Health Canada just completed the most comprehensive and largest study on wind energy and health to date.  They collected data for two years, and they have released their summary report today.  The good news is – the results support what previous studies have concluded: wind turbines are not related to adverse health.

Read the complete summary from Health Canada, here.  Key findings are:

(Key findings can be found here in Health Canada's brochure about the study here.)

Illness and chronic disease*: No evidence was found to support a link between exposure to wind turbine noise and any of the self-reported illnesses (such as dizziness, tinnitus, migraines) and chronic conditions (such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes).

Stress*: No association was found between the multiple measures of stress (such as hair cortisol, blood pressure, heart rate, self-reported stress) and exposure to wind turbine noise.

Sleep*: The results of this study do not support an association between wind turbine noise and self-reported or measured sleep quality. 

Annoyance and quality of life: An association was found between increasing levels of wind turbine noise and individuals reporting to be very or extremely annoyed. No association was found with any significant changes in reported quality of life, or with overall quality of life and satisfaction with health. This was assessed using the abbreviated version of the World Health Organization’s Quality of Life Scale.

Noise: Calculated noise levels were found to be below levels that would be expected to directly affect health (World Health Organization— Community Noise Guidelines [1999]). This finding is consistent with self-reported and measured results of the study.

Low Frequency Noise: No additional benefit was observed in assessing LFN because C- and A-weighted levels were so highly correlated (r=0.94) that they essentially provided the same information. It was therefore not surprising that the relationship between annoyance and WTN levels was predicted with equal strength using dBC or dBA and that there was no association found between dBC levels and any of the self-reported illnesses or chronic health conditions assessed (e.g., migraines, tinnitus, high blood pressure, etc.)

* While some people reported some of the health conditions above, their existence was not found to change in relation to exposure to wind turbine noise.