

    You need objective, scientific data gathered over at least three months to find out if all people are affected by the wind turbine as you are. Also, at what distance from the turbine does its effects stop? What specific components of the turbine make the noises or pulses? And, do these noises have any effect on wildlife living as close as you do, or closer, to the turbine?