Why are regulators, communities, neighbors, and acousticians annoyed by wind turbines?

Abstract

Noise assessments for large wind turbines should be more reliable based on decades of human-response research. Empirical data clearly show the most severe noise impacts occur in the quieter environments. Populations living in quiet areas were the least researched until the arrival of wind turbines. European studies reveal that the public has a greater sensitivity to wind-turbine noise than transportation sounds. Acoustic researchers developed the percent highly annoyed metric to model. This metric should be shaped by an assessment of the acoustic environment using many variables all subjective, debatable, and mathematical. A review of dose-response research will attempt to lay the groundwork for a new noise assessment methodology specific to wind turbines.