“But wind turbine noise issues are not just an acoustic issue. I have been trying to solve the acoustic problem to allow the medical side to then undertake the required research.” (Cooper, below)
Last year, I interviewed acoustician Steven Cooper, AU on wind turbine health issues related to pulsation and low-frequency noise. “In general, wind farm applications claim that turbines do not generate any low-frequency, tonal, or impulsive characteristics,” he noted, “which is a matter disputed by residential receivers.”
What has developed in the last 20 months? In this two-part series (today and tomorrow), Mr. Cooper shares his most recent research and findings, which complement our current knowledge regarding the nature of “noise” impacts to real-time victims of wind power.
Mr. Cooper recently presented his new findings in Germany at the International Congress on Acoustics Conference. As Mr. Cooper states in this interview:
“I question how an authority can propose noise criteria with no fundamental basis identified as to how a stated core objective can be satisfied.”
Q: Since our previous discussion for Master Resource you have continued your research into the basis of wind-turbine noise. Your presentations to the Acoustical Society of America in December 2017 and Euronoise in May 2018 presented the results of your testing of inaudible wind-turbine sound on a group of people who have been severely impacted by turbine noise to the extent of regularly leaving or permanently leaving their home, versus a group of people never been exposed to wind turbine noise.
Cooper: Yes
Q: You still seem to be pushing boundaries and asking fundamental questions on what is the “signature of wind turbine noise.”
Cooper: Correct. As a noise engineer you have to understand what is causing the problem before you can arrive at a solution. But wind turbine noise issues are not just an acoustic issue. I have been trying to solve the acoustic problem to allow the medical side to then undertake the required research.
Q: Congratulations are in order as you have been appointed to the European Acoustics Association Technical Committee on Noise as the group leader on wind turbine noise, and last month gave three papers at the International Congress on Acoustics in Germany.
Cooper: Right. The papers were well received and led to multiple discussions with individual experts during the conference. The three papers and a pdf of the power point for each paper are up on National Wind-Watch, two in the acoustics section and one in the general section.
Q: In our previous interview for Master Resource you identified a series of relatively simple questions in relation to criteria to protect against sleep disturbance that need to be answered by Regulatory Authorities. Any response?
Cooper: No. Still a deafening silence. Also on Wind Watch is my submission on a review of draft wind farm guidelines for South Australia that refers to those questions. I question how an authority can propose noise criteria with no fundamental basis identified as to how a stated core objective can be satisfied.
Q: Previously we have discussed that you don’t use the term ILFN (Infra and Low Frequency Noise). I have trouble getting my head around that. Your position on ILFN seems to cause some problems for people in discussions on wind turbine noise. When discussing infrasound from turbines you have referred to the infrasound signature showing peaks in the spectrum being multiples of the blade pass frequency. Why this specific terminology?
Cooper: I have never used the term of infrasound sound. I used “infrasound signature” to refer to the result of a frequency analysis. This is because the noise from a turbine has a broad band signal with some tones associated with the gearbox, but the time signature of the pressure signal from turbines is a series of pluses that occur at an infrasound rate. The pulses are very short in time when compared to the wavelength of the blade pass frequency and are not of a continuous nature like an audible sound. You can use FFT analysis to show the presence of an operating wind turbine.
Q: The term FFT is used in wind turbine noise, and you reference it here. What does it mean?
Cooper: FFT stands for Fast Fourier Transform. It is a method used in digital analysis to extract the periodic functions in a time signal to derive a frequency spectrum. It is the modern way of creating narrow band analysis.
This form of analysis is the basis of the “infrasound” problem. The FFT procedure identifies the occurrence of the presence of the pulsations in the time domain (say every 1.2 seconds) which is at the blade pass frequency (0.86Hz), because they are a periodic function. That doesn’t mean there is a constant sound at 0.86 Hz. (For those wishing a more detailed explanation, we request you contact Master Resource for the email of Mr. Cooper.)
