Health

People who are subject to wind turbine noise more often mentioned sleep disturbances. In this project, we distinguished two types. In the questionnaire, people were asked how often they had trouble to fall asleep. Secondly, they were asked how often their sleep was interrupted by sound. This project found no increase in problems with falling asleep due to wind turbine sound annoyance. It did find an increase in sleep interruption though. Young people more often reported sleep interruption than elderly people. In this case also, people with economic benefit are less often interrupted in their sleep.

Respondents reporting annoyance by wind turbine sound also report having stress. With these effects it is difficult to distinguish cause from consequence. It could well be that wind turbine noise causes stress, but even so, a person who is stressed could more likely have a negative response to noise in general, or perhaps wind turbine noise in particular. More research would be necessary to determine what is the cause and what is the effect.

A curious finding in this research is that respondents living in the vicinity of a wind turbine have a higher prevalence of diabetes. We do not know whether this relationship will always be present. In this study, a large amount of data was tested. In some cases relations are found that are just coincidental. This might be the case here.