
‘Annoyance’ is a term much used, and frequently abused, in relation to the acoustic torture caused by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound.
Those that abuse the term, including a former tobacco advertising guru, claim that the known and obvious effects of being immersed in thumping waves of pulsating air pressure (ie noise and vibration), night after merciless night (such as sleep deprivation) are all the product of fertile imaginations and/or scaremongering.
Unfortunately for the guru and his shameful ilk, cases such as Clive and Trina Gare put paid to that lie. The Gares are cattle graziers with their home property situated between Hallett and Jamestown and, since October 2010, have played host to 19, 2.1MW Suzlon s88 turbines, which sit on a range of hills to the West of their stately homestead. Under their contract with AGL they receive around $200,000 a year; and have pocketed over $1 million since the deal began.
On 10 June 2015, the Gares gave evidence to the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud during its Adelaide hearing: [Hansard from the hearing is available here as HTML and here as a PDF (the Gare’s evidence commencing at p55)].
Their evidence destroys the wind industry lie that turbine hosts never, ever complain; and the propaganda that it’s only “jealous” wind farm neighbours who complain about wind turbine noise, “jealous” because they’re not getting paid, apparently. The Gares pocket $200,000 a year for the ‘pleasure’ of hosting 19 of these things; and, yet, make it very clear that it was the worst decision of their lives.
In their evidence they describe the noise from turbines as “unbearable”; requiring earplugs and the noise from the radio to help them get to sleep at night; and the situation when the turbines first started operating in October 2010 as “Crap, to put it honestly” – evidence which is entirely consistent with the types of complaints made routinely by wind farm neighbours who don’t get paid, in Australia and around the world. Despite AGL spending tens of thousands on noise “mitigation” measures – double glazing, sound deadening insulation and the like, the noise from turbines continues to ruin their ability to sleep in their own home, as Trina Gare put it:
No, they were waking me up on the weekend. You wake up to the thumping. This is with all the soundproofing in the house. As I said, I sleep with the radio on every night. If they are really cranked up I have to turn the volume up, so I will probably just go slowly deaf.
In her evidence Trina Gare stated, in the same terms as her husband Clive, that:
In my opinion, towers should not be any closer than five kilometres to a dwelling. If we had to buy another property, it would not be within a 20-kilometre distance to a wind farm. I think that says it all.
For more on the Gare’s experience, see our post here.
As to the real meaning of the term ‘annoyance’ – in the realm of acoustics (which is what matters here) it has nothing to do with whether wind farm neighbours detest the look these things; and is all to do with hard-wired and involuntary neurological responses to a man-made stimuli received and processed in the brain.
Waking up to a clap of thunder or the screaming siren of a smoke alarm is an integral part of a biological system designed to respond to unseen, nocturnal threats and to, thereby, keep itself alive. So far, so obvious.
For a properly qualified expert’s view on annoyance, here’s what Dr Bob McMurtry told the Senate Inquiry last year:
First, adverse health effects have been reported globally in the environs of wind turbines for more than 30 years with the old design and the new.
Second, the wind energy industry has denied adverse health effects, preferring to call it ‘annoyance’ even though annoyance, however, is an adverse health effect. Certainly it is a non-trivial effect when sustained because it results in ‘sleep disruption’, ‘stress’ and ‘psychological distress’— those are direct quotes from others’ research.
Third, annoyance is recognised and was treated by the World Health Organization as an adverse health effect, which is a risk factor for serious chronic disease including cardiovascular and cancer.
Fourth, experts retained by the wind energy industry have preferred the diagnosis of nocebo effect to explain the adverse health effects, but the claim does not withstand critical scrutiny as there is a dose-response effect and nocebo does not have a dose-response effect. And there is a clear correlation between exposure and adverse health effects. Researchers have talked about dose-response. I should also comment that making that diagnosis without a comprehensive evaluation of a person or patient would qualify as non-practice, and I know that has been said in this committee before.
One question though is what it is about wind turbine noise emissions, that makes them just so incredibly annoying?
That question was taken up by a team of American researchers and the answer was published last month in the Journal of the Acoustic Society of America. This time, the work was done in the lab, with volunteers exposed for half-a-minute; rather than on unwilling victims subjected to a life-time of relentless sonic torture.
We have picked out the thrust of the study below and the whole paper is available in PDF here: Short-term annoyance reactions to stationary and time-varying wind turbine and road traffic noise
To the wind industry’s countless victims, the results will come as no surprise.
Short-term annoyance reactions to stationary and time-varying wind turbine and road traffic noise
Journal of the Acoustic Society of America 139, 2949 (2016)
Beat Schäffer, Sabine J. Schlittmeier, Reto Pieren, Kurt Heutschi, Mark Brink, Ralf Graf and Jürgen Hellbrück
24 May 2016
Abstract
Current literature suggests that wind turbine noise is more annoying than transportation noise. To date, however, it is not known which acoustic characteristics of wind turbines alone, i.e., without effect modifiers such as visibility, are associated with annoyance.
The objective of this study was therefore to investigate and compare the short-term noise annoyance reactions to wind turbines and road traffic in controlled laboratory listening tests. A set of acoustic scenarios was created which, combined with the factorial design of the listening tests, allowed separating the individual associations of three acoustic characteristics with annoyance, namely, source type (wind turbine, road traffic), A-weighted sound pressure level, and amplitude modulation (without, periodic, random).
Sixty participants rated their annoyance to the sounds. At the same A-weighted sound pressure level, wind turbine noise was found to be associated with higher annoyance than road traffic noise, particularly with amplitude modulation.
The increased annoyance to amplitude modulation of wind turbines is not related to its periodicity, but seems to depend on the modulation frequency range. The study discloses a direct link of different acoustic characteristics to annoyance, yet the generalizability to long-term exposure in the field still needs to be verified.
What they did
In this study the researchers recruited 60 participants (ages 18-60; median age 35 years; self reporting that they had normal hearing and felt well at the time of the experiment) and asked them to listen to 30 sounds (each 25 second long recordings) in a semi-sound proof room.

