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Adverse health effects: Summary of presentations
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The following is the abstract of Dr. Pierpont’s keynote address before the “First International Symposium on the Global Wind Industry and Adverse Health Effects: Loss of Social Justice?” in Picton, Ontario, Canada, October 29-31, 2010, followed by a discussion of other relevant talks at the symposium by Alec Salt, Michael Nissenbaum, Christopher Hanning, and Richard James.
Wind Turbine Syndrome & the Brain – Abstract
The latest research, as discussed below, suggests the following mechanism for Wind Turbine Syndrome: air-borne or body-borne low-frequency sound directly stimulates the inner ear, with physiologic responses of both cochlea (hearing organ) and otolith organs (saccule and utricle – organs of balance and motion detection).
Research has now proved conclusively that physiologic responses in the cochlea suppress the hearing response to low-frequency sound but still send signals to the brain, signals whose function is, at present, mostly unknown. The physiologic response of the cochlea to turbine noise is also a trigger for tinnitus and the brain-cell-level reorganization that tinnitus represents – reorganization that can have an impact on language processing and the profound learning processes related to language processing.
New research also demonstrates that the “motion-detecting” otolith organs of mammals also respond to air-borne low-frequency sound. Physiologic responses and signals from the otolith organs are known to generate a wide range of brain responses, including dizziness and nausea (seasickness, even without the movement), fear and alerting (startle, wakefulness), and difficulties with visually-based problem-solving.
Increased alerting in the presence of wind turbine noise disturbs sleep, even when people do not recall being awakened. A population-level survey in Maine now shows clear disturbances of sleep and mental well-being out to 1400 m (4600 ft) from turbines, with diminishing effects out to 5 km (3 miles).
[Click here to download entire talk: “Wind Turbine Syndrome & the Brain”]
Alec Salt, PhD, demolishes A-weighting noise measurements, while demonstrating that the ear has a physiological response to low frequency noise at the intensities produced by wind turbines
Professor Alec Salt is a cochlear physiologist, a laboratory scientist in the Department of Otolaryngology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He and his students study the fluids and physiology of the cochlea (the hearing part of the inner ear) in guinea pigs.
For years, Salt and his colleagues have used infrasound to change the way parts of the cochlea behave – not because they were interested in infrasound, but because it has physiologic effects which are useful in their studies of cochlear fluids and cells.
In the last year or so, Dr. Salt documented that the two types of sensory cells in the cochlea, the inner and outer hair cells, react differently to infrasound. The inner hair cells, which are the ones that send hearing signals to the brain, do not respond to infrasound, but the outer hair cells do.
Infrasound, he discovered, makes the outer hair cells move in such a way that they prevent the inner hair cells from responding. The outer hair cells also send neural signals to the brain and to other outer hair cells, but it is not clear what these signals do once they reach the brain. One thing we do know is that they don’t convey sound stimuli, themselves. Some evidence suggests they may play a role in mediating the perception of loud sounds in the cochlear nucleus, the first relay point for sound impulses in the brain.
What’s significant for Wind Turbine Syndrome is Dr. Salt’s discovery that the cochlea does indeed respond to infrasound, and sends signals to the brain in response to infrasound, but the anatomy and cellular responses of the outer hair cells actively prevent us from hearing the infrasound.
Wondering whether these findings had any significance to people and their diseases, Dr. Salt searched the medical literature last winter and came across Wind Turbine Syndrome. He subsequently published a research article linking his findings to the symptoms or clinical manifestations of Wind Turbine Syndrome.
It’s worth emphasizing that Professor Salt is an outstanding educator, as is clear from his website. There is a lot to be learned here about the inner ear, complete with moving, colored, 3-D simulations.
His recent research article is posted here, with a user-friendly discussion of its significance. There is also a link to the website of the National Institutes of Health, where his research is featured. He has also posted the slides from his presentation at the Picton conference on October 30.
