Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Peer reviews - Dr. Nina Pierpont - Wind Turbine Syndrome

Professor Lord (Robert) May of Oxford University OM AC Kt FRS calls the book “impressive, interesting, and important.”

(Click here and here for further information on Lord May’s prodigious research accomplishments and honors, including President of the Royal Society and Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK government. Lord May is currently at the forefront of global warming research.)

Excerpts from peer reviewers (referees):
This “report … deserves publication…. The careful documentation of serious physical, neurological and emotional problems provoked by living close to wind turbines must be brought to the attention of physicians who, like me, are unaware of them until now.”

—from the referee report by Jerome Haller, MD, Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics, Albany Medical College, Albany, New York. Dr. Haller is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Neurology (Child Neurology Section), and the Child Neurology Society.

“This [report] addresses an under-reported facet of Noise Induced Illnesses in a fashion that is detailed in its historical documentation, multisystemic in its approach and descriptions, and painstakingly and informatively referenced…. [It] opens up the area of low frequency vibration to the medical community….I applaud her.”

—from the referee report by Joel F. Lehrer, MD, Fellow of the American College of Surgeons,
Clinical Professor of Otolaryngology, University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey.

“Let me congratulate you on your case-series investigation on Wind Turbine Syndrome…. As an epidemiologist I fully appreciate your truly remarkable effort, one that smacks of being well done and with a full respect for honest inquiry….

“Your high level of scientific integrity is revealed both in your [research] design decisions and in your writing, both of which are of the highest order….

“You have laid a remarkable, high quality, and honest foundation for others to build upon with the next stages of scientific investigation. In doing so, you have made a commendable, thorough, careful, honest, and significant contribution to the study of (what we can now call) Wind Turbine Syndrome.”

—from the referee report by Ralph V. Katz, DMD, MPH, PhD, Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology,
Professor and Chair, Department of Epidemiology & Health Promotion
New York University College of Dentistry

“Dr. Pierpont has gathered a strong series of case studies of deleterious effects on the health and well-being of many people living near large wind turbines. Furthermore, she has reviewed medical studies that support a plausible physiological mechanism directly linking low frequency noise and vibration (like that produced by wind turbines and which may not in itself be reported as irritating) to potentially debilitating effects on the inner ear and other sensory systems associated with balance and sense of position. Thus the effects are likely to have a physiological component, rather than being exclusively psychological….

“It is … clear that many people are affected at far greater distances than the minimum set-backs currently allowed between turbines and residences. Accordingly, it would be prudent to establish much longer set-backs from houses as a criterion for siting new turbines, pending further studies on this newly documented Wind Turbine Syndrome. Documentation of the syndrome itself is strong evidence that current set-backs are woefully inadequate.”

—from the referee report by Henry S. Horn, PhD, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Associate of the Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University

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