Robyn Williams: Evidence: the essence of
good science. But many misinterpret what it means. Simon Chapman has
written about this problem in connection with wind technology, most
recently in
New Scientist magazine. And here he is for
The Science Show on RN.
Simon Chapman:
New technology has long attracted concerns about modern health worries.
Microwave ovens, televisions, computer screens, and even early
telephony in the late 19th century all caused health anxiety. More
recently mobile phones and towers, wi-fi, and smart electricity meters
have attracted virulent opposition focused on health problems.
In
January I started collecting health claims attributed to wind turbine
exposure. Within hours I'd found 50 often florid assertions about
different conditions in humans and animals. Today my total sits at 198,
with a range redolent of Old Testament plagues and pestilences. The list
includes, and I quote: deaths (yes, many deaths, none of which have
ever come to the attention of a coroner), various cancers, congenital
malformations, and every manner of mental health problem.
But
mostly it includes common health problems found in all communities,
whether they have wind turbines or not. These include greying hair,
energy loss, concentration lapses, weight gain and loss, and all the
problems of ageing, the banalities of the human condition.
Sleep
problems are most mentioned, but a third of the population suffers from
insomnia, so no surprises there. Chickens won't lay near wind farms.
Tell that the Tasmanian poultry farmer who has a turbine on site.
Earthworms vanish from the soil in an 18-kilometre radius, hundreds of
cattle and goats die horrible deaths from 'stray electricity', but
veterinary officials are mysteriously never summonsed.
In 35 years
in public health I have never encountered anything remotely as
apocalyptic. I visited wind farms and compared their gentle swoosh to
the noises that all city dwellers live with daily. Quickly this
phenomenon began to tick all the psychogenic boxes. There are several
reasons to suspect the unrecognised entity of wind turbine syndrome is
psychogenic, a communicated disease spread by anti-wind interest groups,
sometimes with connections to fossil fuel interests.
Wind farms
first appeared about 20 years ago in the USA and have rapidly
proliferated. There are now just shy of 200,000 turbines around the
world, but the first recorded claims about diseases occurred a decade
later when two rural doctors in Wales and Victoria made widely repeated
claims that have never been published in any research journal. Turbines
are said to cause both chronic conditions like, amazingly, lung and skin
cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and stroke, but importantly also
acute symptoms. According to Australia's high priestess of wind turbine
syndrome, Sarah Laurie, an unregistered doctor, these can commence
within 20 minutes of exposure. If this was true, what happened in the
early complaint-free years? Where are all the reports of sick people
from the 1990s through to 2008 when the claims really took off?
An
incredulous European wind industry sees the phenomenon as largely
Anglophone, and even then it seems to only occur in particular regions
and around certain farms and involve a small fraction of residents. Many
wind farms have operated for years and never received a single
complaint. Others, legendary for their vocal opponents even before the
turbines commenced, are hotbeds of disease claims. So if turbines were
intrinsically noxious, why do they cut such a selective disease path?
Why do citizens of community owned turbines in places like Germany and
Denmark rarely complain? Why are complaints unknown in Western Australia
where wind farms have operated for many years, but virulent in several
small eastern Australian communities?
Opponents readily concede
that only a minority of those exposed report being ill, and explain this
via the analogy of motion sickness; it only happens to those who are
susceptible. How then to explain that whole regions and indeed nations
have no susceptible residents? The key factor seems to be the presence
or absence of anti-wind activists, generally visiting from outside the
area. Farms with years of community acceptance can erupt with complaints
when anti-wind activists arrive in town, spreading alarm and rolling
out their laundry list of common health problems they insist are caused
by turbines. Prominent among these in Australia are wealthy conservative
landowners, appalled by the very visible presence of the tall green
energy totems, a constant reminder of bucolic decay and the
upstairs-downstairs disdain that they have for those needing the extra
income from their often hilly, poorer quality land.
Indeed, money
seems to be the magic antidote to the problem. Health complaints are
rare among turbine hosts and from those financially benefiting from
communal ownership arrangements. In Australia, depending upon the energy
generated, a turbine can earn a host between $7,000 and $18,000 a year.
Hosts speak of drought proofing their farms when several turbines are
hosted. Health complainants tend to be neighbours who can see the
turbines, don't like them, and dwell on their misfortune. The perceived
injustice can eat away at some and become a preoccupation fermented by
organised groups.
Wind companies report of residents approaching
them with extensive renovation wish lists. One company told me of a
request for a house to be removed to a lake shore, with a jetty thrown
in. In rural Australia, residential buyouts from mining companies are
common. Word spreads quickly about unsaleable shack owners who got
lucky. So when a cashed up company appears in the district, it is
understandable that some see their ticket out via protracted complaints.
A
recent Canadian case collapsed when the tribunal agreed that
complainants should provide their medical records going back 10 years.
They refused, saying it would be too difficult to obtain the
documentation that every doctor routinely keeps. Opponents claimed that
turbine hosts are gagged by confidentiality clauses, so can't speak up
about their illnesses. I've seen several contracts and, predictably,
none say anything about the hosts shedding their common-law rights to
claims of negligence. But the claim persists, with its subtext of
ordinary country folk being exploited by fast talking company lawyers.
Apocryphal
tales about large numbers of families having to abandon family homes
are common. But mysteriously the numbers are never accompanied by
address lists. Abandoning unsaleable properties is a sad part of rural
decay. Fly in, fly out climate change denialists talk up the tragedy of
such communities being ruined by wind farms, but they have no idea about
the long-term rural exodus from such economically unviable settlements.
Previous
modern health worries dissipated when the predicted health mayhem never
eventuated and the feared toxic agents became thoroughly familiar, as
they are today throughout much of Europe. Australian hysteria about
mobile telephone towers had its heyday in the late 1990s, but is rare
today. There are now 17 reviews of the evidence on harm, which are
consistent in their assessment of insignificant risk. How long can this
latest modern health worry last?
Robyn Williams: At least until the next election, no doubt. Simon Chapman is a professor of public health at the University of Sydney.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-science-show-20th-october-2012/4316292
