The findings indicate that negative health information readily available to people living in the vicinity of wind farms has the potential to create symptom expectations, providing a possible pathway for symptoms attributed to operating wind turbines. This may have wide-reaching implications. If symptom expectations are the root cause of symptom reporting, answering calls to increase minimum wind-farm set back distances is likely to do little to assuage health complaints.
And:
But an as yet unpublished study (and therefore not peer-reviewed) just released by Simon Chapman, the Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney, suggests only a tiny proportion of people living near turbines do actually complain and, when they do, the complaints coincide with campaigning from anti-wind groups.
Chapman looked at health complaints made by residents living within 5 kilometres of all 49 wind farms operating in Australia between 1993 and 2012. After reviewing media reports, public inquiries and complaints to wind companies themselves, Chapman found evidence of only 120 individuals having actually complained - representing about 1 in 272 people living near wind farms.
But significantly, Chapman found that 81 of those 120 residents were living beside just five wind farms "which have been heavily targeted by anti wind farm groups". What's more, some 82 per cent of all the complaints had occurred since 2009 when Chapman says anti-wind farm groups began to push the health scare as part of their opposition to turbines.
So there you have it.
I think that we should make an offer to the complainers; get rid of the wind farm if they'll offer up their land for a coal plant.
ReplyDeleteBetween the study on negatively oriented personality traits, the study on sham infrasound and Simon's study on the psychogenic hypothesis being well supported, I would say that stress illnesses of anti-wind lobbyists have just taken a turn for the worse.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, the various people with medical affiliations an credentials should be ashamed. They have been causing the illnesses that they have been promoting.
I've updated my material on wind and health to reflect the latest studies here: http://barnardonwind.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/wind-farms-dont-make-people-sick-so-why-the-complaints/
I'm not sure Simon Chapman is the one to rely on for accurate peer reviewed information. Read this blog critique which places serious doubts on Chapman's conclusions on his 17 health "reviews" on wind turbines and human health. http://windfarmrealities.org/17-studies-part-2-of-3/
ReplyDeleteOf the 17 "reviews" only 4 are actual studies, the rest are trumped up literature reviews. Only 4 out of the 17 papers are actually peer reviewed. 3 aren’t even about wind turbines and human health and one of them is just a web page from CANWEA, which hardly qualifies as a health study by any standards. Furthermore the 4 peer reviewed papers were mail in surveys and no face to face interviews with residents were conducted. Nor did they take physical measurements like blood pressure readings or noise measurements inside or outside of homes to validate sound modeling like the proposed Health Canada study will.
Mr. Wrightman, you really ought to read the published paper. That plus other recently published material make it clear that you and others like you are the cause of medical complaints near wind farms.
ReplyDeleteWhile you don't pretend to medical expertise and as such there is a lower standard expected of you, nonetheless you are playing a part in making people ill. You really ought to take this to heart.
Psychosomatic illnesses are not pleasant because the only cure is to be found via the same place that the illness was created; the mind.
ReplyDeleteSome people become ill because of misinformation, poorly based beliefs and out right lieing by those with an agenda.
Just look at the wifi causes illness and power lines turned my canary bald yarns out there to see just why windfarms are accused of similar effects.
I see once again Mike Barnard has granted to himself an ascendancy that has not been granted or deserved. He and his fellow travelers have constantly tried to berate and put down those who have a contrary health related point of view. Mike is still just a cog in the IBM machine and his expertise is as pedestrian as mine.
ReplyDeleteI have however met those who have been driven from their homes. But to now have to shoulder the blame for their illness, wow, what could possibly be next. Simon Chapman has for years provided "stuff" for the pro-wind side. The flaw in this silage is that at the Melancthon development, people were getting adverse effects long before it was given a name. Most of these folks actually welcomed turbines until it was determined they were inflicting harm to themselves and others. Anti-wind groups popped up when these initial concerns were dismissed as you're doing. Now to think we're all capable of some Jedi mind trick to give people these maladies is now another desperate attempt by the pro-windies to get out of the bowl the industry is circling world-wide.
I've offered up this to Mike and others who are too cowardly to agree to, and that's to set up a meeting so that you can meet those folks face to face, hear their stories and then for you to tell them to their faces, "It's all in their heads". It's time to engage in some intellectual curiosity and not just rely on some laughable report from Australia just because it happens to fit your narrative.
Wow - that didn't take long.
ReplyDeletehttp://windfarmrealities.org/chapmans-nocebo-study/
Another pro-wind study destroyed. This is getting tiresome.