The evidence that human (not to mention animal and marine) health is being negatively impacted by industrial wind turbines is neither speculation nor the hyperbole of so-called “NIMBY’s.”1
Increasingly, scientists and experts across the globe are sounding the alarm on the significant impacts of industrial wind turbines on human health. Even the World Health Organization updated their noise guidlines in 2018 stating that there is “stronger evidence of the cardiovascular and metabolic effects of environmental noise… of new noise sources, namely wind turbine noise…” that it includes as “one of the top environmental hazards to both physical and mental health and well-being.”2
But that’s old news to those who have been researching the human health impacts for decades:
Contrary to the claims of the [wind] industry, there is a growing body of peer-reviewed research substantiating these [adverse] health claims.
Dr. Keith Stelling, MA, MNIMH, Dip Phyt, MCPP, cf. “Summary of Recent Research on Adverse Health Effects of Wind Turbines”, October, 2009
New Research, Mounting Warnings
Some of the most recent peer-reviewed research comes from Dr. Ursula Bellut-Staeck, a German doctor and science writer specializing in vascular physiology and microcirculation. She recently appeared before the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) as a sworn expert on the health effects of infrasound.
Infrasound generated from wind turbines is noise/sound pressure waves below 20 Hertz. These “pressure fluctuations” are rapid and can travel distances of 50km or more.3 Infrasound is also used as a sonic weapon for defensive applications or crowd control.4
When you get into anything below 20 Hz, you have exited the realm of noise and sound; you’re now in the dangerous vestibular domain of air pressure fluctuations. The human vestibular system along with various regulatory mechanisms in blood vessels are extremely sensitive to anything below 20 Hz.
Dr. Calvin Luther Martin, PhD; email to Wind Concerns, October 9, 2025
Dr. Bellut-Staeck’s research reveals that the constant transmission of these pressure fluctuations, which can pass through buildings and walls, impacts the endothelial cells of the human body, which regulate essential vital functions such as the immune system, cellular nutrition, waste product removal, and blood pressure regulation. The endothelial system, she warns, can eventually enter a state of inflammation and further health problems.
The secondary diseases: gradual loss of functions in all areas, such as the immune system, possibly including cancer, the balance of coagulation (leading to increased thrombosis and embolisms), and declining fertility, heart attack, stroke, heart insufficiency, vascular dementia.
Dr. Ursula Bellut-Staeck (update on July 27, 2025); cf. study in Journal of Clinical Medicine, April 2025
Her findings, which corroborate numerous other studies, led her to declare that infrasound “is a threat to the entire biodiversity.”5 She notes that regulatory bodies, like the AUC, are not taking infrasound into account. She pointed out that Rule 0012 [of Alberta’s regulations] does not deal with infrasound6 but “is only dealing with the audible part, therefore not dealing with the infrasound part, and the infrasound effects… What is not being considered is infrasound as a physical energy, and the scientific findings that relate to that, that should also be considered now.”7
Setbacks: 10km
In her video testimony before the AUC,8 Dr. Bellut-Staeck essentially called for a moratorium on any future project approvals to review the science, “because the evidence is high… of the direct findings” of harmful impacts. The Commission asked Dr. Bellut-Staeck what she regarded as a “safe setback from a wind turbine?” Her response:
Based on the studies… a safe distance would be over 10km, given the size and the frequencies emitted.
AUC Hearing #29377 on Oyen wind project, YouTube at 47:33
You read that right: industrial wind turbines should be no closer than 10km to human dwellings. This echoes the conclusions submitted to an Australian federal inquiry in 2011:
An immediate temporary halt in construction of wind turbines closer than 10km to human habitation until adequate research is completed, in order to determine what is a safe setback of turbines from homes and workplaces.
Dr. Sarah Laurie, MD, February 10, 2011, cf. “Submission to the Australian Federal Senate Inquiry on Rural Wind Farms”, p. 5
She notes, “Specifically, hypertension in conjunction with turbine operation has been reported up to 5km away, and body vibrations and nocturnal wakening in a panicked state up to 10km.”
