Crack Neuro-Physiologist, Professor Alec Salt was interviewed by Alan Jones last week and laid out – in clear and simple terms just why so many people are suffering the adverse heath impacts caused by turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound.
Oh, and Alan gives the great wind power fraud a little curry from the first bounce.
Alan has a little radio show that more than just a few Australians tune into each morning. Syndicated through over 77 Stations and with close to 2 million listeners Countrywide – AJ as he’s known – is one of those people that leads the political charge on many issues that really affect ordinary Australians and which the rest of the press ignore.
To hear the interview click on the player below.
The transcript follows:
Alan Jones: Look if you sat where I sit, you would not believe the correspondence that comes across my desk in relation to household bills, and we talked about health insurance recently, but in particular electricity prices. Businesses and individuals just saying simply ‘something has to give’. Why are they the way that they are?
Well the carbon dioxide tax is one of the issues, but as I said last night on the show with Richo on Sky news the Renewable Energy Target says that we have to have 40% of our electricity power from renewable energy by 2035. Just that. Don’t worry about the consequences of this. Over and above the carbon dioxide tax consumers are paying in New South Wales at least $200 a year each more for these green subsidies.
Now Tony Abbott brilliantly, not long after he became Prime Minister, and during the election campaign said he wasn’t going to run down the road with a bucket of money after Holden. He told SPC Ardmona there was no taxpayers money. He told Toyota there was no tax payers money. Why then it is their taxpayers money for wind power and solar power?
As I said on television last night, Richo and I could run a business if the costs was picked up by the taxpayer. And as Alby Schultz said, now retired from the Federal seat of Hume, to be replaced by the quite brilliant newcomer Angus Taylor, Alby Schultz said that in Hume alone, one Federal seat, the turbines subsidies are between $500 million and a billion dollars a year. $10 billion over 10 years. Billion! As he said you can rebuild the Goulburn hospital for $150 million. You can fix mobile and TV blackspots for $2 million. You can duplicate the Barton Highway for $600 million and this is the age when we were supposed to be ending entitlements. As John McEnroe would say, ‘you can’t be serious’. This must end.
I’ve got endless letters from business people. Just one alone – an industrial user the other day, got a $244,000 electricity bill. $32,500 attributable to renewable energy targets. $45,000 for the carbon tax. Every individual faces higher electricity bills due to a carbon dioxide tax and this Renewable Energy Target.
This is all this CO2 rubbish that we’ve gone on with. The sheer cost of this ideological nonsense especially when we have brown coal reserves that would last 539 years, black coal reserves which would last for 111 years and we are sabotaging our greatest competitive advantage – cheap energy – by pushing the price of power through the roof and business knows this. Big business writes to me. I don’t know why they don’t write to government? Surely if you wanted to harm your country you would put your energy security at risk. The idea that you could power a modern economy with giant steel wind turbines and solar energy verges on criminal stupidity.
I mentioned recently that Professor Hughes from Edinburgh University calculated the UK bill for wind energy by 2020 will cost British consumers a staggering 120 billion dollars. Here according to the rubbish peddled since Rudd became Prime Minister, before the end of this decade, it’s 2014 now, we’ll have spent $17 billion erecting between 7 to 10,000 wind turbines. You’re paying.
Worldwide they are waking up about the cost of this and what it’s doing to health. And this renewable energy nonsense has got no currency in Europe. Germany and China are pushing ahead with new coal-fired electricity plants because of political and public concern over the cost of renewable energy and the health consequences of wind turbines. Britain’s once Conservative-led government is in open revolt. And even Energy Australia’s Chief Executive, Richard McIndoe said two years ago, there is no social licence to ramp up the construction of wind farms so rapidly, he said. We are just going to end up flat on our face, from a social licence prospective because the social licence isn’t there.
