{"id":8722,"date":"2010-06-17T14:03:12","date_gmt":"2010-06-17T18:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kselected.com\/?p=8722"},"modified":"2012-02-03T06:00:15","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T11:00:15","slug":"quebec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/2010\/quebec\/","title":{"rendered":"Wind turbines don\u2019t belong in national parks (Pierpont)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Letter to the \u201c<\/span>Mouvement citoyen pour la protection de nos territoires envahis par l’\u00e9olien industriel\u201d<\/span> (Quebec, Canada)<\/h3>\n

June 16, 2010<\/p>\n

I am alarmed to hear that the government of Quebec is willing to install industrial wind turbines in the famed Parc r\u00e9gional Massif du sud\u2014or in any wilderness area dedicated to the protection of wildness and wildlife.<\/p>\n

For nearly six years, I have been studying the health impacts of industrial wind turbines on people living within 2 km of these infrasound-generating machines. Last fall, I published \u201cWind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment\u201d (K-Selected Books, 2009), outlining the effects of turbine low frequency noise and infrasound on the body\u2019s organs of balance<\/em>, motion<\/em>, and position<\/em> sense. The book was refereed by medical specialists at leading American medical schools. (The book has since been translated into German, French, Italian, Polish, and Japanese\u2014countries in which Wind Turbine Syndrome has become an industrial plague.)<\/p>\n

One of the points I establish in the book is that wind developers and their hired acousticians are dead wrong when they argue, \u201cIf you can\u2019t hear a noise, it can\u2019t hurt you.\u201d A recent, peer-reviewed clinical article by two otolaryngologists at the Washington University School of Medicine, Cochlear Fluids Research Laboratory<\/a> (St. Louis, Missouri), has put the final nail in that coffin.1<\/sup> The truth of the matter is, \u201cIf you can\u2019t hear it, it can indeed hurt you!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Infrasound is not heard, yet it\u2019s profoundly disturbing to the body\u2019s vestibular organs (in the inner ear) and other organs of balance, motion, and position sense. People suffering from Wind Turbine Syndrome basically experience the equivalent of protracted seasickness\u2014motion sickness caused by low frequency noise and infrasound which, we now know, is generated by wind turbines as huge, rapidly pulsed, sub-audible pressure waves.2<\/sup><\/p>\n

The Parc r\u00e9gional Massif du sud is a refuge for wildlife. My PhD degree is in Population Biology & Behavioral Ecology. I spent years in a wilderness area (Amazon jungle) studying animal behavior\u2014the subject of my PhD dissertation. It is well known among animal behaviorists that low frequency noise and infrasound are even more devastating to wildlife than to human beings. There should be nothing surprising in this, given the fact that the vestibular organs (in the inner ear) are evolutionarily extremely ancient organs common to all vertebrates (back-boned animals).<\/p>\n

Mother Nature, in other words, equipped all back-boned species with these highly sensitive organs of balance, motion, and position sense\u2014organs that not only tell us where we are in physical space, but affect animal learning and behavior, including the famous \u201cfight or flight\u201d response. The vestibular organs are part of Nature\u2019s grand blueprint for animal life. Anything that inappropriately triggers these organs, triggers serious behavioral and health consequences\u2014be it in wildlife, domestic livestock, marine life, or you and me.<\/p>\n

Remember, \u201cIf you can\u2019t hear it, it can indeed hurt you<\/em>\u201d\u2014including wildlife.<\/p>\n

Nina Pierpont, MD (Johns Hopkins), PhD (Princeton)<\/p>\n

References<\/span>:<\/p>\n

1<\/sup>Alec N. Salt, PhD, and Timothy E. Hullar, MD, \u201cResponses of the ear to low frequency sounds, infrasound, and wind turbines,\u201d Hearing Research<\/em>, in press.\u00a0 Click here<\/a> for a pre-publication copy of the paper.<\/p>\n

2<\/sup>Lars Ceranna, Gernot Hartmann, and Manfred Henger, \u201cThe Inaudible Noise of Wind Turbines,\u201d presented at the Infrasound Workshop, November 28 \u2013 December 02, 2005, Tahiti. Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), Section B3.11. Stilleweg 2, 30655 Hannover, Germany. Download PDF copy here<\/a>.\u00a0 Also see the wind turbine noise measurements of American noise engineer, Richard James, E-Coustic Solutions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Letter to the \u201cMouvement citoyen pour la protection de nos territoires envahis par l’\u00e9olien industriel\u201d (Quebec, Canada) June 16, 2010 I am alarmed to hear that the government of Quebec is willing to install industrial wind turbines in the famed Parc r\u00e9gional Massif du sud\u2014or in any wilderness area dedicated to the protection of wildness and wildlife. For nearly six years, I have been studying the health impacts of industrial wind turbines on people living within 2 km of these infrasound-generating machines. Last fall, I published \u201cWind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment\u201d (K-Selected Books, 2009), outlining the effects of turbine low frequency noise and infrasound on the body\u2019s organs of balance, motion, and position sense. The book was refereed by medical specialists at leading American medical schools. (The book has since been translated into German, French, Italian, Polish, and Japanese\u2014countries in which Wind Turbine Syndrome has become an industrial plague.) One of the points I establish in the book is that wind developers and their hired acousticians are dead wrong when they argue, \u201cIf you can\u2019t hear a noise, it can\u2019t hurt you.\u201d A recent, peer-reviewed clinical article by two otolaryngologists at the Washington University School of Medicine, Cochlear Fluids Research Laboratory (St. Louis, Missouri), has put the final nail in that coffin.1 The truth of the matter is, \u201cIf you can\u2019t hear it, it can indeed hurt you!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,169],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8722"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}