Q: As a result of your research you have produced a number of presentations in relation to the acoustic signature of wind turbine noise and have questioned the issue of infrasound being an actual sound signal.
Cooper: Correct. For the ASA (Acoustic Society of America) wind turbine working group I have given a number of presentations on the question of there being infrasound present in the acoustic signature. In our quest to accurately reproduce the wind turbine signal for subjective testing we found real issues in the frequency response of speakers/amplifiers, but as presented to the ASA in Boston we also found issues with the analysis of the pulses. We could remove all frequencies being sent to the speakers below 50 Hz and the infrasound signature was still present. There are fundamental technical issues for analysis that are not met by the short duration pulses in that what is being assessed are the pulsations of the signal, not actual infrasound.
Q: So if I understand this correctly you are saying you can take the wind turbine signal that in a normal frequency analysis shows peaks at the blade pass frequency (say 0.86 Hz) and multiples of that frequency, and reproduce that signal in a laboratory that can go down to 0.5 Hz. But having a filter to block out all the infrasound going to the speakers, you still get a frequency analysis of that sound still shows peaks in the infrasound region.
Cooper: Yes. Because the analyser is providing the results of the overall sound levels varying (modulating) at an infrasound rate.
Q: Well that concept may be giving me a headache. But that would be in my head. And this leads me to the nocebo concept, that wind turbine impacts are psychosomatic, proposed by Simon Chapman, and that it is all in people’s heads. You say he is right in one sense but wrong in another.
Cooper: Yes. In the New Orleans ASA and the Euronoise presentations we identified that the sensitive people were able to sense the operation of the signal (even though it was inaudible) and the majority of the sensitive group identified feeling it in their head (our emphasis). In the brainwave paper at the ICA for a test case we showed the inaudible signals affected frontal lobes. So it is right that people can sense the signal but not in the concept proposed by Chapman that they are making it up. The amplitude modulation paper goes to the work of others in relation to sensing the modulation.
Q: I see that some acousticians quote the work of Crichton as setting the bar on establishing the nocebo concept.
Cooper: Yes, and there is a problem with acousticians accepting that data without examining the material. If you look at the ICA (International Congress on Acoustics) synthesis paper (now on National Wind Watch) and more importantly, from slides 6 & 7 of the PowerPoint you will see that the basis on the Nocebo proposed by Crichton is flawed.
Despite the title of Crichton’s paper she never used what has been identified in frequency analysis as “infrasound” for wind turbines. Look at the title of the paper then look at her signal. She used a single tone (see slide 6). I have never seen a single tone at 5 Hz (or 9 Hz) from wind farm.
The figure slide 7 of the PowerPoint superimposes Crichton’s “infrasound signal” onto the Shirley wind farm graph provided by Walker, Hessler & Hessler, Rand, and Schomer. That frequency graph is typical of a narrow band frequency analysis of a wind turbine. Also note the orange line is the manufacturer’s specification for the speaker used by Crichton that would seem to have some difficulty producing the “wind turbine infrasound” used in the experiment.
Furthermore, if you look at Crichton’s PhD thesis (on this work), one of her supervisors was Simon Chapman.
Q: The synthesis paper raises further issues with using just wind turbine infrasound and creating a digital signal for subjective assessments of wind turbine noise.
Cooper: Yes. If the synthesised “infrasound” wind turbine levels are well below the threshold of hearing for actual infrasound sounds and don’t produce the same time signal pressure variation as in the real world, and leave out the rest of the wind turbine signal that is in the normal audible range of sounds, then why use such signals – particularly when you have a US Standard for wind turbine (Annexure D of ANSI/ASA S12.9-2016/Part 7 “Advanced Signal Processing Techniques”) providing caution on using a signal that may have the same energy but sounds different.
Q: Your Cape Bridgewater study took a fair time to digest and comprehend. I think people may need a fair bit of time to digest this new information and carefully read the paper and also view your PowerPoint.