While listening to each of the individual sounds, separated only by a second, they were asked to respond (using a computer) to this question:
When you imagine that this is the sound situation in your garden, what number from 0 to 10 represents best how much you would be bothered, disturbed or annoyed by it?”
The sounds had been synthesized to represent wind turbine noise or road traffic noise of equivalent A weighted sound pressure levels. Comparisons were made over a range of sound pressure levels and with different types of amplitude modulation.

‘Without amplitude modulation’ corresponds to a stationary noise. Wind turbine noise with periodic amplitude modulation represent situations with high-frequency swishing (normal amplitude modulation) as well as low-frequency thumping sounds (other amplitude modulation). Random amplitude modulation is more typical of road traffic noise on streets with low or intermediate traffic density. The authors acknowledged that because that some of these noises (such as periodic traffic noise) would not necessarily occur in nature but were included for completeness in the study.

At all sound pressure levels tested, the participants found that wind turbine noise was more annoying that its road traffic noise equivalent.
They even looked at how long it took for the participants to record their annoyance – and in all tests wind turbine noise was found to be more annoying and at a much earlier time, when compared to road traffic noise. In fact, as participants listened to more samples of wind turbine noise they became increasingly more annoyed and formed their opinion quicker as they became accustomed to just how annoying wind turbine sounds could be.

As part of their study they tried to prove that the characteristics of the participants were not playing a role in how annoying they were finding wind turbine noise. They were able to eliminate gender, age, how sensitive the person was annoyance in general, as well as their attitude towards the sources (wind turbine noise or road traffic noise). Wind turbine noise was just more annoying to everyone.
They pooled the results and compared annoyance to the A weighted equivalent continuous sound pressure level with and without the different types of amplitude modulation. Periodic and random modulation of wind turbine noise increased the annoyance, but the same pattern could not be seen in road traffic noise. They concluded that the increased annoyance reaction to amplitude modulation of wind turbine noise was not related so much to the period, but more on the modulation frequency range.

While the study has plenty of obvious limitations – subjects were only exposed to a short sound grab of 25 seconds – by way of comparison with road traffic noise, it vindicates wind farm victims and provides yet more objective proof to reject the wind industry’s nocebo nonsense, if any more was needed.
Oh, and if the factor of human fallibility in this experiment troubles scientific types, why not check out the ‘experiment’ being conducted with Britain’s Badgers Wind in the Gallows: Study Shows Badgers Suffer Merciless Stress & Torment from Wind Turbine Noise & Vibration
Pretty hard to suggest that badgers suffering immune system destroying stress for the very same reasons – exposure to incessant wind turbine noise and vibration – are, somehow, victims of ‘suggestibility’ or their aesthetic take on these things.
Slowly, but surely, the evidence supplants the lies and the myths.

