Analysis of Open Letters to the British Medical Association

Posted Category: Health

 

OPEN LETTER TO TIM BOURNE 2 19.06.14.

OPEN LETTER to Sir Sabaratnam ArulkumaranPresident of the BMA. 21.0614

FINAL TO PRESIDENT OF BMA finalof the BMA.2. 24.06.14

 

Given the vital importance of adequate good quality sleep to maintain physical and mental health, the determined ignorance of the serious impact of wind turbine noise alone by the medical profession is verging on ‘wilful blindness’.

Wilful blindness: An attempt to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally putting oneself in a position to be unaware of facts which create liability.

Those who have closely studied this subject know full well that this has nothing to do with climate change – it is an issue of Environmental Noise pollution which is NOT being properly regulated because the very frequencies known 30 years ago to directly cause harm are not being monitored. The public and those responsible for their health deserve to be fully informed about all emerging peer reviewed reports available relating to a technology being imposed upon the whole country.

It is abundantly clear that noise pollution is the ‘elephant in the room’ for the wind industry – and for those governing the country needing the information. As referred to in the Open Letter to the BMA President, the Kelley research is therefore really important to re-examine. ETSU-R-97 can therefore be described as a “licence to harm” or ” licence to damage’ people’s health. There is noexcuse or justification for this omission of infrasound and low frequency noise, especially when the NASA research in 1989 showed that with turbulent air flowing in the upwind bladed turbines could be very good at generating both. Information received is that, as the wind industry well knows, their acoustic experts persuaded the government not to measure the very sound frequencies which were found to cause the adverse symptoms directly 30 years ago.

NB: ETSU-R-97: The environmental assessment of noise from wind turbines in the United Kingdom. A methodology that is now considered, by some independent acousticians, as not fit for purpose and woefully out of date with turbine sizes far greater today than in 1997.

This is identical to the behaviour of other corporate vested interests hiding the truth about their products – for example the Tobacco companies, the companies mining and using asbestos, and the pharmaceutical company making thalidomide. 

When will we learn to protect people first and put profits second?

It is therefore imperative that these matters are now examined at the highest level by the General Medical Council and Government Health Departments as a foremost UK Medical Authority has apparently closed its ‘eyes and ears’ to that to which it has been alerted.

The BMA and its members have a duty of care to all UK residents including rural residents. There is a rising potential for harm tomany vulnerable rural residents especially the elderly, young children, and the chronically ill. It will inevitably affect urban inhabitants when nearer proposal sites are consented. The question remaining is have the BMA acted precipitously by not alerting their members to the serious material regarding industrial wind turbines they had in their possession, prior to their conference and subsequent vote regarding investing and supporting renewables?

To do anything else but support research and health protective noise pollution regulation (as the BMA would appear to be doing) is to act in a discriminatory fashion and smacks of hypocrisy.  Unregulated and excessive environmental noise, regardless of the source, is harmful to health.  Wind turbine noise is driving people out of their homes and harming the health and fertility of animals in captivity nearby as evidenced by the recent mink farm reports.

This being the case –

What about the impacts upon humans?

Dr Amanda Harry was the first UK clinical whistleblower on this issue – the BMA and the Health Authorities can no longer afford to ignore or deny this problem.

https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wind-turbines-noise-and-health/

As Professor Alec Salt has said in his latest summary of the neurophysiological research:

In the coming years, as we experiment to better understand the effects of prolonged low frequency sound on humans, it will be possible to reassess the roles played by acousticians and professional groups who partner with the wind industry”.

https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/how-does-wind-turbine-noise-affect-people/

Angela Armstrong, BMA member says:

“As a BMA member I was distressed to hear that our president has ignored pleas from Christine Metcalfe to ask doctors to monitor the health of patients living near turbines in view of the ever increasing evidence that there are significant health implications. Sadly I shouldn’t be surprised as over a year ago I wrote to local doctors to ask them to do the same and was met with complete apathy. I do expect my representative body (I have been a member since 1966) to look at health issues in an open and unbiased way. Imagine my horror when I discovered that the BMA conference has voted to transfer investments from fossil fuel energy to renewable energy. There is a serious conflict of interest here and we will be seen to be putting our financial investments before discussing the health implications of renewable energy. I am ashamed of my colleagues.”
Dr. Angela Armstrong M.B., Ch.B.   

It is a scandal that members were prevented from seeing relevant information before the vote.

Herewith Motion details.

http://www.medact.org/news/uk-doctors-vote-end-investments-fossil-fuel-industry/

http://bma.org.uk/working-for-change/arm-2014-info/agenda/finances-of-the-association

The BMA have thus far refused to answer the following questions.

 1.            In particular, what level of funding the BMA received and/or what association has been entered into either with wind power developers, their trade associations or members of the renewable industry?The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP)will be contacted for the same information.