Cooper: Yes. This is what happened in Germany. Quite a few esteemed acousticians later in the week came to have a one-on-one session with me. I hope people will take the time to explore my clarification of this complex issue. We still do not have government authorities or wind developers being required to explain any of the impacts, nor protect people from such impacts.
For example, in Australia we still do not have the Authorities or the Wind Farm Commissioner providing noise criteria for wind turbines that is based on actual measurements/studies that identify noise levels that will not give rise to sleep disturbance. As these issues are relevant to the three ICA papers my submission in relation to a draft noise guideline in Australia is also on Wind Watch here. A review of that paper will place in context my material presented at the ICA.
———————-
Please watch for tomorrow, part two of this interview. Mr. Cooper’s second paper is even more technical. Comments regarding Crichton and Chapman are referenced here, as both persons have denigrated the impacts, claimed they are NOCEBO (in people’s minds, psychosomatic), and have significantly dampened and in our view, polluted, the real conversation about wind turbine harms. See here.
Mr. Cooper has been asked via email to respond to several questions, also of a technical nature. Will add to the comments as answers arrive.
QUOTE:
“Does Steve Cooper’s actual presentation of this concept have slides/ narrative/ greater connection to reach my non-synchronized cognition? Is there a book “Infrasound for Dummies” or a reasonable monograph that will allow me to construct an adequate mental framework of the major variables – frequency, modulation, dB(a) vs dB(A), band pass filters – both wide and narrow, analyzer function and it’s limitations? Has Steve Cooper produced set of optimal guidelines for permitting IWTs that reflect all the ignored realities of infrasound? Were his presentations referred to in the Master Resource article sent out today recorded? Is there a review produced from the post-presentation “huddle” he provided to presentation-attending acousticians?”
Response from Mr. Cooper:
QUOTE:
Synthesised paper http://acoustics.com.au/media/ICA2019SS01.pdf
Amplitude modulation paper http://acoustics.com.au/media/ICA2019AM01.mp4 http://acoustics.com.au/media/ICA2019AM02.mp4 http://acoustics.com.au/media/ICA2019AM03.pdf
Brain wave testing paper http://acoustics.com.au/media/ICA2019BW01.pdf http://acoustics.com.au/media/ICA2019BW02.pdf NB the first of these links had a typo in the paper showing I am not perfect.
Remaining questions:
· No book Infrasound for Dummies. Just me trying to get to the bottom of what is actually occurring from a practical perspective.
· At lot of my early concepts and breakdown of the material is set out in the Cape Bridgewater Report. Not a simple document to digest when one sees all the work that was undertaken.
· Optimal guidelines – no. There is still a lot of research to be undertaken – see the previous interview with Sherri and the fundamental questions that need to be addressed as to the dose-response. Hint look to the critique of the south Australian draft Wind Farm Guidelines under the noise section of Wind Watch. Relevant material there that may in part answer your question.
· The ICA presentations were identified in the beginning of part 1 of the interview as being up on Wind Watch (plus see above)
· The ICA presentations were not streamed or recorded.
· No review of post presentation “huddle”. Some people had concerns that they didn’t fully understand FFT’s and the technical limitations of FFT analysis so wanted to learn more but required the discussions to be confidential.
OUR COMMENT: Steven Cooper is likely the most up to date acoustic researcher world wide for ILFN. We should understand fully that his testing/research/compilation of findings, is world level on the ground, fully academically accepted, with verifiable findings.
Result? Our question:
HOW ARE WIND TURBINE COMPANIES/PROMOTERS, BEING ALLOWED TO ERECT INFANTILE ENERGY PRETENDER FACILITIES NEAR COMMUNITIES, PEOPLE, ANIMALS, WITHOUT PROPER STUDIES AND not providing EVEN THE MINIMUM OF ATTEMPT TO COMPREHEND OR MITIGATE WHAT MR COOPER TESTIFIES ARE CERTAIN IMPACTS, WITH NO COVER OF LEGISLATIVE PROTECTION??