MELODIE MCLANE: YOU KNOW YOU LIVE TOO CLOSE TO A WIND PROJECT IN VERMONT WHEN …
Editor’s note: This commentary is by Melodie McLane, who is a neighbor of the Georgia Mountain Community Wind project.
• You dread checking the mail because you probably have another filing from the Department of Public Service that supports the wind developer in every way possible, even though they supposedly work for you.
• You do a slow burn because someone has written that you will participate in the Public Service Board’s noise investigation only because you lost. Lost what? The right to sleep at night?
• You spend every Sunday afternoon meeting with the neighbors that are still speaking to you to write discovery questions, answers, briefs, comments and to do research.
• You have stupid looking equipment set up near your house to monitor sound from the turbines.
• You laugh at the look of shock on people’s faces when you tell them to be aware that everything they say is being recorded outside when that stupid looking equipment is there.
• You have to sign a release saying that you give yourself permission to listen to your own conversations before the wind company will release the raw data from the monitoring to you.
• You plan your barbecues and neighborhood parties around whether that stupid looking equipment is there.
• You go ahead and have that barbecue or party regardless and get perverse pleasure out of blasting loud music all night at that stupid looking equipment in order to drown out all conversations.
• You realize the noise from the turbines gets louder when they take that stupid looking equipment away.
• You think you are going to stroke out if one more person says “I drove over to New York and listened to the ones there and couldn’t hear anything.” Were they running at full capacity?
• You understand why your father used to sit and swear at the television when a politician was talking.
• You know the true meaning of “campaign donations” and “follow the money.”
• You have “wind friends” who you can talk freely with about the stupidity of wind and then you have “regular friends” with whom you never discuss wind.
• You go to work ticked off and exhausted because you could hear the turbines rumbling all night, even with your windows shut.
• You are dreading summer, even after one of the most miserable winters on record, because the noise is worse when you open your windows.
• You used to love a good snowstorm but now it just means more noise with all the moisture in the air and southwesterly winds.
• You used to love going to bed at night in the summer with your windows wide open, listening to the rain. Now you shut your windows and turn the fans on to drown out the turbine noise, because it’s always louder when it rains.
•You look out at your garden and remember how peaceful it used to be to work in it. Now it’s just an annoying place to be.
• You used to love having your morning coffee on your south porch, but now you are driven away from it by noise.
You try sitting on your back porch, but the noise is worse back there because the noise bounces off from the ledges behind your house.
• You open your door in the morning and think you hear a jet flying over really low, but then realize it’s just the turbines.
You have pet names for noises that come from the mountain. There is the airplane noise, train rumbling noise, whale noise and semi-truck noise.
• You open your door in the morning and think the turbines are really loud, but it’s just a jet flying over really low.
• You have pet names for noises that come from the mountain. There is the airplane noise, train rumbling noise, whale noise and semi-truck noise.
• You are angry because the turbines are running and you can’t sleep.
• You are angry because the turbines aren’t running and someone ruined a perfectly good mountain for no reason.
• You want to stroke out every time you hear a wind developer say that you only complain about the noise because you didn’t want the project there in the first place. You didn’t want the wind project so close to your house because you knew it would be noisy.
• You want to stroke out every time you hear a wind developer say that only “two or three” neighbors complain about the noise. Those neighbors are the only ones who are ridiculously close to the project.
• You are shocked when the project owner starts using the Facebook group, Victims of Industrial Wind, to tout the merits of wind when most of the people in this group are suffering from sleep loss every day from wind.
• You are shocked when that owner says on his Facebook page that he has a Trunk Monkey by each turbine on Georgia Mountain to keep the anti-wind people away. Trunk Monkeys shoot people with guns and beat people up with tire irons.
• You are up checking the victims group at 4 a.m. on a regular basis to see if someone else is being kept awake by the noise.
• You are in constant disbelief at how loud 45 dBA is.
• You know that some people will make nasty NIMBY comments about this when they read it, but you have been bullied and called names so much that it doesn’t even hurt anymore.