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Volume : 44

Part : 2

Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics

 

 

Annoyance and sleep disturbance responses in people living in the vicinity of wind turbines in the Netherlands

 

Anne Bolders1, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Bilthoven, The Netherlands

Marije Reedijk2, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Bilthoven, The Netherlands

Harm van Wijnen3, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Bilthoven, The Netherlands

Irene van Kamp4, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Bilthoven, The Netherlands

 

ABSTRACT

 

In order to achieve global and national climate goals, wind energy production in the Netherlands and elsewhere will likely continue to grow, and the size and capacity of new and replaced turbines will increase. Therefore, it is important to understand the impact of wind turbines on people living in their vicinity. Current evidence on health effects of living in the vicinity of wind turbines in The Netherlands is lacking. To fill this knowledge gap we conducted a nationwide survey among 3500 people living within 5 km distance of wind turbines, of whom 662 people (19%) participated. They completed a questionnaire about annoyance and sleep disturbance responses to wind turbine related exposures (e.g., mechanical sound, sound of blades, and visual aspects), as well as questions about general health, perception of risks, and attitudes. Information about local wind turbine features (distance, hub height, capacity, and rotor diameter) was available for each address. This paper presents preliminary descriptive results for annoyance and sleep disturbance responses to wind turbine sound. These findings and their limitations are discussed against the background of the challenges encountered and considerations for future research.

 

1. INTRODUCTION

 

As concluded by recent reviews on the effects of wind turbines on health and perception [1-3], noise annoyance is the most often described effect of living near wind turbines. There is a clear relationship between annoyance and exposure to wind turbine sound (and wind turbine distance [4]). The percentage of people that is highly annoyed by wind turbine sound increases with increasing sound levels [1-3]. Moreover, sound from wind turbines is perceived as more annoying compared to other sources of environmental noise such as industry, rail and road traffic [e.g., 6]. A likely cause for this difference is the typical swishing character of wind turbine sound (amplitude modulation). Furthermore, the findings of studies on sleep disturbance due to wind turbine noise that were presented in recent reviews are inconsistent and there is insufficient evidence for other direct health effects [1-3] [5]. The literature reviews also show that in addition to the noise exposure, a large number of other factors determine levels of noise annoyance and sleep disturbance. These co determinants, such as personal characteristics and circumstances in the surroundings, seem to play a major role, particularly at individual level. Lastly, recent studies [7-8] have shown that annoyance from wind turbines is not limited to wind turbine sound, but it is also a consequence of other wind turbine related exposures (such as shadow flickers and visual impacts).

 

At national level in The Netherlands, as estimated from a sample of the general population, 0.3% of the persons of 16 years and older is highly annoyed by wind turbine sound and less than 0.1% is highly sleep disturbed [9]). At the local level these figures might be very different. Currently there are no recent data available for the prevalence of annoyance and sleep disturbance among people living in the vicinity of wind turbines in the Netherlands. The most recent data presented in the literature (within 2.5 km from wind turbines in the Netherlands) is from April 2007 [6][10]. Since then, not only the number of wind turbines in the Netherlands has increased, but newly placed wind turbines are also larger in size and capacity [11-12].

 

Taken together, the time is ripe to update the data on community response to wind turbines in the Netherlands. A comprehensive description should include annoyance to different wind turbine related exposures and take relevant co-determinants into account. Therefore, as part of a larger survey into the perception of risk and health effects of a range of environmental factors, we conducted a study into the perception of, and responses to, wind turbine related aspects in a sample of 3500 residents of 16 years and above, living within 5 km from a wind turbine in the Netherlands.

 

The study had the following main aims:

  1. To map the prevalence of (high) annoyance, sleep disturbance and health complaints due to wind turbines sound and wind turbine related exposures within 5 km from wind turbines across the Netherlands.

  2. To assess the relationships of (high) annoyance, sleep disturbance and health complaints with distance and sound exposure (and possibly wind turbine features such as hub height, capacity and rotor diameter).

