Perceptions of Wind Turbine Noise and Self-Reported Health in Suburban Residential Areas.

Fei Qu,Aki Tsuchiya

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.736231

Abstract

Wind turbines play an important role in the worldwide mission of producing renewable energy. The development toward integrating large-scale wind turbines in the urban environment has raised concerns over the noise impacts on urban residents. While most of the existing studies on wind turbine noise (WTN) have focused on rural settings, this paper investigates the relationship between WTN, noise perception and self-reported health of people, and controlling for background characteristics of the residents in urbanized areas. Questionnaire surveys were carried out around three suburban wind farms in the UK with 359 respondents. A-weighted sound pressure levels of WTN were predicted using noise mapping, for the most exposed façade of each dwelling of the respondent. The dose-response relationship was found between WTN and annoyance, moderated by age and degree of education. WTN was associated with some aspects of self-reported health, including raised health concerns, having headaches, nausea, and ear discomfort, but was not related to sleep disturbance directly. Noise sensitivity, attitudes to wind energy, and visibility of the wind turbines were found to significantly influence self-reported health. By employing a second variant of the questionnaire with the research aim masked, this study also addressed the focusing effects induced by the questionnaire design. The significant differences in the reported adverse health between questionnaire variants implied focusing bias among the sample who knew the research purpose. This elicited a methodological finding that should be noted in future research.

Highlights

Wind turbines (WTs) play an important role in producing renewable energy and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions
One study found that living in an urbanized area reduced the risk of annoyance with wind turbine noise (WTN) (Pedersen and Waye, 2007), and another study found that living in a built-up area increased the probability of being annoyed (Pedersen et al, 2009), while another article of people living in noisy areas reported that noise exposure did not lead to noise annoyance among those who noticed the sound (Bakker et al, 2012)
The results suggest that the characteristics of residents such as age, gender, education, and noise sensitivity significantly affect the degree of individual noise perception or self-reported health, most of which were not reported as significant in previous WTN studies

Summary

Introduction

Wind turbines (WTs) play an important role in producing renewable energy and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. A limited number of cross-sectional studies have conducted questionnaire surveys to investigate the impact of wind turbine noise (WTN) on selfreported noise evaluations. One study found that living in an urbanized area (as opposed to a rural area) reduced the risk of annoyance with WTN (Pedersen and Waye, 2007), and another study found that living in a built-up area increased the probability of being annoyed (Pedersen et al, 2009), while another article of people living in noisy areas reported that noise exposure did not lead to noise annoyance among those who noticed the sound (Bakker et al, 2012). Given the increase in the WT size and the number of built-up areas, there is a need to investigate the perception and health impact of WTN in urbanized environments, controlling for respondent demographical and attitudinal factors

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