What's the last time you heard from the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar? Not recently, you say. Well, that's because he's been busy cooking up a plot to destroy America increase the amount of energy our country gets from wind turbines. Salazar told the Associated Press he's confident America's largest wind energy project, Cape Wind, will break ground this year off the coast of Massachusetts.
But Salazar and the pro-wind movement are running into some fierce headwinds in the form of one scientist-cum-activist who believes wind is dangerous to human health.
NPR recently profiled Dr. Nina Pierpont, a physician trained at Johns Hopkins who now lives in upstate New York. She's made it her mission to sound the alarm over the undetectable sounds produced by wind turbines. In her self-published study, she concludes that "infrasound" can lead to a host of health problems including, "headaches, dizziness, tinnitus, ear pain, and difficulty sleeping."
Though many think Pierpont's claims of "wind turbine syndrome" are hot air, her thoughts were partially vindicated by peer-reviewed researchers in the U.K., who found infrasound might actually affect people in adverse ways.
Still, the U.K. researchers warn that they weren't blown away by the conclusions of their study.
"We think infrasound causes problems in the inner ear and we think wind turbines produce infrasound," one researcher told NPR. "But we can't stand up and put our hands on our hearts and say 'Wind turbines cause wind turbine syndrome.'"
Without further research to back her up, Pierpont and her claims might just be left blowing...in...the...wind.
[Image via Getty]