Turbines and Health

Credit: Erin Howe, CKWS Newswatch, October 29, 2010, ckwstv.com ~~

A panel of experts has gathered in Prince Edward County for the weekend for the first ever international symposium on wind turbines and their potential health effects. Newswatch’s Erin Howe spoke with a few of the experts as registration for the event got underway this afternoon.

With 86 wind turbines dotting the landscape on Wolfe Island, and plans for others to be installed in Prince Edward County – a group of experts has assembled in Picton to talk about the impact they could be having on our health.

McMurtry: “It’s remarkable that in the decades that wind turbines have been in operation, there has never been adequate human health studies. And yet, wind farms are getting larger, and the turbines are getting larger.”

The conference is organized by the Society for Wind Vigilance – whose message is that there should be health studies before turbines.

Dr. Robert NcMurtry is the chair of the organization – he says in Ontario, just the opposite is happening.

McMurtry: “We need to have the research so we can have the dose response relationship, and have evidence based regulations. They don’t exist now.”

This is the first international conference dedicated to the discussion of wind turbines and their adverse effects on health – an event that has drawn experts from Canada, the U.S. and the United Kingdom.”

Krogh: “It’s an outstanding group of researchers including clinicians and physicians and other researchers, engineers, physicists, acoustics people.”

Bronzaft: “We’re not talking about hearing loss here. We’re talking about the effects of the sound on the physiological system of the individual. We’re talking cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, we’re talking mental, just having to listen to the whirl.”

Dr. Arline Bronzaft is an expert on noise – and just one of the speakers taking part in the symposium. She says sound doesn’t have to be loud to have an impact.

Bronzaft: “Before you can definitively state that something has not harmed you, I think you owe it to find out whether indeed it does or does not.”

Source: Erin Howe, CKWS Newswatch, October 29, 2010, ckwstv.com

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