But these things are everywhere, in every state in Australia. Conga lines of them. The deputy chief health officer of Victoria refuses to conduct a health impact statement. People have been getting sick for years. No one assesses the noise inside peoples’ homes. Under government guidelines it doesn’t have to be measured. And this is going on all over Australia.
Anne Gardner in the middle of this wretched Macarthur wind farm in Victoria wrote to AGL and said, ‘come down here for a few nights, stay with us, stay with the Jan Hetherington, stay with Ron Gelbart, stay with Simon and Louise Manifold. Stay with Maria and Colin Linke. 140 turbines of enormous size. She wrote to Scott Thomas the general manager of power development with AGL. She said ‘I wonder how you would feel if you and your wife were affected in the same way that we’ve been impacted over the last few months?
This monster is destroying us.’ This is from a health perspective.
Yet it if it weren’t for government subsidies wind power would never ever be cost-effective. Wind turbines are technological and economic white elephants. And of course when the wind doesn’t blow, no electricity. They’re expensive and inefficient. And they are unhealthy. Now the wind industry itself is proof that there are unhealthy because wind companies are paying people to put these wind turbines on their property and then sign them to secrecy.
Listen to this letter which came to me. One contract, quote, can’t tell you who the poor bugger was, because he would get blown away, but the contract says this the landholder, he’s had to sign up, this is in his contract. The landholder acknowledges and agrees, that it accepts the noise impacts which the landholder also agrees will not cause him or her nuisance. And agrees that he or she will not make any claim, objection or complaint and releases the developer from any claim of liability. The bloke doesn’t know what to do. Wind turbine renewable energy – this is Pink Batts, the Building the Education Revolution and NBN altogether – and yet, nothing is being done. Tony Abbott has to scrap this stuff immediately.
Well, you then get the AMA on March 18, releasing a position paper on wind farms. The AMA do you mind, no listed authors. No information that has anything to do with health research. But the AMA supporting wind farm development applications, and there’s been an outcry from across the world. A South Australian Doctor, Dr Gary Hopkins, has 30 years experience as a physician. He wrote to the AMA – quote – ‘I am rendered speechless by your irresponsible, ill researched, ill advised and reckless statement that those who might suffer physical effects from the presence of wind turbines, are suffering a psychological condition, anxiety. Your very statement itself causes anxiety in those likely to be affected.’
This is the AMA, in bed with the wind turbine industry.
And as I’ve said many times if these things didn’t cause ill-health, why wouldn’t we put them in Macquarie Street? Or Parramatta Road? Or Collins Street Melbourne? In Kings Park in the middle of Perth, if they didn’t cause any problems in relation to health? There are people all over Australia are writing to me about this health issue. I don’t know why they don’t write to government, but they’re desperate. They have become refugees in their own homes. In their own land.
The Irish Department of health recently warned people who live near wind turbines that they risk having their health and psychological well-being compromised. The deputy chief medical officer in Ireland said, ‘there is a consistent cluster of symptoms related to wind turbine syndrome which occurs in a number of people in the vicinity of industrial wind turbines’ you see, wind turbine syndrome. This is when they’re in earshot of the noise made by these blades as they spin around. And these blades make what are called infra-sound vibrations, and you can’t consciously hear them, but they have an effect on the inner ear. And they cause fatigue and dizziness and headaches and insomnia and all the rest of it.
Yet AGL recently sent, yes in the same AGL from up Gloucester way, sent a letter to 12 medical centres in south-west Victoria, AGL, they are wind turbine vandals too, 12 medical centres in south-western Victoria, in November 2012, the letters have just come to light. I’ve got a copy of it. They’ve informed doctors that there was no evidence of health impacts from wind turbines and that should any patient present with symptoms, that they attribute to AGL’s turbines AGL recommends the doctors tell patients to consult either AGL or the AGL website. The website also indicates that wind turbines have no impact on health. This is a large Australian Company, AGL, attempting to influence medical doctors – and it has in a significant part of Victoria, violating the privacy of patients resulting in doctors neglecting patient illness and refusing to help sick people. Where is government? Stands by.
