There is now irrefutable evidence that wind turbine noise at levels permitted by ETSU-R-97 is harmful to health.

In INWG Work Package 3.2 March 2015 titled, Excessive Amplitude Modulation, Wind Turbine Noise, Sleep and Health (link to WP 3.2), Dr Hanning provides a comprehensive review of the evidence relating to the health effects of wind turbine noise. At Para 1.5 he states: “A large body of evidence, presented below, demonstrates that human sleep and health are adversely affected at wind turbine noise levels permitted by ETSU. There is particular concern for the health of children exposed to excessive wind turbine noise. The inadequate consideration of excessive amplitude modulation (EAM) is a major factor in the failure of ETSU to protect the human population.”

Additionally, at WP 3.2 Para 5.3 Hanning quotes a peer-reviewed article by Phillips dated 2011: “There is overwhelming evidence that wind turbines cause serious health problems in nearby residents, usually stress-disorder type diseases, at a nontrivial rate. The bulk of the evidence takes the form of thousands of adverse event reports. There is also a small amount of systematically-gathered data. The adverse event reports provide compelling evidence of the seriousness of the problems and of causation in this case because of their volume, the ease of observing exposure and outcome incidence, and case-crossover data. Proponents of turbines have sought to deny these problems by making a collection of contradictory claims including that the evidence does not “count”, the outcomes are not “real” diseases, the outcomes are the victims’ own fault, and that acoustical models cannot explain why there are health problems so the problems must not exist. These claims appeared to have swayed many nonexpert observers, though they are easily debunked.”

And at Para 5.18 Hanning quotes Van den Berg who states; “Wind turbine noise was several times more annoying than the other noise sources for equivalent noise levels.”

Hanning concludes at Para 5.73 with: “It is abundantly clear that wind turbine noise adversely effects sleep and health at the setback distances and noise levels permitted in UK by ETSU. There is no reliable evidence at all that wind turbines are safe at these distances and noise levels, not a single study. In contrast there is an increasing volume of studies outlined here to the contrary.”

During 2018 the World Health Organisation (WHO) released its updated Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region during 2018. Sections 3.4 and 4.2 cover wind turbine noise. At section 3.4, page 85 the WHO state; “Wind turbines can generate infrasound or lower frequencies of sound than traffic sources. However, few studies relating exposure to such noise from wind turbines to health effects are available. It is also unknown whether lower frequencies of sound generated outdoors are audible indoors, particularly when windows are closed”.

At section 4.2, page 100 the WHO state; “Further research into the health impacts from wind turbine noise is needed so that better-quality evidence can inform any future public health recommendations properly. For the assessment of health effects from wind turbines, the evidence was either unavailable or rated low/very low quality.”

More recently the International Acoustic Research Organisation (IARO) submitted an unsolicited response during 2021 to the WSP survey carried out on behalf of the government DBEIS (Now DESNZ) into the review of ETSU-R-97. However, this response was presumably rejected by WSP as it was not included in the WSP review.

The IARO document provides a highly critical appraisal of ETSU-R-97 and provides an insight into recent developments into wind turbine low frequency noise research. The IARO present compelling new evidence relating to wind turbine low frequency sound, its characteristics and effects.

The IARO response is available on their website www.iaro.org.nz and also as an Appendix to the INWG report titled: INWG Analysis of WSP Report titled: A review of noise guidance for onshore wind turbines. This INWG report was submitted to government during April 2023.

Despite the mounting evidence, there is a failure by the wind industry to acknowledge the potential for health impacts from wind turbine noise including low frequency noise, audible and non-audible, or any cumulative long-term effects. None of the wind industry noise working groups to date have included medical experts as authors yet they continue to claim insufficient evidence and deny any health issues.

The INWG has recommended to Government that independent research is required into the effects on health and well-being associated with wind turbine noise, including impacts from long term exposure, low frequency noise, infrasound, amplitude modulation and tonal noise as recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).