In a Finnish study some eight years later, these recommendations were more than confirmed:
The pilot study carried out in Satakunta and Northern Ostrobothnia in Finland shows that the damage caused by infrasound from wind power plants will only decrease significantly more than 15 kilometers away from wind turbines… There were about three times more harmful or more serious symptoms near wind turbines (less or about 15 km from wind power plants) than further away.
Pilot study here (Mehtätalo et al. 2019); translation of study here
I personally would not live 20km away from them… We have identified the wind turbine acoustic signature in a home 12km away from the closest wind turbine.
Professor Mariana Alves-Pereira, “Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise (ILFN)”, YouTube.com
Professor Ken Mattison, PhD, who worked at Stanford and NASA with air acoustics and with the Swedish Defence Research Agency on underwater acoustics has added his voice to the growing chorus of scientists calling for setbacks. He notes animals studies showing them to flee an area if they are within 5km of wind turbines.
We really need to stop and investigate really how dangerous this infrasound is. Infrasound can potentially spread at least 10 kilometers at levels that have proven to be affect people. So I would say safe distance is most likely five to ten kilometers at least.
Professor Ken Mattison, PhD, Copenhagen, October 8, 2025; YouTube
Time to End the Experiment
Now that courts have recognized “wind turbine syndrome” as the collective impacts on human health; now that the testimonies of people of people across the planet have been corraborated;9 and now that the aforementioned peer-reviewed science shows the devastating impacts of wind turbines upon people and animals on the cellular level… it is time for this experiment to end. But the opposite has been happening; wind corporations are not only forging ahead, but they’re building turbines even larger next to rural communities, with few governments opposing them.10
What we have observed is that people who live near the bigger wind turbines develop more quickly and more intense health problems than people who live near smaller wind turbines… there’s no option for this person but to run… people are put into impossible situations — impossible situations.
Professor Mariana Alves-Pereira, “Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise (ILFN)”, YouTube.com
The most stringent setbacks we have found are in Slovakia, where the Public Health Office requires towers to be located at least three kilometres from inhabited areas, with a minimum height of 150 metres.11 But even this falls far short of the recommendations cited above.
Yet, even if 10km setbacks were instituted, this doesn’t resolve the impacts on wildlife. Henning Theorell, MD, and Maria Vemdal, M.Sc. note that “noise and vibrations from wind turbines cause stress in various animals, evidenced by elevated cortisol levels in the serum and hair follicles of geese and badgers when they are close to wind turbines… Reports indicate that badgers abandon their dens, moose and reindeer flee from wind industries during operation and return when the wind is still, and birds vacate areas with wind power installations, both domestically and internationally.”12 Nor does it address the now well-documented decimation of insects and bats.
The answer is to place an immediate moratorium on any future development of wind turbines and initiate an immediate scientific and medical review of existing turbine installations. It’s not politically correct to question so-called “green energy”, but in light of over two decades of damning evidence, it’s absolutely the morally correct response.
- Those who say, “Not in my back yard.”[↩]
- “New WHO noise guidelines for Europe released”, October 10, 2018; www.who.int[↩]
- Marcillo et al.’s study in 2015 discovered that “Infrasound from a 60-turbine wind farm was found to propagate to distances up to 90 km under nighttime atmospheric conditions.” cf. “On infrasound generated by wind farms and its propagation in low-altitude tropospheric waveguides”, August 21, 2015[↩]
- cf. Killing Me Softly[↩]
- windconcerns.com/infrasound-a-huge-threat-to-the-entire-biodiversity-says-doctor/[↩]
- cf. We’re Measuring the Wrong Thing[↩]
- AUC Hearing #29377 on Oyen wind project, YouTube at 52:21[↩]
- Hearing #29377; the videos have since been hidden from the AUC’s site but have been duplicated here.[↩]
- see stories here and here[↩]
- cf. www.windconcerns.com/county-of-st-paul-restricts-turbine-heights/[↩]
- www.windconcerns.com/slovakia-turbines-to-be-set-3kms-from-habitations/[↩]
- cf. www.windconcerns.com/egg-mortality-increases-near-wind-turbines-study/[↩]
Mark Mallett is a former award-winning reporter with CTV Edmonton and an independent researcher and author. His family homesteaded between Vermilion and Cold Lake, Alberta, and now resides in the Lakeland region. Mark is Editor in Chief of Wind Concerns.