Professor Alec Salt is an eminent world authority from the Washington University School of Medicine. In a journal last week, called Acoustics Today, he said the measurement of turbine noise used by the wind industry, and all Australian regulatory agencies was highly misleading as it masked the level of infra-sound. Yet here we have our own AMA stating
that sub-audible infra-sound cannot cause health effects. On the line from Missouri, Saint Louis, Professor Salt. Professor Alec Salt good morning.
Alec Salt: Good morning.
Alan Jones: You’ve got expertise in this field, what do you make of the AMA?
Alec Salt: Their position is – it’s very cleverly crafted words. They talk about whether the health effects are accepted and basically any scientific issue, there is always a degree of acceptance. If you look at either global warming or evolution, there are some people that don’t accept these things. So the point is that, they’re sheltering behind very carefully crafted words. There is good evidence …
Alan Jones: Yes, good evidence, go on.
Alec Salt: Yes there is good evidence, we have good evidence that this sound is definitely picked up by the ear. I mean the sounds that you can’t hear, the infrasounds down to 1 Hz or something, that’s one cycle per second, we know that this is detected by the ear at quite low levels and even though you don’t hear it, it is still stimulating the ear and potentially affecting you in other ways.
Alan Jones: And what does it do to people?
Alec Salt: Well, from our perspective, it may account for the sleep disturbance people have, like thunderstorms wake you up you know even though they are far away, thunderstorms wake people up because it’s the low frequency of the thunderstorm that you’re detecting. So the point is if, they, wind turbines generate a lot of low frequency like this, it’s potentially it’s going through pathways that lead to disturbing of sleep.
Alan Jones: So what impact, I mean does this have, could this have on pregnant women, on children, on the elderly, on neighbours?
Alec Salt: Well obviously if you’re, if you’re disturbing people’s lives there are other symptoms people have – that we think the sound is generating a condition called endolymphic hydrops in the ear and this gives rise to symptoms like dizziness, you feel like you are seasick so there is nausea, mild nausea feeling slightly dizzy and upset. I mean if people are living like that long term, then of course it’s going to be bad for the health.
Alan Jones: Yes. But the AGL, one of the proponents of wind farming here, sends a letter to 12 medical centres in south-west Victoria informing doctors that there is no evidence of
health impacts from wind turbines and tells them what they should do if patients present with symptoms. What would you say to that?
Alec Salt: I’m appalled by it. I mean, basically the medical profession claims the acoustician should be protecting people from these things. So the idea that the medical profession is saying is telling these people to go away, it’s in their imagination, it’s a nocebo effect, all this claptrap that they tell people. I mean, it’s outrageous to be honest. Basically, people should, I mean if you go to a doctor with most other ailments, they will consider it and try to find the cause of the problem.
Alan Jones: Didn’t we have this with tobacco and asbestos where massive amounts of money were made to persuade the world that there were no consequences of tobacco smoking.
Alec Salt: And that’s exactly the problem now that you have a very powerful and well funded industry that is trying to protect their turf, to protect their financial interests. And eventually science will prove what is going on. But it requires scientists who are not affected by the money that’s sloshing around supporting these things.
Alan Jones: Professor Salt, we will leave it there, and I am glad that we have spoken to you, but we may need to speak again.
Alec Salt: OK.
Alan Jones: Can I just say though that I was sent a quote the other day from the novelist Emile Zola, “if you shut up truth and bury it under the ground it well but grow and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.’ And this may well be the fate of those politicians and others who have turned a blind eye to the problems associated with wind turbines, coal seam gas and the lot of it. I don’t apologise for alerting you to these issues. Everyone I meet says ‘well I wouldn’t want to live in a coal seam gas field’, every one I speak to, ‘well I wouldn’t like to live next to a wind turbine’. What do we do as Australians? Just let other people suffer? Not Alan Jones.
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