Climatide

Last week, we ran an in-depth series of reports on claims of health impacts caused by wind turbines, focusing on the experience of Falmouth, MA residents living within a quarter of a mile of a town-owned turbine. My colleague Sean Corcoran reported the series. I reviewed the relevant science and provided analysis and commentary. Here’s everything in one place. Enjoy!
And stay tuned for continuing coverage of this issue, including a live chat with David McGlinchey of the Manomet Center for Conservation Science on the state of the science and how to shape responsible wind turbine siting policies in the face of incomplete data … Wednesday, March 16th at 10am.

The Falmouth Experience by Sean Corcoran

Part 1: Life Under the Blades

Encouraged by the Patrick Administration’s goal to expand wind power, communities across the commonwealth are considering or constructing wind turbines. In the town of Falmouth, MA, some residents say a 400-foot tall turbine installed last year has changed their lives – and not for the better.

Extended interview: ‘You can’t be forcing these on people’

Part 2: Sick from the noise

Some residents of Falmouth say the sounds coming from a large, town-owned wind turbine are making them sick. While turbines are not silent, claims of health impacts, including sleep disruption, headaches, ringing in the ears, and depression, are often controversial. And there’s limited scientific data to resolve the debate.

Extended interview: ‘It put me into depression’

Part 3: Flickering light

Residents in the town of Falmouth say that a nearly 400-foot wind turbine has severely impacted their quality of life. They talk about noise and health issues, but sound isn’t the only thing generating discontent. There also are complaints about a phenomenon called ‘shadow flicker’.

Part 4: The Green Debate

Efforts to install land-based wind turbines on the Cape have slowed, largely because of opposition to a turbine that was installed last spring in Falmouth. Prominent pro-wind spokesperson Liz Argo says the Falmouth experience is an isolated incident, but anti-wind advocate Eric Bibler says the same thing could happen anywhere.

Extended Interview with Liz Argo: ‘What can we learn from Falmouth?’
Extended Interview with Eric Bibler: ‘The towns are conflicted’

Part 5: Making Waves in the Wind Debate

Because of its strong winds, Cape Cod is a crucial part of Governor Deval Patrick’s plan to erect enough wind turbines to power 800,000 home by the end of the decade – a quarter of them on land. But complaints about a wind turbine in Falmouth are raising the possibility that one bad experience could jeopardize Patrick’s state-wide push for wind energy.

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Heather Goldstone

The wind energy movement bills itself as an integral part of efforts to reduce fossil fuel usage and curb climate change while helping build the new green energy economy. But complaints about adverse health impacts – loss of sleep, headaches, depression – have surfaced in communities around the world where wind turbines are located in close proximity to homes, including here on Cape Cod. In their efforts to dismiss claims of adverse health impacts caused by nearby wind turbines, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) comes out looking more like big industry than grassroots environmentalist.

I was a toxicologist in a former career, and I see a lot parallels between this debate and debates about the toxicity – or not – of chemical pollutants. So, here are three reasons not to dismiss arguments for and against dismissing complaints about wind turbines drawn from the environmental movement and the science of toxicology.

Argument: It’s all in their heads

An AWEA-commissioned review of the science surrounding wind turbines, sound, and health asserts that the main impact of wind turbine noise is to annoy people:

A feeling described as “annoyance” can be associated with acoustic factors such as wind turbine noise. … Annoyance is clearly a subjective effect that will vary among people and circumstances. … the main function of noise annoyance is as a warning that fitness may be affected but that it causes little or no physiological effect. Protracted annoyance, however, may undermine coping and progress to stress related effects. … The main health effect of noise stress is disturbed sleep, which may lead to other consequences.

And yet, they draw a line between “annoyance” and a health impact: (my emphasis)

There is no evidence that sound at the levels from wind turbines as heard in residences will cause direct physiological effects.

Rebuttal: Immune suppression

AWEA’s argument seems to hinge on dismissing annoyance as a subjective, emotional response and, thus, dismissing the secondary health effects of annoyance. But consider this: certain chemicals can alter the immune system, impairing its ability to fight off infections. This might not be a problem if we lived in germ-free bubbles (i.e. not a direct health problem). But in the real world, the increased risk of infection poses a serious health threat. Not satisfied? I won’t claim this is a perfect analogy, but my point is that it seems disingenuous to dismiss the end results of a chain reaction because the first step isn’t severe enough.

There are also deeper flaws in AWEA’s argument that there are no direct health impacts:

• As discussed earlier this week, the word “annoyance” as it is used by several researchers addressing the wind turbine issue has a technical definition that encompasses “a significant degradation of quality of life.” As such, some scientists and medical professionals consider annoyance to be an adverse health effect in itself.
• Sleep disturbance and deprivation need not be a secondary effect of stress; noise at levels typically produced by large turbines is capable of partially or fully waking a person some people. Prolonged sleep deprivation constitutes a medical issue in itself, and is also a trigger for other health problems.
• Some residents report physical sensations – like ear popping – not related to stress. There is little or no scientific data to address these claims … a point I’ll get to shortly.

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Massachusetts’ Governor Deval Patrick has a plan to erect enough wind turbines in the state to power 800,000 home by the end of the decade, with 25% of that electricity coming from land-based turbines. But in the final installment of our series The Falmouth Experience, Sean Corcoran reports that complaints about a turbine in Falmouth are raising the possibility that one bad experience could jeopardize Patrick’s state-wide push for wind energy.

