No link between wind turbines and health, says NHMRC

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has released a statement concluding that “there is currently no consistent evidence that wind farms cause adverse health effects in humans”, following a rigorous independent assessment of the existing scientific evidence on wind farms and human health. The review was overseen by NHMRC’s Wind Farms and Human Health Reference Group, which comprised experts in public and environmental health, research methodology, acoustics, psychology and sleep, as well a consumer advocate.

The group identified over 4000 papers, only 13 of which were found to be of sufficient scientific quality to consider possible relationships between wind farms and human health. They found that examining whether wind farm emissions may affect human health is complex - not only are the character of the emissions and individual perceptions of them highly variable, but the team also had to consider similar emissions from other sources such as road traffic, aircraft and rail (parallel evidence).

“There is consistent but poor-quality direct evidence that wind farm noise is associated with annoyance,” the statement said. “While the parallel evidence suggests that prolonged noise-related annoyance may result in stress, which may be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, annoyance was not consistently defined in the studies and a range of other factors are possible explanations for the association observed.

“There is less-consistent, poor-quality direct evidence of an association between sleep disturbance and wind farm noise. However, sleep disturbance was not objectively measured in the studies and a range of other factors are possible explanations for the association observed. While chronic sleep disturbance is known to affect health, the parallel evidence suggests that wind farm noise is unlikely to disturb sleep at distances of more than 1500 m from wind farms.”

There was also no direct evidence on the possible effects of infrasound or low-frequency noise from wind farms, with the council saying such noise is “similar to noise from many other natural and human-made sources”. The statement thus concludes that it is unlikely that people would experience significant health effects beyond 1500 m from wind farms - and while the council concedes that research into possible health effects within 1500 m of wind farms is warranted, this is only due to the poor evidence base and continued public interest.

“We’ve been presented with a report from an expert committee which says that the research is to date is ‘poor quality’,” said NHMRC CEO Professor Warwick Anderson. “As a scientific body charged with providing reliable health advice for the Australian community, it is clear that high-quality research is now needed.”

Clean Energy Council Policy Director Russell Marsh said the NHMRC report reached the same conclusion as “dozens of international and local studies”. The most recent international research was a large-scale study by the Canadian Government’s health body, published too late for the NHMRC to review.

“Health Canada’s study measured health impacts and their relation to wind turbines in more than 1200 homes and found no direct link, even in houses located less than 600 m from a wind turbine,” Marsh revealed.

“Australia already has some of the world’s strictest regulations for wind farms, and we know that further scientific research will only reinforce the fact that wind energy is one of the safest and cleanest forms of energy generation in the world.”

The statement, information paper and other supporting materials are available here.

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