Key Takeaways
- Study suggests wind turbine syndrome may be psychosomatic, linked to nocebo effect.
- No significant cognitive or stress effects found from short-term wind turbine noise exposure.
- Wind turbine syndrome often fueled by anti-renewable campaigns, seen as sociological.
A new study has added to the growing chorus of evidence that so-called ‘wind turbine syndrome’ may not be a legitimate condition, but a suite of psychosomatic symptoms resulting from the perception of harm – otherwise known as a nocebo.
The study, from a team of researchers at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland, recruited 45 volunteers, exposing them to recordings from a wind turbine to investigate its effects on the dynamics of brain waves associated with cognitive tasks, sustained attention, and inductive reasoning.
The team also recorded the subjects’ evaluation of their own stress as a result of the noise, and tested it against control conditions including silence and road noise. Participants were not told from what source the noises they were hearing came from.
The results of this latest study showed that short-term exposure to wind turbine noise had no impact on cognitive functions, and the noise was not perceived as significantly more stressful than road traffic noise, with 93 per cent of participants reporting that they did not find the turbine noise intrusive.
‘Wind turbine syndrome’ is an alleged medical condition characterised by symptoms associated with proximity to wind turbines and exposure to the noise they produce. The condition is widely contested.
Reported symptoms range from the plausible, such as tinnitus, stress, and fatigue, to the outright bizarre, including ADHD, cancer, and herpes.
Despite a steady stream of studies since at least 2003 finding no evidence of a causal link between proximity to wind farms and adverse health effects, the syndrome has gained ground in news media, anti-renewable politics, and even in some courts.
In 2021, a French court recognised ‘turbine syndrome’ as a legitimate condition, awarding a Belgian couple €100,000 in compensation for health problems attributed to the condition, with symptoms including headaches, insomnia, heart irregularities, depression, dizziness, tinnitus and nausea.
In Australia, regulations governing wind farms vary by state or territory, but generally wind farms have a set noise limit, and operators must conduct noise assessments and testing to comply with those limits – in Victoria, for example, an EPA-accredited auditor must verify these assessments.
Most states also recommend turbines should be located at least one to two kilometres away from residences.
The authors of this latest piece of research attribute the low stress reported by their participants to the fact that they were unaware of the source of the noises they were exposed to.
In other studies, where participants have been exposed to wind turbine noise and are aware of the source, higher stress levels have been reported as compared with other noises, including road traffic.
The researchers posit that ‘wind turbine syndrome’ is in fact a consequence of the ‘nocebo effect’, the placebo effect’s evil twin.
The ‘nocebo effect’ describes a psychological phenomenon where a belief or fear that adverse symptoms may arise as a result of a particular stimulus results in those symptoms actually occurring.
That’s not to say that the distress reported by complainants is any less real – the nocebo effect, like its powerful sibling placebo, is a very real psychological and physiological phenomenon.
In Australia, a report by Simon Chapman, a professor of public health at Sydney University and author of the book Wind turbine syndrome: a communicated disease, found that 63 per cent of Australia’s wind farms had never been subject to noise or health complaints.
Of the farms that had been subject to complains, 68 per cent came from residents living near five wind farms that have been at the roiling core of wind farm controversy.
These five wind farms have been the target of anti-renewables campaigns, many of which have taken adverse health impacts as a core component of their communications.
Chapman’s conclusion? That wind farm syndrome is essentially a sickness driven by belief. And Chapman for his part blames the anti-renewables lobby for stoking up fear.
“People discovered if you started saying it was a health problem, a lot more people would sit up and pay attention,” Chapman told The Guardian way back in 2013. “It’s essentially a sociological phenomenon.”
