Infrasound, LFN and our health

In our recent report The Wind Turbine Tragedy Clintel pointed out the health dangers of infrasound (vibrations we cannot hear) produced by wind turbines. In the following article guest author and biophysicist dr. Dietmar Hildebrand writes about the same subject. (LFN means Low Frequency Noise and refers to very low frequencies that we can still consciously perceive with our ears).

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Is everything that is not accessible to our five senses harmless?

Is gamma radiation completely harmless? We can’t see it. Let’s stick with the eye. We can’t perceive any frequencies below visible light, but microwaves in high doses kill us. All frequencies above visible light are also harmful, from sunburn caused by too much ultraviolet light to gamma radiation from nuclear reactions, which kills us slowly or quickly depending on the dose (1).

Our nose fails completely to detect carbon monoxide, which is fatal to us even in small doses because it binds to hemoglobin and thus blocks the transport of oxygen in the blood (2).

Our sense of taste fails completely when it comes to perceiving botulinum toxin, which is described in the science magazine Scinexx.de as the ‘deadliest poison in the world’ (3).

Our sense of touch perceives a stiletto penetrating the heart through the back as only a slight prick.

Our ears perceive sound, i.e. air pressure fluctuations from around 20 Hz to around 20,000 Hz (Hz is the abbreviation for Hertz, which are vibrations per second). Higher frequencies are called ultrasound. Dogs can hear higher frequencies and bats even use ultrasound for echo navigation, i.e. they can generate and hear it. Sound with frequencies below our hearing range is called infrasound because we cannot consciously perceive it with our ears. But does that mean that we do not perceive it at all and does that mean that it has no influence on us or our well-being?

 

She only likes music when it’s loud
When it goes straight to her stomach
She only likes music when it’s loud
When the ground shakes beneath her feet
Then she forgets that she’s deaf

 

This is what the lyrics of a song by Herbert Grönemeyer say. Yes, even a deaf person can perceive low frequencies (LFN) and infrasound. However, it is not the stomach but the diaphragm that detects the vibrations of the abdominal cavity at high volumes via the solar plexus (a network of nerves) and transmits them to the brain. The soles of our feet also sense vibrations that can be triggered by sound.

Infrasound Communication of Elephants and Whales

Infrasound and LFN spread for kilometers in the ground. Elephants can perceive it with the skin between their hooves. Females ready to mate, send tapping signals with their feet, which males kilometers away perceive; they immediately make their way to the female. In the Handbook of behavioral neuroscience an entire chapter is dedicated to the infrasound communication of elephants (4).
When you analyze the ‘songs’ of the humpback whales, you find that a part of it is infrasound. This is why wind turbines in the ocean are an unbearable noise for whales. Unlike us they can’t put earplugs into their ears

And how do we perceive infrasound?

What has been mentioned so far, was my level of knowledge until I read a 2021 publication by Lee Bartel and Abdulla Mosabbir in the Journal of Healthcare (5). “Music has the ability to influence our health and well-being”, is how the introduction begins. But then the authors differentiate between ‘music’ and ‘vibration’ and focus on vibrations from shock waves (less than 1 hertz) up to the audible range. ‘VAT’ (vibroacoustic therapy) has been around in medicine for a long time and therefore a lot of research has been done to understand not only the effects of VAT but also the mechanisms by which our body can perceive vibroacoustic signals. Even the purely mechanical vibration of bio-molecules, cells, bones has effects on our health. For example, blood clots can be dissolved by VAT.
The endothelial cells on the walls of veins and lymph vessels can perceive vibrations. All nerve cells react to vibrations, but we also have special sensors, so-called proprioceptors (Merkel discs, Meissner corpuscles, Pacinian corpuscles), which are not only part of our sense of touch in the skin but can also be found in other parts of our body. The Golgi tendon spindles measure and regulate muscle tension and thus also react to low-frequency sound waves that pass through our body. In four long chapters, the authors explain the variety of sensory perceptions and how these can be used for VAT. The publication is solidly supported by 247 references. Anyone who still says that we cannot perceive infrasound must be illiterate.

