Hetherington J. Open Letter to NHMRC Regarding Research Into Wind Turbines & Health Impacts

I am a PERFECT candidate for research into this noise pollution.

My home is TOXIC and I cannot live in it for any length of time.

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From: Jan Hetherington
Sent: Wednesday, 30 March 2016 12:14 PM
To: ‘[email protected]‘ <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>; ‘[email protected]‘ <[email protected]>; ‘[email protected]‘ <[email protected]>; ‘[email protected]‘ ‘[email protected]‘ ‘[email protected]‘ ‘[email protected]‘ ‘[email protected]‘ <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>; ‘[email protected]‘
Subject: open letter to NHMRC

National health and Medical Research Council,
G.P.O. Box 1421,
Canberra, ACT, 2601

OPEN LETTER 

Dear Members of NHMRC Board,

We are aware that the NHMRC has granted $3.3 million to carry out research into the effects of infrasound and low frequency on the human body, albeit only that produced by wind farms.

Please understand that once your body is sensitized to infrasound and low frequency noise pulses, as mine now is, I can be impacted in other places from other noise sources, including in hospitals whilst undergoing treatment, as the Manager of the new Western Private Hospital in Melbourne can attest.

My body is now so badly sensitized because of the chronic exposure in my home at Macarthur Wind Farm, that a recent stay in that hospital resulted in a formal complaint and request for an acoustic investigation and sure enough, the independent ethical acoustical consultant identified the cause of the problem.

To date the NHMRC has noted that the present research into infrasound and low frequency has been of “poor quality” and I agree with that, although excellent research and acoustic investigation work has been done by four exemplary acousticians, Mr Steven Cooper, Mr Les Huson, Dr Bob Thorne and Professor Colin Hansen. Their work is highly regarded around the world and I am glad to see that Professor Hansen is one of the investigators on the South Australian Research group which the NHMRC have funded.

There has NEVER been any multidisciplinary research “in the field”, on heavily impacted residents being exposed to infrasound and low frequency noise in the area of wind farms.

Multidisciplinary research, carried out inside the homes of severely impacted people like myself and my neighbours is surely the priority, rather than using study participants who have not been so severely exposed.

Larger more powerful wind turbines are well known to emit a greater proportion of infrasound and low frequency noise as they increase in size.

If researchers do not know or measure exactly what we are being exposed to when we are suffering the symptoms, and our responses measured objectively, how can these exposure conditions and our responses then be reproduced accurately in a laboratory?

Using wind turbine noise from Cape Bridgewater wind turbines is of no relevance to what I am exposed to at Macarthur Wind Farm, where there are 140 wind turbines and they are 3 MW in size.

I am calling on the NHMRC to only fund researchers who go out “in the field” and study impacted residents directly in our own homes, at a variety of locations, with different sized wind turbines.

The researchers must be of the utmost integrity and must be trusted by us before they are allowed inside our homes and given access to our personal health information.

Where is the public benefit in conducting a study using people who are not already sensitized to the low frequency noise and infrasound as it appears the New South Wales University study is doing?

What a monumental waste of taxpayers’ money and precious research resources, if the research does not first investigate the problems we are experiencing directly and instead used people who are not sensitized or susceptible to the sound energy.

How else will you know what is happening to actual living beings inside their homes?

How else are you going to know what to look for and how will the researchers gather a range of different acoustic recordings to use in the follow-up laboratory research?

I offer myself for this study and research, as I live 3 kilometres from the Macarthur Wind Farm and am heavily impacted, suffering from sleep deprivation, nausea, head-pressure, headaches, tinnitus, heart palpitations, ear nose and throat soreness, vibration.

I am a PERFECT candidate for research into this noise pollution.

My home is TOXIC and I cannot live in it for any length of time.

I now have to leave my home regularly, even sometimes in the middle of the night.

Do any of you have to leave your homes because of these sorts of impacts?

How would you feel, I wonder?

What if your children and grandchildren could not visit, because they too become sick?

This is where the research should start, on the affected people and inside our homes, measuring what we are exposed to and what our responses are.

Why is this not the NHMRC’s priority with your precious research dollars?

I look forward to hearing from all the NHMRC Board members, as to, when the NHMRC will begin their “IN THE FIELD’ research on us.

Yours Sincerely

Jan Hetherington

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