Response to Telegraph Article ‘Living close to wind farms could cause hearing damage’. – Dick Bowdler

Ms Turner writes that living close to wind turbines could cause hearing damage and make you deaf. I have been working for wind farm objectors and for Councils for fifteen years trying to prevent people’s amenity being compromised by excess noise from turbines and it is just this sort of article that makes my job difficult. It makes it difficult because people pick up and run with this sort of thing and are not taken seriously because it is clearly nonsense. No where in the paper referred to are wind turbines mentioned.

Subjects in the paper referred to were presented with a specific tonal noise at a frequency of 33Hz at 120dB (decibels) and, it’s hardly surprising that funny things happened to their hearing at that level of noise. Wind turbines are rarely tonal at that frequency and, in any case, the highest level in that frequency area that wind turbines are likely to produce is about 60dB which is about the lowest level we can hear at that frequency. 60dB is one millionth of the sound energy presented to the subjects in this research paper. The paper tells us absolutely nothing about the effect of wind turbines.

Dick Bowdler
The Haven
Low Causeway
Culross
KY12 8HN
Fife
07785352534