ACNC Appeal – Responses from Professionals, Citizens and Impacted Residents re Loss of Health Promotion Charity Status

On 11th December, 2014 the Australian Charities and Not for Profit Assistant Commissioner, David Locke handed down his decision that the Waubra Foundation was a charity for the purposes of “advancing health” and “advancing public debate” but in his view was not a “Health Promotion Charity”.

There has been national and international outrage at this decision from the range of people who understand the value of the work the Waubra Foundation has been doing for the last five years in raising public awareness about the severe adverse health impacts and diseases caused by industrial sound and vibration from a range of noise sources, facilitating field research, and advocating for improvements to noise pollution regulations and their enforcement, in order to prevent the many diseases known to be caused by industrial noise, including particularly those caused by noise induced environmental sleep disorders.

Part of the ruling by Assistant Commissioner Locke related to whether or not Wind Turbine Syndrome and Vibro Acoustic Disease were “diseases”.

Letters from both Professor Mariana Alves Pereira and Dr Nina Pierpont were sent directly to the Commissioner of the ACNC, Ms Susan Pascoe and are available at the following links:

Professor Mariana Alves Pereira

Dr Nina Pierpont PhD, MD

Letters and emails from a range of other professionals, citizens, and impacted residents from sources of noise including infrasound and low frequency noise from open cut coal mines, underground coal mines with large extractor fans, gas fired power stations, and wind turbines have been sent to the Commissioner. Permission has kindly been given by some of the authors for some of those letters and emails to be made publicly available, and they are reproduced below:

Anderson, Neil. Falmouth Massachusetts, USA

Ambrose, Stephen, Noise Control Engineer, USA

Cool, Mark, Falmouth, Massachusetts, USA

Correia, Shellie

Evans, Emeritus Prof Alun, Ireland

Fitzgerald, Marion Cumbria, UK

Funfar, Barry Falmouth Massachusetts, USA

Gabb, Andrew, Victoria

Gardner, Ann and Andrew, Victoria

Gallandy-Jakobsen, Greta Denmark

Goland, Gary Noise Watch Australia Inc

Green, Lilli-Ann, Massachusetts, USA