Research blow for wind farm-related 'illness'

A group of researchers who studied complaints about wind farms in Australia found that health and noise complaints are actually quite rare.

According to their study in Plos One, the researchers took a look at all 51 of Australia's wind farms, and then looked at the complaints they had gotten.

33 of them never got any complaints at all, despite the fact that  21,633 residents lived within 5 km of them.

Apparently the complaints appear to have mostly been due to people being told wind farms are bad for their health - with the vast majority of them coming after 2009 when anti-wind farm groups began adding health to their concerns as part of their opposition.

Before that these complaints were even rarer.

"129 individuals across Australia (1 in 254 residents) appear to have ever complained, with 94 (73%) being residents near 6 wind farms targeted by anti wind farm groups," the researchers wrote.

The researchers figure that this is all consistent with the idea that the illness being reported is in fact consistent with "psychogenic hypotheses that expressed health problems are “communicated diseases” with nocebo effects likely to play an important role in the aetiology of complaints."

Or in plain English people heard the wind farms could be bad for them, so they started feeling sick.