• The Falmouth Experience, Part 5: Making Waves in the Wind DebateReported by Sean CorcoranDownload

Jess Bidgood/WGBH

Mark Cool and Annie Hart Cool stand on the deck in their backyard. Most of the time, they get pressure headaches when they're out there, due to the rotation of Wind One's blades.

FALMOUTH, Mass. — Since the turbine began spinning last April, Mark Cool can’t spend much time in his West Falmouth yard without getting headaches and feeling changes in pressure.

“Everybody’s flown,” he explained. “The sensation that best describes it is when you are about to reach pressure altitude on the climb out or descending, and your ears pop for relief. I’m walking around the yard with that sensation right before the pop.”

Cool says chewing gum helps with the pressure changes. The more immediate problem is that since the town installed the 400-foot turbine at the wastewater treatment plant last spring, Cool and his wife Annie have had trouble sleeping. So when the winds get gusty, Annie goes to the back bedroom where she has a noise machine, and Mark, an air traffic controller, heads to the basement couch.

Jess Bidgood/WGBH

Falmouth's Wind One turbine has caused health problems for some of its neighbors. Many residents are worried about the ramifications of a second turbine, pictured here, which has not yet been turned on.

“That’s how we live around here,” he said. “We plan everything around, okay, do I want to sleep tonight, or should I risk possibly being awoken by the wind turbine?”

More than a dozen households near Falmouth’s Wind One turbine have similar problems, and it’s prompting neighbors to speak out.

Steven Clarke is the Patrick Administration’s top wind official. He says there are no clear answers as to why Falmouth’s turbine is generating so many complaints, and that neighbors, the town and the state’s Department of Environmental Protection are still trying to sort it out.

“There have been assumptions made that it’s either siting or mechanical issues or other issues that are behind the concerns, but I think it is too early to say,” he said.

Clarke says the Cape is a critical part of the state’s wind program. But all the discussion about Falmouth is hurting the effort.

“I think what’s happened is there has been a localized issue in Falmouth,” asserts Clarke, “and then that certain folks have made generalizations based on that, which I think are inaccurate. And that’s made it more difficult to get other projects built on the Cape.”

Wind industry folks say it’s too early to gauge whether Patrick will reach his goal of generating 2,000 megawatts of electricity from wind by the end of the decade because dozens of turbine proposals are still working their way through local boards. Still, 23 turbines have been installed in the state since Patrick took office in 2007, and to help the process along, the Administration is looking to create a state board to oversee the siting of turbines.

“So like any good campaign manager, they’re going to throw up the poster child. And the poster child is Falmouth,” Argo said. “So I would imagine that off-Cape the horror stories coming from Falmouth are going to be used to scare the population the same way they are being used down here.”

In Mark Cool’s view, he’s not telling horror stories; he’s just talking about his experience. Cool says he likes the idea of a turbine saving taxpayers money. And Gov. Patrick is right to promote wind, he says. The problem is, something’s gone wrong in Falmouth.

“Conceptually it’s a good product,” Cool said. “The Falmouth experience should represent to Deval Patrick, to the state, what didn’t work. So the investigation should be why didn’t it work. So whatever is taken from that analysis, apply it so it won’t happen again. You won’t have a Brewster experience or a Bourne experience.”

Complaints about large turbines near residents are not limited to Falmouth. Places such as New Zealand and Europe had a head start on their installation, and there are ongoing discussions there about health effects and the need for more regulation. Such claims are controversial. But what’s known for sure is that the Falmouth Experience has hurt the land-based turbine effort on the Cape. What’s yet to be seen is whether it will have the same affect state-wide.

More from this series:

• Wind Energy: The onshore-offshore connection
• Part 1: Life under the blades
• Extended interview: ‘You can’t force these on people’
• Part 2: Sick from the noise
• Extended interview: ‘It put me into depression’
• Is annoyance a health impact?
• Part 3: Flickering light
• Debating the future of renewable energy
• Part 4: The Green Debate
• Extended Interview with Liz Argo: ‘What can we learn from Falmouth?’
• Extended Interview with Eric Bibler: ‘The towns are conflicted’

Just wanted to let everybody know that I’ve arranged to have Dave McGlinchey of the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences join me for a live chat next Wednesday, March 16th, at 10am. We’ll be discussing what science tells us about how wind turbines affect human health, where the gaps are, and how to shape responsible public policy around incomplete data.
Get your thoughts and questions ready, and mark your calendars. I’m excited (almost giddy).

A number of people have commented on our decision not to include audio recordings of the wind turbine that is drawing complaints here in Falmouth. For example, this from Cant-hear-it:

… NONE of the sounds could be recorded for the story! Funny how only a few neighbors can hear this stuff. The NPR microphones can’t pick it up, and the Town’s noise study can’t either. A huge noise problem that can’t be heard.. How do you spell “exaggeration”?

As I pointed out in a reply comment, the decision was made specifically to avoid exaggerating the situation:

To be sure, we are talking about fairly low sound levels in terms of total decibels. In order to get high-quality recordings and make them clearly audible on the radio, [Sean] would have had to turn up the gain on his microphone. As he said to me, he thought that would be disingenuous. While I very much sympathize with the desire to experience the sound for oneself, I tend to agree with him.

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Sean and I spoke with PBS News Hour’s Hari Sreenivasan yesterday about the situation with wind turbines and health complaints here in Falmouth. You can check out their post on The Rundown blog or watch a video of our conversation (above).