{"id":738,"date":"2025-03-12T21:17:25","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T19:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/?p=738"},"modified":"2025-03-12T21:18:26","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T19:18:26","slug":"are-wind-farms-causing-harm-to-cognitive-functioning-balancing-between-health-and-clean-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/?p=738","title":{"rendered":"Are wind farms causing harm to cognitive functioning? Balancing between health and clean energy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-739 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wind-turbine-3709111_1280-1024x681.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"681\" srcset=\"https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wind-turbine-3709111_1280-1024x681.webp 1024w, https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wind-turbine-3709111_1280-300x199.webp 300w, https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wind-turbine-3709111_1280-768x511.webp 768w, https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wind-turbine-3709111_1280.webp 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Wind turbine, Photo: Viniane6276, Pixabay<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\">Wind farms are a substantial source of clean energy needed for green transformation. Is the noise they produce harmful for people and nature or not?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\">Clean energy from various renewables may decrease dependence on fossil fuels as a major energy course. There are several ways to get the so-called green electricity. One of them includes wind farms. These include large or small fans located in places with favorable weather conditions that stipulate strong enough and continuous wind. However, it does not mean they are completely oil-free as large turbines need some of this fuel or other power. Equally, the capacity, i.e, the amount of electricity produced by the single one substantially increased. Off-shore turbines work more effectively, but at the same time they are a challenge for migrating birds.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 lang=\"en-US\"><strong>Differing noise tolerance<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p lang=\"en-US\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\">Yet, some time ago those fans\u2019 turbines generating the electricity caused huge noise, in particular, when they were large at a specific speed of spin. This is why their location was and still is important, as too loud noise measured in decibels may cause health and functioning problems. The same speed of fans should be adequate to the strength of the wind. The height of the fan and the number of fans in the turbine, as well as the size of the entire wind farm, matter for birds. Although they have their migration paths rather stable, what makes it possible to locate a wind farm in a distance on the land, they still may feel confused due to the generated noise and thus lose their route more easily on the sea. Noise tolerance for humans and birds varies as there are larger and smaller seas.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Now, scientists of the University of Adam Mickiewicz in Pozna\u0144 in a recent study published in the journal ,,<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Nature&#8221; <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">call for <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\">a new approach in research on the impact of wind turbine noise on human functioning. <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\">B<\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\">ased on the most recent studies, <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">it is impossible to conclude whether the impact of wind turbine noise on physical-mental health is objective or merely a socio-culturally constructed stressor. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> However, Poland-based scientists thought they managed to catch a sign of worsening of cognitive state dependent on the time of noise exposure.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h2><strong>The length of exposure<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">A deterioration in TBR by 0,04 has been observed (from 1.15 to 1.19, t\u2009=\u20092.273, df\u2009=\u200942, Tukey\u2019s p\u2009=\u20090.028). TBR is s a widely recognized biomarker for cognitive control (EEG). What is a paradox, lower TBR indicates a higher level of attentional. Therefore, a decrease in TBR is indicative of an enhancement in cognitive functioning, whereas an increase in TBR suggests a decline in cognitive performance. However, the change in TBR over the entire measurement duration merely showed a trend (F1,42\u2009=\u20093.296, p\u2009=\u20090.077, \u03b7\u00b2p\u2009=\u20090.073) toward worsening \u2013 according to scientists. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Moreover,<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> the longer is <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">the <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">time of measurement, i.e. exposure for noise, the deterioration of cognitive state could be, but not necessarily stronger.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">The scientists analyzed a single wind turbine impact recorded outdoors at one of the wind farms located near Poznan, Wielkopolska Region in Poland. Participants of the study were not informed about the purpose of the experiment as scientists\u2019 intention was to objectively asses the link between health and the noise. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Scientists obtained approval for the experiment <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">from<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> <span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">The Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Educational Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">and <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">adhered to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\"><span style=\"font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">The authors of the study include Agnieszka Ro\u015bciszewska, Maciej Buszkiewicz, Gabriela Dobrzy\u0144ska-Kobylec, Anna Klichowska, Tomasz Przyby\u0142a, Blanka B. Nagy, Andrzej Wicher, Micha\u0142 Klichowski. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wind turbine, Photo: Viniane6276, Pixabay Wind farms are a substantial source of clean energy needed for green transformation. Is the noise they produce harmful for people and nature or not? Clean energy from various renewables may decrease dependence on fossil fuels as a major energy course. There are several ways to get the so-called green [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17,1,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clean-energy-in-a-nutshell","category-energy-efficiency-technologies","category-healthmedical-security","category-sustainability-technologies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":744,"href":"https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions\/744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolutionandsecurity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}