Can expectations produce symptoms from infrasound associated with wind turbines?

Abstract

Healthy volunteers, when given information about the expected physiological effect of infrasound, reported symptoms that aligned with that information, during exposure to both infrasound and sham infrasound. Symptom expectations were created by viewing information readily available on the Internet, indicating the potential for symptom expectations to be created outside of the laboratory, in real world settings. Results suggest psychological expectations could explain the link between wind turbine exposure and health complaints.

The effect of infrasound and negative expectations to adverse pathological symptoms from wind farms

“…Whilst it is noted that this experiment is of short-term duration exposure, there are claims that even short-term exposure to infrasound (within 20 min) can cause symptoms. The experimental procedure was designed to replicate Crichton et al 15 with an important difference being the method of generation of infrasound at an appropriate noise level. The final experiment was a double blind study of 72 volunteers, wherein their expectations of harmful health effects from infrasound were influenced into either a state of HE, or LE.…”

“…These results are consistent with the nocebo hypothesis. 15,16 However, if one compares the level of infrasound recorded at Shirley Wind Farm and other wind farms, 17,12 the level of infrasound produced in the Crichton study was too low (40-50 dB, unreported as to whether this is rms or peak and whether the sound was sinusoidal or not). In addition, the duration of exposure to infrasound was 10 min.…”

Subjective perception of wind turbine noise - The stereo approach

“…Other testing purporting to assess the impact of infrasound from turbines, has not actually used the infrasound signal but has used either pure tones [28] [29] or a synthesised signal based a result of an FFT Leq analysis of the original signal and incorrectly claimed such noise sources as being "wind farm infrasound".…”

Reproducing wind farm infrasound for subjective testing – Just how accurate is the reproduced signal?

“…Crichton [9] & [10] has used single infrasound tones inserted into broad band noise for an assessment of "wind turbine infrasound".…”

“…The presentation of synthesised signal of turbine noise as a result of a creating a signal based upon the individual FFT components of a time average (rather than a WAVE file of the original signal) has been used to show the inaudible infrasound frequencies do not impact upon people [6], [7], & [8], by suggesting that the synthesised signal or pure sine waves [9] & [10] is a representation of the signal residents receive as a result of an operational wind farm.…”