The wind industry clearly has an open berth to creating harm, and no apparent legal requirement to assist victims, communities, decimated environments. The largest highway to profits ever in the world imaginable.
Thank you again, Mr. Cooper.
REPLY VIA EMAIL FROM MR. COOPER TO QUESTIONS ABOVE.
The articles on Wind Watch from the ICA (two in the noise section and one in the general section) have pdf’s of the slides that were presented. There is an exception in that the QEEG results (presented to the audience) were not contained in the Wind Watch slides as that material is from the psychologist and the paper was about the acoustic results of the pilot study.
There are links in the presentations that go back to my website as the Powerpoints that were presented are very large and cannot be emailed. The movie plots that help people understand the variation in the noise are large files.
There are refences to previous papers that can be downloaded from the Acoustical Society of America website (ASA POMA vol 26/10.1121/2.0000432, ASA POMA vol 25/1/10.1121/2.0000157, ASA POMA vol 25/1/10/1121/2.00001777 ASA POMA Vol 30/10.1121/2.0000639 ASA POMA Vol 31/10.1121/2.0000653 )
And of course the entire Cape Bridgewater report is available on the Waubra Foundation website http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/cooper-s-acoustic-group-results-cape-bridgewater-acoustic-investigation/
There are other ASA presentations that have not been prepared for POMA – I seem to have other things to do like make a living in acoustics, as the wind turbine research is unfunded.
ICA papers contain the following links
Synthesised paper http://acoustics.com.au/media/ICA2019SS01.pdf
Amplitude modulation paper http://acoustics.com.au/media/ICA2019AM01.mp4 http://acoustics.com.au/media/ICA2019AM02.mp4 http://acoustics.com.au/media/ICA2019AM03.pdf
Brain wave testing paper http://acoustics.com.au/media/ICA2019BW01.pdf http://acoustics.com.au/media/ICA2019BW02.pdf NB the first of these links had a typo in the paper showing I am not perfect.
Remaining questions:
· No book Infrasound for Dummies. Just me trying to get to the bottom of what is actually occurring from a practical perspective.
· At lot of my early concepts and breakdown of the material is set out in the Cape Bridgewater Report. Not a simple document to digest when one sees all the work that was undertaken.
· Optimal guidelines – no. There is still a lot of research to be undertaken – see the previous interview with Sherri and the fundamental questions that need to be addressed as to the dose-response. Hint look to the critique of the south Australian draft Wind Farm Guidelines under the noise section of Wind Watch. Relevant material there that may in part answer your question.
· The ICA presentations were identified in the beginning of part 1 of the interview as being up on Wind Watch (plus see above)
· The ICA presentations were not streamed or recorded.
· No review of post presentation “huddle”. Some people had concerns that they didn’t fully understand FFT’s and the technical limitations of FFT analysis so wanted to learn more but required the discussions to be confidential.
Comment given with permission to post…
Thanks for doing the great interview with Steven Cooper on Master Resource re: his latest investigations and presentations on industrial wind turbine noise.
It gives me hope that with greater understanding of the adverse impacts that eventually, people will be protected from the mostly unrecognized harm being allowed to continue by Australian and world wide health authorities.
Steven’s efforts and time over many years being put in on affected residents behalf, and to assist acousticians understanding of what occurs acoustically and physically, near wind factories are very much appreciated. As a participant directly involved in some of his investigations I am grateful for his ground-breaking work, which deals fairly and scientifically with actual people and their experiences.
Some years ago I spoke to the CEO of the ——- —– Council (a local gov’t) and told her what I was experiencing near the wind farm and her response to my plea for help was cold and useless. She repeatedly said, “You are entitled to your opinion”. The impacts of the unheard noise from wf’s and now urban sources, on my health are longstanding and they are not an ”opinion”, they are an unwanted experience requiring a supportive and non-judgmental scientific, acoustic and medical approach.
