Over the past few decades we have been publicly aware of our need for alternative energy for the good of our planet. Despite nuclear energy being available the dangers were always present, and as for solar panels, the sun is not always in agreement to help us out on that one. But harnessing wind power – something we had been doing for a long time already, something we can harness all year round and use of our windy British Isles turning the sometimes disagreeable weather into a great energy source for us all didn’t seem like a bad option. All we needed to do was to produce the modern day wind turbine as opposed to the shorter and less efficient windmills of the epoch.

July 1887 saw the creation of the first windmill for the purpose of electrical production in Scotland. Over the next few years, this new type of windmill could be found in USA, and Denmark as well where it was discovered that the fewer rotor blades there are, the more efficient the machine. However, it wasn’t until 1927 that the wind turbine generators were being manufactured up in Minneapolis, USA, for farms to charge batteries and power lighting. 1980 saw the first wind farm, consisting of 20 turbines in New Hampshire, USA but with little success as he turbines began to break down as the developers overestimated the wind resource. From 1991 up to the present day, wind farms have been successfully cropping up, the first in the form of an off-shore wind farm in the South of Denmark. Despite some protesting against the believed destruction of natural beauty caused by the turbines, and people worrying about the danger to birds, our new-age wind farms are generally accepted in our world.

Nonetheless, unknown dangers to this new green-energy have begun to emerge in the form of health complaints from those living in or next to a wind-turbine area. Following the installation of a 37-turbine wind farm in South Australia, the locals began to suffer from a wide range of health problems from heart troubles to sleep disturbances and ringing in their ears. Although certain professionals in research and the medical field have begun compiling evidence and testimonials from a variety of people in a variety of countries. Despite all their research wind energy associations are quick to criticise their work denying the existence of ‘wind turbine syndrome’. They claim that a direct physiological connection between wind turbine noise and health has not and cannot be made. But even if this is true, should we still be allowing wind turbine farms to be mounted in inhabited regions given the chance that this research may way day be proven to be justified?