A continual refusal to truthfully answer this simple query leaves only one conclusion remaining, which is that the BMA are involved on both levels.  The implications of this will be of interest to many. As stated before, in order to ensure full transparency for both members and the public on whom they depend, such dealings must always be accessible.  It is then for members to decide whether this is acceptable, or what effect this might have on their attitude to motions.  That these facts should be known before motions are voted upon would seem both obvious and crucial.

  1. Do you accept the evidence that sleep deprivation from wind turbine noise is occurring, and that sleep deprivation is extremely serious and health damaging?
    You will have presumably have seen Prof Alun Evan’s recent review and also the Arra and Lynn review, by two public health physicians in Canada which supported the concerns expressed in 2012 about wind turbine noise by Dr Chris Hanning and Professor Alun Evans published in the BMJ – your own journal.
  1. Would you support turning wind turbines off at night if there are noise complaints, so that people can sleep?
  1. Would you support conducting urgent multidisciplinary research involving full spectrum acoustic monitoring inside homes, and concurrent physiological monitoring of EEG, heart rate, blood pressure and sequential cortisol in those  people who are reporting adverse health effects?’

The following links are just a few among the plethora now circulating on the internet.

Professional opinion on the effects on humans of industrial turbines

This is a recent literature review by Professor Alun Evans(Professor Emeritus Alun Evans, Visiting Senior Research Fellow Centre for Public Health, The Queen’s University of Belfast Institute of Clinical Science B) with up to date references and he co-authored the other literature review in the British Medical Journal.’ 

https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wind-farms-and-health/

http://www.bayshorebroadcasting.ca/news_item.php?NewsID=67200

IMPORTANT. ‘Doctor Lynn says U.K. study finds infrasound could be cause of health side effects.’

There is audio for this story.
click to open MP3 version
or click the play button to listen now.

 

Comments of Dr Steve Rauch, the senior ENT specialist from Harvard:

“Dr. Steven Rauch, an otologist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and a professor at Harvard Medical School, believes WTS is real. Patients who have come to him to discuss WTS suffer from a “very consistent” collection of symptoms, he says. Rauch compares WTS to migraines, adding that people who suffer from migraines are among the most susceptible to turbines. There’s no existing test for either condition but “Nobody questions whether or not migraine is real.”

“The patients deserve the benefit of the doubt,” Rauch says. “It’s clear from the documents that come out of the industry that they’re trying very hard to suppress the notion of WTS and they’ve done it in a way that [involves] a lot of blaming the victim.”

Dr. Chris Hanning, formerly Consultant in Sleep Medicine, University Hospitals of Leicester  

His statement from article in the BMJ 2012;344:e1527 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e1527 (Published 8 March 2012) is that :-

“The evidence for adequate sleep as a prerequisite for human health, particularly child health, is overwhelming. Governments have recently paid much attention to the effects of environmental noise on sleep duration and quality, and to how to reduce such noise.1 However, governments have also imposed noise from industrial wind turbines on large swathes of peaceful countryside.”

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsr.12102/abstract

http://www.principia-scientific.org/wind-farms-and-health.html?utm_campaign=newsletter_april_3_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter

https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/owen-black-affidavit-re-wind-turbine-syndrome/#.UzoKwQaU0zc.facebook

Court Cases

Independent analysis demonstrated that the turbines would not only exceed the noise ordinance as proposed by CMS and adopted by Mason County but that the turbine noise would create widespread complaints and result in legal action by those subjected to this industrial development in a rural environment.”……

“This should be a warning that there is a price to be paid for ignoring the clear acoustical science that predicted this social disaster long before the first shovel
of dirt was ever turned,” Martis said.

http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/20229

The site belongs to the Association of Portuguese Judges.

http://www.asjp.pt/2013/06/08/supremo-da-razao-a-vitima-de-aerogeradores     

THE SUPREME COURT AGREES WITH VICTIMS OF WIND TURBINES

The judgement upheld the claim of the family affected and the agreement invokes the “right to rest, to sleep and to tranquillity”

Real life Experiences

See also attached document

https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2014/06/09/i-need-to-protect-my-child-from-wind-farms/

http://donegalnews.com/2013/12/my-house-actually-vibrates-from-wind-turbine/

http://fairwindenergy.org/testimony.html

http://stopthesethings.com/experience/
Effects on animals living close to industrial turbines
Mink: http://wcfn.org/2014/06/07/windfarms-1600-miscarriages/

See attached translated vet report

Mink update: http://wcfn.org/2014/06/23/another-horror-story-from-denmark/
http://wcfn.org/2014/03/31/windfarms-vertebrates-and-reproduction/

Canada:

Showing similarities between wind industry and tobacco industry

http://www.windconcernsontario.ca/big-wind-follows-big-tobacco-in-denying-health-problems/

New documentary

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/straighttalk/archives/2014/06/20140601-075938.html

Precautionary Principle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

The precautionary principle or precautionary approach states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is not harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking an action.

 

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