National Wind Watch: Wind Energy News » 17 people have complained of health issues from turbines

A Grey Highlands woman wants her council to prod the provincial government into investigating health issues that she and more than a dozen others say are caused from living near industrial wind turbines south of Maxwell.

“I want council to write the Ministry of the Environment on behalf of all of us and say there are people who are suffering, that we have problems with this and I’m hoping their voice will carry some weight. How many people is the MOE going to ignore?” asked Virginia Stewart Love.

Last week’s plea was a follow up to a letter she wrote to council on April 27 signed by 17 people who detail health effects that they say began following production by the 11 wind turbines belonging to the Plateau Wind Project located along south of Maxwell along County Rd. 2.

The project began production in February of this year. Since then Stewart Love has made dozens of complaints to the MOE about pressure in her head and ears, vibration within her body, ringing in the ears particularly at night but sometimes during the day.

“It’s been less frequent in the summer and that’s because a lot of the time the wind turbines aren’t turning,” she said.

Stewart Love says she believes she’s suffering from the effects of low frequency sound, “ because I can’t actually hear the turbines from my house. The infrasound comes into the house,” she said.

The closest turbine is 1,400 metres from her home. She can see a total of six from her house and she doesn’t know how far the others are from her house because the developer and the MOE won’t tell her, she says.

“I want the council to be a little pro active when it comes to the people in the community that are suffering from the impacts of the wind turbines and I am one of them. I live near several of them,” she said.

Stewart Love also wrote a letter on Aug. 9 to David Michaud, the principal investigator and project manager of Health Canada’s recently announced study of the health effects of industrial wind turbines.

She would like to be a part of the study announced by the federal government on July 10.

Health Canada, in collaboration with Statistics Canada, will conduct a research study that will explore the relationship between wind turbine noise and health effects reported by, and objectively measured in, people living near wind power developments.

The study will be focused on an initially targeted sample size of 2,000 dwellings selected from eight to 12 wind turbine installation facilities in Canada.

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