Health effects of wind towers hyped by media

The following article appeared in the Lewiston (Me.) Sun Journal May 12 and is reprinted here with permission of the author, Richard Jennings, M.D.

Slate Magazine is not generally thought of as a medical journal, but in its recent issue it seems to have confronted, and clarified, a massive medical myth about wind power, conceived in northern New York by a pediatrician and nurtured in Maine by a radiologist, with potentially negative worldwide consequences.

In the Slate article, “communication illness” is suggested as a possible title for this disorder, which may be appropriate as, despite claims, it never made it to the medical literature and seems to be transmitted through the media.

Claims of negative health effects from wind turbines may have begun in England, but a New York pediatrician, Nina Pierpont, M.D., seems to have taken them up, full force, but without much thought or evidence. She self-published “Wind Turbine Syndrome,” a book now out of print, that was seized upon by the anti-wind factions.

Claimed to have been “peer reviewed,” it was, instead, reviewed by selected associates. Pierpont has since spoken extensively to the New York legislature and as far away as the Australian Parliament with various claims of harm related to wind. Strangely, a Maine radiologist from Fort Kent, Michael Nissenbaum M.D., enthusiastically took up the cause.

His “research” consisted of interviews with 15 families in Mars Hill, all anecdotal reports, which he parlayed into what he claimed was possible publication in the New England Journal. (That never happened.)

Nonetheless, Dr. Nissenbaum remains undeterred, and has given legislative testimony in Vermont, and been quoted extensively