It is important to understand that the influence of wind turbines must not be measured with microphones, but with sensitive seismometers! It is about vibrations, not sound.

Unfortunately, it is not music with loud bass tones or signals from females ready to mate that are spread by wind turbines over kilometers of air and ground.

Do we have good research results?

Are the infrasound and LFN spectra of wind turbines precisely known and have their effects been well researched? No! People just started building wind turbines instead of first building prototypes and thoroughly researching their effects.

Did people know how many billions of insects are killed by wind turbines? No! People didn’t even know that the stable winds at the height of large wind turbines are used as migration routes by insects, making wind turbines a mass killer of migrating insects.

Did you know that birds don’t stand a chance against wind turbine blades? No! Anyone who has ever had a bird crash into their windshield knows that many birds cannot avoid the collision even at much lower speeds. “The tips of the rotor blades of a wind turbine reach a speed of over 300 km/h when operating at full load”, says a publication by the Fraunhofer Institute that is also worth reading (6).

Did people know that the infrasound and LFN from wind turbines is harmful to people? No! They were built anyway and are still being built.

Subjective perceptions and sound measurements at wind turbines

There are many publications about the subjective feelings of people who live near wind turbines. There are reports of sleep disorders and illnesses caused by stress. Wind power fans dismiss all of this as ‘psychosomatic’, i.e. it’s all just imagination.

In keeping with this, there are many publications about ‘measurements’ in the vicinity of wind turbines, all of which show that the noise there is less than night-time traffic noise. How stupid do you have to be to carry out such measurements with commercially available microphones and measuring devices that can only detect sound? But that is exactly the case with many published measurements, which of course do not find anything harmful to health.

Many research reports regard ‘infrasound’ as just ‘sound’ and do not understand that it is ‘vibrations’. Accordingly, they don’t understand that completely different perception receptors are involved in the human body.

A Short History of Infrasound

The author Sophia Roosth (Harvard University) has taken the trouble to collect some information on the history of infrasound in her article Nineteen Hertz and Below (7). Infrasound began to interest scientists when the volcano Krakatoa erupted in 1883 and the infrasound waves triggered in the earth’s crust circled the planet several times.

All people who live near volcanoes have long known that animals become restless long before the volcano erupts and leave the area if possible. They sense the infrasound. If we know that animals somehow ‘sense’ very weak signals (stress levels, inner restlessness, flight reflex), then it is more than plausible that people also subconsciously perceive these signals and react to them in some way when they are constantly exposed to them.

After the invention of nuclear weapons, infrasound signals were used to detect secret nuclear bomb tests and to locate them by triangulation. Then the idea of using infrasound as a weapon came up. In 1966, prof. Gavreau in France even received a patent (FR1437460A) for an infrasound cannon that could kill people and bring down walls (Jericho says hello).

In 1980 the Portuguese doctor Nuno Castello Branco recognized that infrasound and vibrations during the manufacture and repair of aircraft turbines caused strange symptoms in workers, including epileptic disorders. He called these phenomena ‘Vibroacoustic Disease’, abbreviated to VAD. This term has stuck to this day and is used in modern research into health disorders caused by infrasound and LFN.

Vibroacoustic Disease (VAD)

VAD in the narrowest sense was defined as tissue thickening of the mitral valve and pericardium caused by continuous exposure to infrasound. Renzo Tonin describes in his review (2017) on the health effects of wind turbine infrasound (8) how the definition of VAD had to be expanded further and further. Depression, increased irritability and aggressiveness, self-isolation and reduced cognitive abilities, i.e. psychological suffering, were the first to be added.

As early as 2005, dos Santos et al. published on physical damage caused by infrasound in the kidneys of rats and mice. The ‘Portugal Papers’ of the group of scientists to which he belongs, are still a thorn in the side of the wind power lobby. The best way to understand the extent of the findings that are being kept secret in Germany, is to go to researchgate.net, search for Pedro Oliveira (9) and starting from his publications you move on to those of his co-authors.

