Are You or Members of Your Family Windsick?

The Problem.

You know that your and your family’s health and well-being are deteriorating, that your home is no longer a place of rest (and is actually virtually unsaleable), and your surrounding countryside is an industrial park. Neighbours are divided. Social structures of a lifetime are destroyed.

You, almost certainly correctly, put this down to the erection and operation of an industrial wind project in your neighbourhood. After all what else has changed?

Who Helps? No One

When everyone: the industry, the supposedly responsible bureaucrats, public relations spruikers beholden to the industry, the ABC and Fairfax press, the AMA and politicians, denies that there are really serious health problems with your local wind project, then your local medical centre or GP is unlikely to recognise what is happening to you and unwilling to get themselves into arguments with their partners, the local wind project owners, various wind energy promoters and the industry-briefed local and national press.

The best a GP will do is refer you for a range of probably largely irrelevant tests.

Waste of money, time and expectations.

How Does this Usurping, Land Grabbing Industry Respond?

Whatever your suffering, an indifferent or foreign project owner can always secure official statements that the project is compliant to (what are now widely known as technically incompetent) guidelines.

Months or even years later you are no further forward.

How Can You Take Charge?

The quicker you can establish that you are impacted by wind turbines and at what level, the better you are armed to nail the Land Grabbers and use other advice available on this blog.

How can you do this?

Well two Canadians professionals, McMurtry and Krogh¹, have done the job for you and classified wind turbine impacts on nearby residents. This analysis is attached.

McMurtry-Krogh-diagnostic-criteria-JRSM

These criteria allow you to judge and confirm for your, and likely your family’s, problem, and the extent and intensity thereof. That data and its position on the McMurtry/Krogh criteria is virtually a big wake up call to your GP. Use it as such. Put pressure on him/her. Move on to other advice on this very practical blog.

DeFrock’s View

DeFrock describes industrial wind turbine health impacts as torture. Impacts which cause ongoing and growing community health issues that medical authorities, planning departments, and the wind industry continue to deny, or in the case of Australia’s National Wind Farm Commissioner, is unwilling to even acknowledge the health impacts from turbines exist.

Deliberately turning a blind eye allows the expansion of the wind turbine fleet, permitting the torture, and adverse health impacts occurring mostly in rural areas and some regional cities, e.g. in Victoria; Portland, Stawell, Ararat, etc. to continue.

DeFrock fully understands that higher powered turbines in larger wind farms are being approved and built too close to communities, likely creating cumulative acoustic and health impacts. It is predictable that more people and habitats will be impacted.

Lists of Diagnostic Criteria for IWT Adverse Health Effects

Dr Pierpont [in her book, ‘Wind Turbine Syndrome- a report on a natural experiment’] gave the symptoms the name of “wind turbine syndrome” which have been acknowledged by acousticians as being familiar symptoms which they have historically called “annoyance”.

The symptoms in the book include the following;

Sleep disturbance
Headache, including migraines
Tinnitus
Ear pressure (often described as painful)
Balance problems / dizziness
Vertigo
Nausea
Visual blurring
Irritability
Problems with concentration and memory
Panic episodes
Tachycardia (fast heart rate)

‘Diagnostic criteria for adverse health effects in the environs of wind turbines’, McMurtry and Krogh, published in 2014, includes this comprehensive list of criteria for diagnosis and symptoms.

Categories of diagnosis

Possible: a potential diagnosis is considered in the differential diagnosis.
Probable: cause of complaints is more likely than not related to adverse health effects [AHE] in the environs of industrial wind turbines [IWT].
Presumed: no other explanation for the diagnosis of AHE/IWT can be found by history, physical and after appropriate investigations.
Confirmed: other diagnoses are very unlikely i.e.less than one chance in 20.

Probable diagnosis

First-order criteria (all four of the following must be present)

(a) Domicile within up to 10 km from IWT.

(b) Altered health status following the start-up of, or initial exposure to, and during the operation of IWT. There may be a latent period of up to six months.

(c) Amelioration of symptoms when more than 10 km from the environs of IWT.

(d) Recurrence of symptoms upon return to environs of IWT.

Second-order criteria (at least three of the following occur or worsen after the initiation of operation of IWT)

(a) Compromise of quality of life.

(b) Continuing sleep disturbance, difficulty initiating sleep and/or difficulty with sleep disruption.

(c) Annoyance producing increased levels of stress and/or psychological distress.

(d) Preference to leave residence temporarily or permanently for sleep and/or restoration.

Third-order criteria Three or more of the following frequently occur or worsen following the initiation of IWT. If the symptoms described in second-order criteria (b) and (c) are present, no further symptoms or complaints are required for the probable diagnosis. Based on the authors’ experience, the following list provides an indication of the more common symptoms:

Neurological

(a) Tinnitus

(b) Dizziness

(c) Difficulties with balance

(d) Ear ache

(e) Nausea

(f) Headache

Cognitive

(a) Difficulty in concentrating

(b) Problems with recall or difficulties with recall

Cardiovascular

(a) Hypertension

(b) Palpitations

(c) Enlarged heart (cardiomegaly)

Psychological

(a) Mood disorder, i.e. depression and anxiety

(b) Frustration

(c) Feelings of distress

(d) Anger

Regulatory disorders

(a) Difficulty in diabetes control

(b) Onset of thyroid disorders or difficulty controlling hypo- or hyperthyroidism

Systemic

(a) Fatigue

(b) Sleepiness

Presumed diagnosis

If following a fulsome history, physical and completed investigations no alternative explanation is apparent, and the criteria of probable diagnosis have been met, then a presumed diagnosis of AHE/IWT [Adverse Health Effects in the environs of Industrial Wind Turbines] is warranted. AHE/IWT exists until proven otherwise.

Further informative descriptions of symptoms are available on the Waubra Foundation Website:

https://waubrafoundation.org.au/health/symptoms/

Link to Paper ‘Diagnostic criteria for adverse health effects in the environs of wind turbines’.