Griffiths, Emyr. To ACNC in Support of Waubra Foundation
The Waubra Foundation has provided a valuable resource for wind farm victims like ourselves to further our knowledge and understanding on the effects of LFN and IFN on human health. The Waubra Foundation has also been instrumental in unearthing and disseminating new and buried information worldwide, so it is, in fact a Health Promotion Charity in my opinion.
To ACNC Commissioner Susan Pascoe
I am writing to express my disgust and disbelief over Commissioner David Locke’s ruling that the Waubra Foundation is not a Health Promotion Charity, because according to him:
“to date there has been no rigorous independent scientific evidence that finds that the ill health complained of is caused by the physiological effects from wind turbines nor that there are human diseases called “wind turbine syndrome” or ‘vibroacoustic disease”.
May I enlighten Commissioner Locke on these terms since he hasn’t obviously done any in depth research on them.
WIND TURBINE SYNDROME – this was a term coined by American doctor, Nina Pierpont, to label a consistent group of symptoms experienced by people living in close proximity to industrial wind farms. People complaining of being adversely affected by wind farm noise emissions either suffered one, some or all the symptoms to varying degrees of severity. Pierpont never classified wind turbine syndrome as a disease.
VIBROACOUSTIC DISEASE – this term was coined by Prof Marianna Alves-Pereira to describe the physiological symptoms found in aircraft engineers who had chronic exposure to intense LFN through their work – thickening of the pericardium, build up of intercellular fibrous tissue, etc. These physiological effects can only be determined in biopsies or autopsies – hardly the sort of tests carried out on living people.
I would recommend that Commissioner Locke do the requisite research into the subject and experience first hand what it’s really like to live in close proximity to an industrial wind farm before drawing up his erroneous conclusions.
My wife and I live 11km from our nearest wind farm – it is still too close. My wife has the misfortune of being very sensitive to low frequency noise (LFN) and infrasound (ILFN.) She can hear wind farms at distances of at least 50km under atmospheric conditions favourable for efficient propagation of LFN and ILFN.
In the summer of 2013 my wife was debilitated for over 1 month by an illness with symptoms identical to motion sickness. We gathered enough observations to conclude that the illness was triggered by chronic exposure to intense LFN and ILFN. You can read a detailed record of our observations in the attached report.
Steven Cooper’s recent research at Cape Bridgewater Wind Farm totally negates Commissioner Locke’s erroneous conclusions.
Cooper’s work corroborates research carried out by physicist Dr Neil Kelley and his team in the USA in the 1980’s. Kelley proved that certain frequencies emitted by large wind turbines caused adverse health symptoms in people living in close proximity to wind farms. He followed up his field study with a lab study which proved which noise frequencies were inducing adverse health symptoms in people.
Dr Kelley presented this paper to the wind power conference in California in 1987. On the basis of this research the manufacturers changed their wind turbine configuration from downwind to upwind. The industry has failed to this to implement to implement Kelley’s guidelines to minimise people’s exposure to infrasound. Ever since Kelley’s research the wind industry has gone out of its way to NOT measure infrasound.
The Waubra Foundation has provided a valuable resource for wind farm victims like ourselves to further our knowledge and understanding on the effects of LFN and IFN on human health. The Waubra Foundation has also been instrumental in unearthing and disseminating new and buried information worldwide, so it is, in fact a Health Promotion Charity in my opinion.
If it wasn’t for the Waubra Foundation we never would have found out about Kelley’s pioneering research. Nor would we have found out about other research by:
- Prof Marianne Alves-Pereira on the physiological consequences of long term exposure of aircraft workers to LFN and ILFN.
- 25-30 years of research by Dr Alex Salt and his team on the physiological responses of the cochlea to infrasound.
- Recent research carried out by Les Huson who found a strong correlation (over 80%) between sudden chest pains experienced by a wind farm neighbour and intense infrasound pulses measured by Huson’s equipment.
…. The list goes on and on and on.
As well as learning a lot of information from the Waubra Foundation about health effects attributable to LFN and ILFN emissions from wind farms, we have also freely contributed our experiences and observations to the Waubra Foundation’s pool of information.
When we contacted some professional acousticians some 6/7 years ago, none of them believed my wife could hear wind farm noise from 40-50km away. One expert, who was initially very skeptical now believes my wife can hear wind farm noise over those distances under favourable atmospheric conditions.
We are waiting for the opportunity to prove scientifically that the hypotheses we have made from our observations are correct. With my scientific background I am confident that my hypothesis will be proved correct if the necessary research using the correct equipment is ever carried out. To prove or disprove our hypothesis a number of wind farms would have to be turned off and on numerous time in order to gather the requisite data and control data. Cooperation from wind farm operators is never forthcoming, with the recent exception of the research conducted by Steven Cooper at Cape Bridgewater wind farm in South Australia.
Sincerely,
Emyr Griffiths
Carmarthenshire
Wales UK