Wind Turbines Should Be Classed as a Health Hazard

Wind turbines poison wildlife and other living creatures

Dr. Peter F. Mayer, tkp.at (German)

Investigations and studies are finding toxic pollutants from the abrasion of wind turbine rotor blades in wild boar, mussels and oysters. The mass installation of wind turbines on land and offshore is increasingly beginning to endanger our food supply and therefore our health.

As reported here (German) and here (German), expert reports and investigations have shown that abrasion from the rotor blades spreads over a radius of 1,000 metres around a wind turbine, contaminating an area of 3.14 square kilometres (A = πr²). Soils, surface water and groundwater are contaminated with the finest particles of the materials used – carbon/GFRP/CFRP, including bisphenol A, which is classified as life-threatening – and the microfibres in particular can even trigger cancer. What is more, such particles and fibres measuring less than 2 millimetres can also cross the protective blood–brain barrier and penetrate the brain. There they apparently accumulate in certain cells, the microglia, affect the immune defence and lead to life-threatening inflammation. All of this is the current state of science.

Bear in mind that the tips of the rotor blades reach speeds of up to 400 km/h. Onshore wind turbines have diameters of 138 to 175 metres, offshore ones are in some cases even larger. This gives circumferences of 430 to 550 metres that the blade tips travel with each rotation. In a slightly stronger wind they need only 3 to 5 seconds per rotation, giving speeds of about 110 m/s, i.e. 396 km/h. When the blade hits insects, water droplets, grains of sand, hail or other obstacles in its path at this speed, the surfaces are damaged and abraded.

If the wind turbines are set up in fields, the crops growing there are contaminated; if they are set up in forests and meadows, the livestock and wild animals living there are. Offshore installations poison marine life. There is now a growing body of evidence for this.

Contamination from offshore wind farms

Researchers at the University of Portsmouth have warned that offshore wind farms could pose “significant risks to the ecosystem, the economy and human health”. Scientists warn that the potential for metals such as zinc, aluminium and indium – a metal important for making flat-screen televisions – to accumulate in marine life such as oysters, mussels and seaweed should give pause for thought before the government’s aggressive development plans for offshore wind farms in vulnerable marine areas are pursued further.

According to the study, this is due to the potentially harmful amounts of metallic materials from current wind turbine protection measures that could leach into the surrounding water, posing risks not only to ecosystems but also to seafood safety and human health.

Carried out in collaboration with the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, the study found that the equipment installed in these wind farms does indeed release thousands of tonnes of metals – including aluminium, zinc and indium – into the surrounding water every year.

But that is not all. A research team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, with the participation of the Helmholtz Centre, has now investigated the effects of these particles on blue mussels – a species also being considered for the multiple use of wind farms for aquaculture. In the experiment, the mussels took up metals from the rotor blade coatings, as the team describes in a study just published in the journal “Science of the Total Environment” under the title “Effect of particles from wind turbine blades erosion on blue mussels Mytilus edulis”, which also discusses the possible physiological effects.

In a laboratory-based pilot study, a research team investigated the possible effects of rotor blade emissions on the physiology of blue mussels. For this purpose, the material of these rotor blades was ground to a particle size small enough for the mussels to take up. “We exposed the mussels to different particle concentrations and took samples after predefined exposure times,” explains Dr Gisela Lannig, project leader of the study and ecophysiologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). “The blue mussels showed moderate to pronounced uptake of metals, especially barium and chromium,” reports Dr Daria Bedulina, ecophysiologist and postdoc at the AWI.

The results show that offshore wind farms represent a new anthropogenic burden on the marine environment: according to the study, emissions of polymer particles from rotor blades, caused by the decomposition and surface erosion of the coatings and core material of the blades, should not be underestimated. Mussel species such as the blue mussel studied here play a key role in coastal ecosystems. Mussel beds, for example, provide habitat and breeding grounds for a range of marine fauna, promote biodiversity and, because the animals are filter feeders, maintain water quality. Microplastics and pollutants can accumulate in the animals’ tissue.

Contamination of wildlife on land

On land, too, contamination has been detected in wild boar. TKP has already reported (German) on the contamination of farmland and the food and feed grown there. Illnesses and deaths of animals caused by wind turbines have been documented in southern Crete (German) and investigated in studies (German).

In “Windkraftanlagen – Giftige Kontaminationen statt sauberer Energie” (Wind turbines – toxic contamination instead of clean energy), the Initiative für Demokratie und Aufklärung reports that hardly degradable forever chemicals called PFAS and other toxic substances are released into the environment through abrasion. Depending on location and output, the amount abraded is said to be about 30–150 kg per wind turbine per year, and rather more at coastal sites or with very tall turbines. Like the two TKP articles on “nasty fibres”, the article evidently refers to microplastic particles from glass-fibre-reinforced, toxic epoxy GFRP/CFRP and carcinogenic bisphenol A, as well as PFAS.

The frightening thing is that PFAS has been found in the livers of wild boar.

“In total, 60 samples from wild boar shot in Rhineland-Palatinate (30 samples of meat and 30 samples of the corresponding liver) were tested for PFAS in an external laboratory. The results show that all wild boar livers clearly exceeded the maximum PFAS level that has applied throughout the EU since 1 January 2023. The total PFAS levels for the compounds PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid), PFOS (perfluorooctanesulfonic acid), PFNA (perfluorononanoic acid) and PFHxS (perfluorohexanesulfonic acid) in the 30 wild boar liver samples ranged between 98 micrograms per kilogram (µg/kg) and 738 µg/kg; the mean was 310 µg/kg. The maximum level under food law, which must not be exceeded, is 50 µg/kg for wild boar liver.

To ensure that livers, which are generally too heavily contaminated because of general environmental pollution, are not eaten by consumers, wild boar livers may no longer be sold or processed (e.g. into game liver sausage or game liver pâté), i.e. may no longer be placed on the market (see also Article 7 of the General Food Law Regulation, precautionary principle). Furthermore, for health reasons, wild boar liver should not be eaten (German) in hunters’ private households either.

Short-term profit, long-term damage, and you knew about it

So although there is already measurable contamination in “the wild”, the state-affiliated media (German) continue to promote the expansion of wind turbines vigorously, mainly with the argument that municipalities can expect high lease income.”

How this works in Lower Austria has already been described here.

It is not only municipalities and landowners who earn money, but a whole range of intermediary organisations with good connections to politics and the authorities.

Given that damage to animals and living creatures has been demonstrated both at sea and on land, it cannot be ruled out that contamination will soon also be found in crops and other agricultural products. And then it is to be expected that farmland will (have to) be closed off. And that once again plays into the hands of all those billionaires and financial investors who have invested massively in lab-grown meat, artificial milk and cheese, insect flour or CO2 butter.

Original article on tkp.at (German)

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