  3. To study the role of contextual and personal factors in annoyance,sleep disturbance and health complaints.

 

Here we present preliminary data from a part of this study. The objective of the current paper is to explore the percentages of (high) annoyance and (high) sleep disturbance within 5 km from wind turbines and to compare annoyance and sleep disturbance responses between 0 to 2.5 km and 2.5 to 5 km from wind turbines. We discuss these findings and their limitations as well as the challenges encountered in conducting the survey and give some considerations for future research.

 

2. METHOD

 

2.1. Selection and recruitment

 

This study was conducted in the Netherlands from mid-April to mid-June 2021 among participants of 16 years and older living within 5 km from a wind turbine. The study area was based on wind turbine location data as well as information about the capacity of each wind turbine. This information was obtained from the wind turbine map (and data base) available as part of the National Energy Atlas [13]. Figure 1 shows the wind turbine map with the distribution of wind turbines (and their capacities) over the Netherlands. The maximum distance from a wind turbine at which addresses could be sampled depended on the capacity of the wind turbine. The maximum distance was 1 km for wind turbines with a capacity of 100 kW or less, and increased linearly with capacity to a maximum distance of 5 km for turbines with a capacity of 3000 kW or more. A random selection of 3500 addresses was drawn from all addresses of dwellings in the area within these maximum distances from wind turbines. Addresses with one or more turbines on the property were excluded.

 

Participants received an invitation letter by post in which they were asked to participate in a survey about their living environment. The letter informed them that the survey contained additional questions about wind turbines because their dwelling was in the vicinity of one or more wind turbines. It further stated that a voucher worth 25 EUR would be raffled among participants who completed the survey. The survey had to be completed online.

 

 

Figure 1: Distribution of wind turbines (and their capacity) over The Netherlands (source: www.nationaleenergieatlas.nl, December 2020 [13]).

 

2.2. Wind turbine distance and features

 

Wind turbines in the Netherlands range in hub height from 15 meters near farms to a few hundred meters in large turbine parks. The capacity of these turbines ranges from a few kW to over 12000 kW. Rotor diameter ranges from 20 to over 140 m [13]. The distance between the participants' address and the nearest wind turbine was calculated. Furthermore information on wind turbine characteristics (hub height, capacity, rotor diameter) of the nearest wind turbine obtained from the national energy atlas was linked to the location of the participant’s dwelling.

 

2.3. Questionnaire

 

The questionnaire contained a generic part about perception of risk and health effects of various factors in the living environment and a specific part about wind turbines. The latter will be further discussed below.

 

Demographics. The online questionnaire included questions on socio-demographic characteristics derived from standard surveys and aligned as much as possible with other national surveys in the Netherlands (Municipal health service and Statistics Netherlands). The current paper uses a selection of these characteristics, age, gender and home ownership status, to describe the study population.

 

Wind turbine questionnaire. The wind turbine questionnaire started with a question assessing whether respondents were aware of living in the vicinity of a wind park ("Do you live in the vicinity of a wind park?" [yes, no, don't know]). A 'yes' response to this question routed respondents to a subset of additional questions about the wind park, their attitudes to wind turbines, ownership and possible consideration of relocation due to wind turbines. The remainder of the questionnaire was presented to all respondents and consisted of questions about annoyance and sleep disturbance to wind turbine sound and other noise sources, annoyance to specific wind turbine related features and sound features, activity interference due to wind turbines sound, opinions about participation and communication by the authorities and non-specific health complaints. The current paper presents results for the questions about annoyance and sleep disturbance to wind turbine sound and therefore only these questions will be described in more detail below.

 

Annoyance. The question about annoyance to wind turbine sound was embedded in a list of questions asking about annoyance for various sources (sound of neighbors, sound of ventilation, sound of road traffic, sound of lawn mowers; not further reported here). Annoyance to wind turbine sound was measured by means of the standard ISO annoyance question scale [14]. This index enquires about the level of "bother, nuisance, annoyance" when at home over the past 12 months using answering categories ranging from 0 ("not at all annoyed") to 10 ("extremely annoyed")."At home" was further specified as inside the house, at your door, in the garden or at the balcony". If the source of annoyance was not perceptible at home, respondents were instructed to select a "not perceptible" option adjacent to the 0-10 scale. For the analyses presented in this paper respondents who chose the "not perceptible" answer option were assigned a score of 0 on the annoyance questions. The annoyance scale was dichotomized using a cut-off score for "highly annoyed" at a score of 8 and more. Furthermore, as an alternative categorization of the annoyance scale we used a cut-off score of 5 and more which puts the person in the category "(at least) annoyed".