In his presentation, Dr. Salt compared measured wind turbine sound spectra, not only to the human hearing response curve (as the wind industry consultants do), but also to the separate response curves of the inner and outer hair cells, showing that wind turbine low-frequency noise and infrasound are easily detectable by the normal cochlea. He also demonstrates how A-weighted sound level measurements specifically exclude the low frequencies significant in wind turbine health effects, effectively demolishing the credibility of A-weighted noise measurements.
Dr. Salt’s research is exciting and useful because it pointedly disproves the wind industry’s assertion that the infrasound produced by wind turbines is not relevant to human health because it is, they claim, below the hearing threshold of most people. On the contrary, the ear has a physiological response to low frequency noise at the intensities produced by wind turbines, even when this noise cannot be heard.
A physiologic response opens the door, of course, to clinical effects.
With regard to the mechanism of Wind Turbine Syndrome, we are now in the interesting position of having, on the one hand, a demonstrated cochlear response to infrasound without a known brain response. On the other hand, if we consider the vestibular (balance) organs in the inner ear (which share physiology and fluid connections with the cochlea), we know a lot about brain responses. There is a large scientific literature on what the brain does with normal or distorted vestibular signals with regard to sensations, symptoms, brain cell pathways, and functional and experimental problems.
We also know that the symptom complex of Wind Turbine Syndrome is very similar to the symptoms of vestibular dysfunction.
What is lacking is direct evidence for air-borne infrasound stimulating the hair cells of the vestibular organs. Dr. Salt told us in his conference talk that the vestibular hair cells are “tuned” (meaning, have their best response) to body- borne vibrations at infrasonic frequencies, but that no one has yet looked at the responses of these cells to “acoustic” (meaning, air-borne) infrasound coming in through the outer and middle ear.
“Jumping mice”: Mammalian balance organs detect air-borne low-frequency sound using their otolith organs (saccule & utricle)
I suspect it’s only a matter of time – and short time, at that – before some research group shows air-borne infrasound stimulating the vestibular hair cells, or shows a human vestibular response to air-borne infrasound. I base my prediction in part on a new article Dr. Salt sent to me immediately after the conference, titled, “The vestibular system mediates sensation of low-frequency sounds in mice.” In it, the authors explain how the “ancestral acoustic sensitivity” of the saccule has been retained not only in fish and amphibians, but also, according to recent evidence, in birds and mammals.
The authors demonstrate how mouse otolith organs respond to air-borne, low-frequency sounds below the detection range of the mouse cochlea.
Mice jump when startled by a beep. They startle more, with a more vigorous jump, in the presence of a low- or mid-frequency background sound. The authors measured this “startle response” – how much the mice jumped – quantitatively on little electronic platforms. Genetically normal mice jump more in response to either low- or mid- frequency background sound, but the authors also tested mice which, for genetic reasons, never developed the otoconia (little stones) in their otolith organs (utricle & saccule). Significantly, these otolith-deficient mice did the extra-large jumps only when the background sound stimulus fell within the frequency range of the mouse cochlea. They didn’t detect the low-frequency background sound stimuli the way the mice with functioning otolith organs did.
Jumping mice. The authors of this study have demonstrated that mammalian ears, using their otolith organs of balance and motion detection, detect air-borne low-frequency sound at frequencies too low to be heard by their cochleas. This makes them startle more. Now consider “jumping people” – startled right out of bed in the middle of the night in the presence of sub-audible, low-frequency noise, or infrasound, from wind turbines.
Evidence like this suggests the following mechanism for Wind Turbine Syndrome: air-borne or body-borne low- frequency sound directly stimulates the inner ear, with physiologic responses of both cochlea and otolith organs.
Physiologic responses in the cochlea suppress the hearing response to low-frequency sound but still send some signals to the brain, signals whose function is, at present, mostly unknown. The physiologic response of the cochlea to turbine noise is also a trigger for tinnitus and the brain-cell-level reorganization that tinnitus represents – reorganization that can have an impact on language processing and the learning processes related to language processing. Physiologic responses and signals from the otolith organs tie into a wide range of known brain responses to vestibular signals, including dizziness and nausea (seasickness without the movement), fear and alerting (startle, wakefulness), and difficulties with visually-based problem-solving.
