A recent article in the UK newspaper The Independent has triggered an avalanche of commentary in the press and blogosphere about the possible health effects of living near wind farms; more is sure to come when Nina Pierpont’s Wind Turbine Syndrome book is finally published this fall. In the book, Pierpont posits a set of symptoms that can crop up in people exposed to wind turbine noise; she suspects that low frequency noise is the key factor, and that people with vestibular system imbalances may be especially prone to problems. UPDATE: The wind industry in the UK responded vehemently to the article, which was reprinted in several cities.

At its root, most of the hubbub centers around whether Dr. Pierpont’s research qualifies as science.  The fact that she’s publishing a book instead of journal articles is the first complaint, and relatively easy to understand from a scientific perspective.  But less valid are critiques that claim she used too small a number of people, or did not use “controls”; these complaints are based on a misunderstanding (or conscious misrepresentation) of her work. Much of the criticism is spurred by the perception that she is claiming that the health effects she cites are common, or are likely to occur near any and all wind farms.  As widely noted, wind farms are up and running around the world with little evidence of dire health effects.  However, just as anti-wind activists are clearly putting too much weight on her very preliminary research, so too are wind advocates being too quick to discount Pierpont’s study as hogwash.  More broadly, there is a risk that doubts about the validity of  a formal new “Wind Turbine Syndrome” or other low-frequency effects will distract both the public and policy-makers from the more concrete question of whether current wind farm setbacks adequately protect neighbors from sleeplessness, stress, and simpler, well-known effects of disturbances caused by audible noise.  I’ve been bouncing around the web in recent days, adding what I hope are thoughtful comments to newspaper and blog stories on the issue, and wanted to share some of my commentary here with you all as well:

It is important to remember that Pierpont is doing ONLY a “case series,” which is designed to see if there are common symptoms that can later be assessed more thoroughly (later studies, should the case series convince scientists to investigate further, would include looking at possible causes, how prevalent the problems are near wind farms, assessing whether the symptoms can be correlated with other factors besides wind farms, etc.).  Her report does take the first step of identifying—via post-hoc self-reporting, admittedly a weakness—a set of symptoms that apparently began with the commencement of nearby turbine noise, and ended when these people moved away.  She DID pick people highly affected (nearly all abandoned their homes), but this is how you zero in on the patterns that may indicate a particular response to a health stressor (in this case, moderate audible noise or inaudible low frequency noise).  She is quick to affirm that these symptoms are not common, even near wind farms.  However, as widely noted, her study was not designed to determine how common they are, or the degree of dose-response (ie how much more common symptoms are as noise increases).  Her work is just a very preliminary first step.  In that sense, it is indeed being run with more aggressively than may be warranted by some anti-wind activists.  But it is not, on its face, hogwash.