 

Sleep disturbance. The question on wind turbine sleep disturbance was embedded in a list of questions asking about sleep disturbance for various sources (sound of road traffic, sound of industry, sound of neighbors; not further reported here). The question on sleep disturbance due to wind turbine sound was identical to the annoyance question, except that it enquired about the level of sleep disturbance instead of annoyance on a scale ranging from 0 to 10. The question thus provides a measure of the subjective perception of participants' sleep. Recoding of the "not perceptible" option and dichotomization were carried out in the same way as described above for the questions about annoyance, resulting in the following dichotomous variables: "highly sleep disturbed" (1 = score ≥ 8) and "(at least) sleep disturbed" (1= score ≥ 5).

 

Percentages (highly) annoyed and (highly) sleep disturbed are presented for the total survey population and for the participants living within 2.5 km from the nearest wind (which is the maximum distance in [6] and [10]) and for participants living between 2.5 and 5 km from the nearest wind turbine.

 

3. RESULTS

 

3.1. Response rate and distributions of wind turbine features

 

Of the 3500 persons invited, 662 (19%) responded to the wind turbine questionnaire. Figure 2 show the distribution of the distance, hub height, capacity, rotor diameter of the nearest wind turbine across respondents.

 

 

Figure 2: Histograms of the distributions of distance to and features of the nearest wind turbine for the respondents to the wind turbine questionnaire (n = 662).

 

3.2. Characteristics of the study population and annoyance and sleep disturbance responses

 

Descriptives of the study population are shown in Table 1. More males than females participated in our study. Of the participants 75% owns a home while 25% rents a home. In total 25% of the participants reported living in the vicinity of a wind farm. Of the participants 20 (3.2%) were highly annoyed by wind turbine sound and 2.4% (n= 15) was highly sleep disturbed.

 

Table 1: Percentages and frequencies for sex, age, home ownership status, living in the vicinity of a wind farm, and annoyance and sleep disturbance to wind turbine sound.

 

 

3.3. Annoyance and sleep disturbance responses per distance category

 

Figure 3 shows the percentages (and frequencies) of highly annoyed and highly sleep disturbed participants as well as (at least) annoyed and (at least) sleep disturbed participants per distance category. The percentages differed between the categories. The percentage of highly annoyed and highly sleep disturbed persons was larger for the group living within 2.5 km from the nearest wind turbine than for those living between 2.5 and 5 km from the nearest wind turbine. The same pattern was found for the percentages of (at least) annoyed and (at least) sleep disturbed persons.

 

 

Figure 3: A. Percentages (and frequencies) of highly annoyed and (at least) annoyed participants of those living within 2.5 km from a wind turbine (n = 268) and between 2.5 and 5 km a wind turbine (n = 366). Error bars show Clopper-Pearson 95% confidence intervals. B. percentages (and frequencies) of highly sleep disturbed and (at least) sleep disturbed participants of those living within 2.5 km from a wind turbine (n = 263) and between 2.5 and 5 km from a wind turbine (n = 361). Error bars show Clopper-Pearson 95% confidence intervals.

 

4. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION

 

The primary aim of this study was to describe the percentages of (highly) annoyed and (highly) sleep disturbed people living in the vicinity (<5 km) of wind turbines in the Netherlands. Furthermore, we explored the difference in annoyance and sleep disturbance between two distance categories (0-2.5 km and 2.5-5 km).

 

Within 5 km of a wind turbine 3.2% of the participants was highly annoyed by wind turbine sound and 2.4% was highly sleep disturbed. For the subset of participants living within 2.5 km from a wind turbine a larger percentage (5.2%) was highly annoyed and 3.8% were highly sleep disturbed.

