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The claim that wind turbines were harmful to health, repeated in Rite-On, ran its course from about 2009 to 2014
No one outside of the wind-turbine haters who are desperate to find some justification for their hatred keep harping on about it.There's little point in me repeating all the evidence here, read WindHealth if you are interested in the truth.
At the time of writing, Rite-On mentioned 'yokeless eggs'.
This is one of
more than 220 illnesses or symptoms that have been blamed on wind turbines.
Can you believe it?
I can't.
World Health Organisation (WHO) report
The Rite-On 'Epic Fail' page referred to a WHO report titled 'Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region'. The report correctly stated that excessive noise is a health risk.What Rite-On failed to say was that Australian wind farms are well within the WHO guide-lines for noise and that the same WHO report said that there was no evidence linking wind turbines to adverse health.
I've written more on the
WHO report and on
a politician who also twisted the meaning of the report elsewhere on these pages.
What references does Rite-On use in support of their claims?
Rite-On doesn't refer to any credible sources or documents in support of their claims; instead they rely on the sensation seeking media, including the notoriously anti-renewable-energy Murdoch empire for their 'evidence'.
These pages refer to respected, reliable and credible sources for supporting evidence.
Wind turbines and fires
Rite-On claims that serious bushfires have been sparked by fires in wind turbines. In fact at the time of writing there were some 2,300 wind turbines in Australia; there had been a total of three wind turbine fires reported in the press, the most recent in 2010. That is a very low fire risk, far lower than many other industrial, rural or agricultural operations.
Contrary to the claims of dishonest organisations such as Rite-On and
StopTheseThings I have shown proof that
not one of these wind turbine fires caused a bushfire.
Wind farm complaints
Rite-On implies that many people are complaining about nearby wind farms. In fact the Australian Wind Farm Commissioner, running an office set up specifically to look into complaints about wind farms, has only received a total of about 163 complaints from the whole of Australia, on all matters relating to wind farms, in two and a half years (October 2015 to May 2018); further, some 145 of the complaints have been resolved.Life of a wind turbine
Contrary to the statement in Rite-On that wind turbines are unlikely to last ten years, Western Australian wind turbines at Ten Mile Lagoon, built in 1993 (26 years old) and those at Nine Mile Beach, built in 2003 (16 years old) are still going. The oldest utility scale wind farm in South Australia, Starfish Hill, built in 2003 (16 years old), the oldest wind farm in NSW, Blayney, built in 2000 (19 years old), the oldest wind farm in Victoria, Codrington, built in 2001 (18 years old) and the oldest wind farm in Queensland, Windy Hill, built in 2000 (19 years old) are also still going.The only Australian wind farm worthy of the name that has been decommissioned is Salmon Beach, built in 1987 and dismantled in 2002 due to urban encroachment and being superseded by the more modern and bigger turbines of Ten Mile Lagoon.
Contrary to the lies in Rite-On, there are no 'rusted out turbine relics' of utility-scale wind turbines anywhere in Australia.
Dr Nina Pierpont
Rite-On's 'Epic Fail' article referred to "Dr Nina Pierpoint" (note that they didn't even spell her name correctly).According to the Energy and Policy Institute Dr Pierpont 'conducted a minor and very poorly constructed health survey' that she used to support her belief that wind turbines make people sick (wind turbine syndrome – a disease that you will not find in any respected health reference).
Of course, as mentioned elsewhere on this page, the claims and conclusions of Dr Pierpont's 'study' are complete tosh. I've written a page on the subject that I've called Pierpont-Laurie Syndrome because a Ms Laurie spread the same delusion in Australia.