As early as 2009, N. Pierpont published the book Wind Turbine Syndrome (10). He writes: “Symptoms include sleep disturbances, headaches, tinnitus, ear pressure, dizziness, nausea, blurred vision, tachycardia, irritability, concentration and memory problems, and panic attacks associated with sensations of internal pulsation or tremors that occur during wakefulness or sleep.The proposed hypothesis is that low-frequency noise or vibrations impair the body‘s balance system and brain functions, including spatial awareness, spatial memory, spatial problem solving, fear, anxiety, …, which explains the aforementioned symptoms.“

If he had had the level of knowledge of Bartel & Mosabbir (2021) (5), he could have explained it more precisely.

Animal experiments

Animal experiments have been carried out not only in Portugal but also elsewhere to research the biological effects of infrasound. As early as 2016, Olivera Stanojlovic et al. from the University of Belgrade reported on the influence of the electro-encephalogram (EEG) of rats. The EEG clearly showed that the rats were in an alarm state under the influence of infrasound, while the control group without infrasound, which was examined in the same way, showed a completely normal EEG (11).

The hippocampus is an area in the brain that is essential for the creation of memories (memory consolidation), but it is also an important switching point in the brain for mental and even spatial orientation. Zhang Meng Yao et al. found that the function of the hippocampus in rats is disrupted by infrasound. A disruption that only disappears two weeks after exposure (12). They also refer to older publications that have already shown cognitive disorders caused by infrasound.

As early as 2012, Ming Shi et al. published in detail about the influence of infrasound on learning behavior and memory performance in rats (13). It describes in detail where the laboratory animals came from and what was done to get the animals, including control groups, used to their environment. The animals were exposed to various test environments (e.g. labyrinths) in order to quantitatively record differences in behavior compared to the control groups.

The Sprague-Dawley rats, a popular type of laboratory rat, were also the objects of study by the Chinese researchers F. Du, L. Yin et al. (14). In their research on glial cells of the nervous system, they went down to the molecular level in order to understand the harmful effects of infrasound. There they found that a hormone with the complicated name ‘corticotrophin releasing hormone’ (CRH) is released when the rats suffer from infrasound. No, no, the rats must have just imagined it all!

The Australians already reacted

Australia was the first to recognise that the problems faced by people living near wind turbines are real: Tonin reports: “In 2015, the Australian Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines concluded that there was credible evidence from a number of people living near wind turbines who had complained of a range of adverse health effects. These included tinnitus, increased blood pressure, palpitations, tachycardia, stress, anxiety, dizziness, lightheadedness, nausea, blurred vision, fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, headaches, ear pressure, increased migraines, motion sensitivity, inner ear damage and sleep deprivation. As a result of this hearing, the Office of the National Wind Farm Commissioner was established.“

How many people on this planet have to suffer their whole lives because of the madness of ‘renewable energy’ technology? No one counts them because ‘they’re just imagining it all.”

Sources:

1. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strahlenkrankheit
2. https://www.bmk.gv.at/dam/bmvitgvat/content/themen/klima/chemie/gefaehrliche-chemikalien/sachkunde-gift/Sachkunde_Gift.pdf
3. https://www.scinexx.de/dossierartikel/das-toedlichste-gift-der-welt/
4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S156973391070014X
5. https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/9/5/597
6. Fraunhofer/IWES Publikation “Rotorblätter auf dem Prüfstand”
7. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/resilience.5.3.0109
8. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40857-017-0098-3
9. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pedro-Oliveira-117
10. Pierpont, N.: Wind Turbine Syndrome. K-Selected Books, Santa Fe (2009)
11. http://www.researchinventy.com/papers/v6i8/B060807011.pdf
12. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0895398816300836
13. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256425169
14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2010.02.060

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