[Click here for Salt’s presentation: “Infrasound: Your ears ‘hear’ it but they don’t tell your brain”.]
Christopher Hanning, MD, and sleep arousal
The interaction between sleep and these ear-brain mechanisms is interesting. Wind turbines create a particularly disturbing kind of noise with high alert potential, Dr. Chris Hanning, a sleep specialist, explained at the conference.
Our sleep is disturbed not only when we wake up completely, but also by subclinical arousals – in which the body and brain move into a lighter phase of sleep without waking all the way up. This type of disturbance requires even less noise than full awakening, but still disrupts sleep and its restorative properties for mood, memory, thinking, alertness, and coordination.
People vary in how deeply they sleep, and how resistant they are to awakening or arousal by noise. We can reliably measure how much people are disturbed during sleep using questionnaires about their daytime functioning.
[Click here for Hanning’s report: “Sleep disturbance and wind turbine noise”.]
Rick James, Noise Control Engineer: Sick Building Syndrome
Turning to noise studies around wind turbines, noise control engineer Rick James presented sound monitoring data showing the disturbing, high-alert qualities of wind turbine noise: high levels of low frequency noise and infrasound, and the pulsating quality of the low frequency noise and infrasound. Both the audible noise and the infrasound from turbines are subject to “amplitude modulation” (meaning, the loudness goes up and down) – a quality that adds markedly to its disturbing character.
The arrangement and spacing of turbines in clusters also affects how much noise they make, because a second turbine, beating in the downwind turbulence of the first turbine, makes more noise.
Mr. James reviewed research from the 1980’s and ’90’s on illness in office workers, induced by low-frequency noise from malaligned fans or vibrating ducts in the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems of large buildings. Research on these specialized cases of “Sick Building Syndrome” focused on the detrimental effects of low frequency noise on work productivity, and included experimental assessment of low frequency noise effects on concentration and mood.
A word of caution, however. The term “Sick Building Syndrome” is associated most commonly with problems of indoor air quality (including particulates, allergens, infectious particles, solvent odor, and the amount of fresh air), and the syndrome includes irritation of the skin, eyes, and respiratory tract, as well as fatigue, headache, poor concentration, nausea, and dizziness. The latter symptoms are commonly associated with low frequency noise exposure in other contexts, whereas skin and mucous membrane irritation are not.
In other words, although Wind Turbine Syndrome shares the noise-related aspects of Sick Building Syndrome, the two terms are not the same.
Michael Nissenbaum, MD, reports that surveyed subjects up to 3 miles from turbines showed effects on sleep and mood that varied directly with distance from the turbines
Finally, Dr. Michael Nissenbaum, a Maine physician, presented results of a study of 79 adults living up to three miles from wind turbines in Maine, who completed (what are clinically called) validated questionnaires on sleep disturbance and general physical and mental well-being, divided into study and control groups based on distance from turbines.
Dr. Nissenbaum found differences between the study and control groups in several sleep quality indices, and in the mental health component of the general questionnaire. Even more remarkable, when he pooled the data from study and control groups, he found a dose-response relationship out to about 5 km (3 miles) from turbines. Subjects up to 3 miles from turbines, whether they were initially considered to be in the study or control groups, showed effects on sleep and mood that varied directly with distance from the turbines, Dr. Nissenbaum reported.
This is a valuable study. The surveys required information only about the subjects’ current state of sleep and well- being, without reference to the turbines. The impact of turbine noise is apparently seen much farther away than the 1.5-2 km minimum setback proposed by many researchers (including me), although there was a drop-off in symptoms beyond 1.4 km. The questionnaires did not sample the full range of Wind Turbine Syndrome symptoms, but provide a standardized and quantified measure of one important symptom – sleep disturbance – and of general medical and mental health in relation to turbines.
Download original document: “Wind Turbine Syndrome & the Brain”
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