Sincerely,
Melissa Ware
Cape Bridgewater/Geelong
Steven Cooper’s ILFN work is groundbreaking. In his scientific mission to identify and isolate the harmful ILFN/Noise/FFT related factors that are in essence, torturing those who are subjected to the presence of Industrial Wind Turbines is both commendable and remarkable. The research that he is completing will generate an expert acoustical guidepost to establish the causal relationship between wind turbines and physical harm that, up until now, has been viewed as anecdotal at best by government and academia.
Thank you to Master Resource and Sherri Lange for bringing such cogent and expert coverage by acoustic expert Steven Cooper to articulate the indeterminable danger being perpetrated by industrial wind turbines.
Thanks, Michael Spencley. We have come a long way even now with policy makers. ILFN and chaotic impulsive tonal pulsation impacts are just now becoming turbine parlance, in a universal way. What continues to surprise us, is that this industry has been given the green light, no pun intended, to produce, assemble, collect subsidies and all manner of loan guarantees, perks, tax advantages, without even minimal protection for health. Never mind the environmental damages that are accruing. The issues are fast becoming known everywhere. It cannot last. Thank you, Steven Cooper, again, for your incredible depth of study.
Fiona Crichton and I were highly amused to read Steven Cooper’s claim that “if you look at Crichton’s PhD thesis (on this work), one of her supervisors was Simon Chapman.” I was not a supervisor of her thesis.
Cooper also claims that I proposed the concept that those claiming to experience symptoms caused by wind turbine exposure “are making it up”. I have never made such a claim anywhere, as any Google search for those words will reveal. Our open access book available here https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/17600/3/9781743324998_repository.pdf has a very large chapter (5 beginning at p139) in which we summarise the research evidence about symptom experience and objective measurement in nocebo responses. There is no debate at all that some people do experience objective symptoms when exposed to stimuli that they have anxious or fearful expectations about.
Our book also takes a long, forensic look at his “signature” study (from p117) and finds many serious problems.
Sheri Lange: You asked if a book exists, Infrasound for Dummies. I have suggestions.
First, I highly recommend the hour-long video of a visiting lecture given in Slovenia by Dr Mariana Pereira, PhD a biomedical engineer who has spent a career studying infrasound, entitled “Infrasound and low-frequency noise and vibroacoustic disease”…..https://youtu.be/ZXCZ3OyklrE or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHPkBNaSnZE
Second, the first book of its kind on wind turbine noise is a technical treatise and gives a full treatment of the subject….”Wind Farm Noise: Measurement, Assessment and Control”, by Hansen, Colin H. et al by John Wiley Sons January 31, 2017. It’s and e-book available on Amazon for about $100.00. It is excellent, excellent, but most of the critical information is in lay language in three of its chapters. Just ignore the technical stuff.
Third, I have compiled a list of more than 200 references consisting of articles or videos found on the internet on “Wind Turbines, Concerns, Experience, Noise, Infrasound, Cost, Health Effects, Impacts on Livestock and More”. Text request with your email to boleneus@gmail.com
Thank you, David. I am deeply aware of the wonderful work of Dr. Mariana Alves-Pereira, Slovenia, Waterloo, Ontario and a short video in DK, that is equally illuminating. We are fortunate to know her and communicate with her and European colleagues regularly. We circulate her work frequently. We have invited Mariana to speak at various legislatures. Thank you very much for the intro to the Hansen, Colin et al, book! I will order it. Have just messaged you at your gmail.
Thank you!
[…] a November 2019 update, (Two parts, Sensing but not Hearing, Latest), Mr. Cooper asked: “I question how an authority can propose noise criteria with no fundamental […]
Trying to make these devices a bit less obnoxious is like trying to burn coal without emitting carbon dioxide.
It is pointless, because the fossil carbon issue is that there is ALREADY too high a proportion of CO₂ in the biosphere (worst in fact in the oceans) and there is No Way that fossil carbon combustion can be replaced by anything other than nuclear. The energy density per unit mass of fissile massive nuclei is millions of times that of any chemical reactants.