How Can Something So Green Be So Bad for You?
Under current federal incentives for “green” energy sources, developers have been rushing to place wind turbines in many rural areas. Indeed, even before the Obama administration’s current emphasis on renewable energy, wind farm development has grown rather dramatically in the last decade, as shown by this time elapsed map of installed wind capacity.
In a recent ABA Journal article, the author notes that many neighbors of proposed wind farms have been challenging the placement of the giant turbines near their homes. Most such challenges have occurred before local land use authorities or state public utility boards, but some have been filed in court.
Most interesting from the mass tort perspective is this: at least some challenges to wind turbine developments have been based upon the purported human health effects of the turbines. Nearby homeowners claim that the low level sound, vibration and shadow flicker from the spinning turbines cause a host of non-specific complaints, such as sleep disruption, headaches, nausea and fatigue.
Lending support to these claims is a pediatrician from upstate New York, Dr. Nina Pierpont, who conducted a study of 40 subjects and concluded that wind turbines cause the following effects: “sleep disturbance and deprivation, headache, tinnitus (ringing in ears), ear pressure, dizziness, vertigo (spinning dizziness), nausea, visual blurring, tachycardia (fast heart rate), irritability, problems with concentration and memory, and panic episodes associated with sensations of movement or quivering inside the body that arise while awake or asleep.” Dr. Pierpont has coined a term for this collection of symptoms: “Wind Turbine Syndrome.” She is currently selling her study in the form of a book.
Most other experts agree that there is little or no epidemiological support for any association between wind turbines and any recognized health condition. One example of a rigorous literature review reaching this conclusion was presented last month. At the request of the American Renewable Energy Association, a panel of experts in Audiology, Acoustics, Otolaryngology, and Occupational and Environmental Medicine reviewed the literature regarding the health effects of wind turbines. Their review and conclusions were discussed at a webinar last month. The video, full transcript and PowerPoint slides from that webinar area available at the US Department of Energy website.
While “good science” would appear to favor developers and manufacturers of wind turbines, veterans of the silicone breast implant wars will be forgiven if the series of common and non-specific symptoms comprising “Wind Turbine Syndrome” are hauntingly reminiscent of the symptoms supposed to make up “Silicone Adjuvant Disease” and other “new” diseases associated with silicone according to plaintiffs’ experts in that litigation. Despite the absence of any epidemiological evidence to establish an association between silicone implants and established systemic disease of any kind, the implant litigation dragged on for over 15 years. The experts on the plaintiff’s side played a role in FDA’s ban of the devices, and the claims drove defendant Dow Corning into bankruptcy. Ultimately, an independent panel of experts appointed by federal judge Sam Pointer found no association between silicone implants and any systemic health effects, effectively ending the litigation.
So, mass tort lawyers, stay tuned. Today’s NIMBY (“Not in My Back Yard”) opponents of wind power developments may be tomorrow’s mass tort plaintiffs.
