Retired pharmacist Carmen Krogh was in Wellington North recently outlining the potential risks of wind turbines in the community.
Krogh was one of a number of speakers invited recently to provide more information on the potential risks of industrial wind turbines,.
Lorrie Gillis, of the Wind Vigilance Society, said Krogh had driven to Damascus from two hours north of Ottawa to speak to residents that night.
“Carmen comes to us, as do all of our speakers, without compensation for personal time and travel – simply because she cares about our rural family health and well being.”
Krogh is a retired pharmacist with more than 40 years of experience in health.
She currently serves on the board of directors of The Society for Wind Vigilance.
Krogh spoke on the gathering of evidence on the risk to health as a result of industrial wind turbines.
She said when she began work roughly two years ago, there were indications that there could be problems.
Krogh was getting reports from people who began getting ill when turbines started operating.
“Now, a few years later we’re at the point where there is definitely evidence that there is a risk to health.”
She said “We do not currently know the mechanism as to how this happens, but we know that there are symptoms and people are experiencing ill health.”
She provided a slide show of charts and graphs about what is acknowledged as adverse health effects.
Special emphasis was given regarding the impact of low frequency noise – “because that seems to be the type of noise that impacts the body the most,” she said. “You may not hear it, but it will cause physical and mental effects.”
As well, Krogh highlighted what she referred to as “the lack of social justice.”
Krough spoke on that topic a few weeks prior during the international symposium held in Picton, and merged some of that presentation into the one being made in Damascus.
She said “beyond the symptoms, there are other consequences to living next to the turbines.”
She read numerous victim impact statements from around the world. (The statements were unsigned within the presentation itself.)
She said the symptoms and consequences seem to be similar in most countries.
First, she said, “The most common effect of community noise is annoyance, which is considered an adverse health effect by the World Health Organization.”
“You hear a lot in the media where people are just annoyed. It’s important to understand that in everyday language, it might sound trivial or not significant – but in clinical terms, annoyance is known as an adverse health effect.”
To set the stage for what that means for social justice, Krogh said a report from the World Health Organization also stated “Social justice is a matter of life and death. It affects the way people live, their consequent chance of illness, and their risk of premature death.”
She said in 2004 the World Health Organization stated “noise pollution may be a problem if turbines are situated close to centres of population. Another thing we hear in North America is that we pack [turbines] in pretty tight,” in comparison to other areas, Krogh said.
She said there are acknowledgements to health risks, combined with contradictions.
Krogh cited reports by the American and Canadian wind energy associations.
She contended that those are registered lobby groups to promote the use of wind turbines and compared to campaigns by the tobacco lobby in the 1960s.
Krogh said the Society for Wind Vigilance is an international organization, which did an evaluation of the wind energy reports.
“We found when we read the document itself, the contents didn’t really support their conclusions.”
Despite the document stating wind turbines would not cause hearing loss, there was an acknowledgement that they might cause annoyance, stress, and sleep disturbance.
The documents also acknowledged there can be mental and physical symptoms, she said.
She said wind turbine symptoms can include distraction, dizziness, eye strain, fatigue, feeling vibrations, headaches, insomnia, muscle spasms, nausea, nose bleeds, palpitations, pressure in the ears or head, skin burns, stress and tension: “The very symptoms we are finding in people.”
And yet, Krogh said the official response of the industry is there is no peer-reviewed scientific evidence that wind turbines have an effect on human health.
Krogh stated that Health Canada says that there are peer-reviewed articles indicating that turbines may have an adverse impact.
Annoyance impact
She said the World Health Organization has stated there are there two potential impacts – direct and indirect.
“It doesn’t matter whether it is direct or indirect – the end result is the same.”
She said people exposed may do all sorts of dramatic things to get away from the noise. “Some may have a safe house, or sleep with relatives or friends.”
Some have rented homes elsewhere so they can sleep at night. She said there can also be a resonance effect within a home.
“Part of the social injustice is that when a person is bought out [by a wind company], they can’t talk about it [as part of the sale agreement]. It does bother people who feel morally obligated to do so.”
Shadow flicker
“We have underestimated the impact of shadow flicker. We’re starting to recognize this is fairly serious,” she said.
She said one of the issues is a person’s eyes can see the resonance of the shadow flicker,
She said research indicates shadow flicker does cause annoyance and wind turbines should be carefully avoided to prevent shadow flicker.
“This is something which affects people both inside and outside the home. We don’t have regulations currently under the Green Energy Act to protect families from shadow flicker.”
She said one of the challenges is the law does not provide an opportunity for municipalities to resist projects if they have concerns.
“A lot of people feel this is not very democratic.”
She said the Ontario Ministry of the Environment suggested in correspondence from a year ago that there was no scientifically accepted field methodology to measure wind turbine noise to determine compliance or non-compliance with a Certificate of Approval limits.
She said the inability to have influence causes social division and is destructive within small communities.
As well, it interferes with the normal political process.
She said the NIMBY phrase (not in my back yard) is considered hurtful – when an individual might be genuinely concerned or suffering.
Another problem, she said, is there is not any human health research able to determine a safe distance for wind turbines or the safe noise levels.
“What we have is computer modelling. What I am showing you are anecdotal reports.”
She said in another decade or two the consequences of having turbines will need to be revisited at some time in the future as well. “Policies sometimes end up with unintended results or consequences.”
Krogh maintained that “Even if the mechanisms are unclear, the symptoms exist.”
When asked for a point of clarification, audience members were requested to save those questions until after all the presenters finished.
Concern with ‘dirty’ power
Ripley area resident David Colling also spoke on wind turbines – but from a different perspective – the impact of the type of energy produced.
While turbines may appear as a clean energy source, the electricity generated is not, he said.
Colling was a dairy farmer and since 2005 has been doing electrical pollution testing on farms, homes and office buildings.
He has been involved in the assessment of several instances of electrical pollution in the Ripley area where 37 wind turbines have been in operation since 2007.
He told the audience that at one time, he also had a wind turbine lease on his farm.
“I wasn’t too fussy on it. But in 2004 I signed a contract. Thank goodness it was a three year option and another three year option.”
The intent was if nothing happened in that six years, the landowners needed to re-sign.
“We did not re-sign. We’d seen what happened to our neighbours in phase one at Ripley.”
Colling believed one of the keys is education.
To those who have yet to sign a contract, he recommended taking the document to a corporate lawyer.
“You’ve got to get it to a lawyer who understands these types of documents. If you don’t, you’re going to be in trouble. We were misled when we signed the first time even though the local lawyer thought it was fine,” Colling said.
He noted that some of his information regarding dirty power is on www.electricalpollution.com.
He said that people exposed to excessive “dirty” power may develop radio wave sickness. Clean power enters the home at 60 Hz. Electrical pollution is 60 Hz electricity polluted with high frequency signals or “dirty” power flowing on the wires and through the earth.