 

Previous data from the Netherlands gathered in 2007 among people living within 2.5 km from wind turbines showed that 2.9% were highly annoyed by wind turbine sound when indoors and 4.1% when outdoors [6][10]. Given the differences between the studies a direct comparison of the results between the studies is problematic. These differences include variation in the way the annoyance questions were phrased (indoors/outdoors vs. at home), the use of different answers scales for these questions (4 point vs. 11 point-scale) and differences in the sampling method used (stratified vs non stratified sampling methods). Furthermore, our cut-off point for high annoyance (score ≥8, which translates to ≥72.72 on a 100 point scale) is slightly lower than the cut-off point for the 2007 data (score ≥4, which translates to ≥75 on a 100 point scale) [6][10]. Bearing in mind these caveats, our results point to similar values of annoyance or a slight increase in annoyance over time, which could be worthwhile to explore further.

 

When looking at the two distance categories, an increase of percentages of high annoyance and high sleep disturbance was observed with closer distance. High annoyance and high sleep disturbance responses further away from a wind turbine (2.5-5 km) were low, 1.6% and 1.4% respectively, compared to the responses closer to a wind turbine (< 2.5 km) described above. A similar pattern was found for the percentages (at least) annoyed and (at least) sleep disturbed. These findings are in line with those of a recent Finnish study that showed an inverse relationship of distance to the nearest wind turbine with both annoyance and sleep disturbance [4]. If distance is regarded as a proxy for sound exposure, the findings also agree with the evidence for an association between annoyance and exposure to wind turbine sound that has been reported by recent review papers on the topic [1-3].

 

4.1. Strength and limitations

 

The current paper gives a preliminary update of annoyance and sleep disturbance to wind turbines in the Netherlands and is part of the first extensive study in the Netherlands among residents living in the vicinity of a wind turbine/wind turbines on the response to different aspects of the turbines, and various related health effects. Limitations of our study include the cross-sectional design of the survey, not allowing to infer causality between exposure levels and their effects on health. Additionally, despite a large sample size of 3500 people, the response rate was only 19%, which could have led to selection bias. Our study population was more often male and on average older than the Dutch population, based on a comparison with demographic information from Statistics Netherlands [15]. We have not weighted the results back to the Dutch population, nor to the population of interest.

 

4.2. Future plans and suggestion for further research

 

In the survey we included an extensive set of different questions investigating annoyance to various wind turbine related exposures, health complaints, and possible co-determinants of annoyance and sleep disturbance responses, which we plan to explore in the next steps of our analysis. In addition, we plan to estimate noise exposure from wind turbines per address and relate this to the different health outcomes. As shown in Figure 2 there was heterogeneity in features (capacity, hub height and rotor diameter) of the wind turbines nearest to the participants’ dwelling, which may allow exploration of the association of the features with annoyance and sleep disturbance and adjust for these features as possible confounders in further analyses.

 

Furthermore, the aim of the study was not to calculate exposure response relationship. As can be seen in Figure 2, relatively few participants live close to a wind turbine. For future research, when the aim is to derive an exposure response relation for wind turbine sound (or other wind turbine related exposures) and health, it is necessary to oversample in the area near the wind turbine (< 1 km) to get enough statistical power across the entire exposure range. Moreover, such an endeavor may benefit from collection of data from multiple countries in an international collaboration.

 

4.3. Conclusion

 

We presented the percentages of (high) annoyance and (high) sleep disturbance to wind turbines for people living within 5 km from a wind turbine in the Netherlands in 2021. In line with previous findings, the subset of participants living further from a wind turbine (2.5-5 km) reported less annoyance and sleep disturbance compared to those living closer to a wind turbine (within 2.5 km). Furthermore, the percentage for high annoyance within 2.5 km seems in line with those previously found within this distance from wind turbines in the Netherlands. The current findings are part of a larger survey which included questions on health complaints, annoyance to various wind turbine related exposures, and possible co-determinants that will be explored in future analyses.

 

5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

This research was carried out in the framework of RIVM Strategic Programme [S/2019-29], in which expertise and innovative projects prepare RIVM to respond to future issues in health and sustainability. We gratefully acknowledge Ric van Poll and Elise van Kempen for their feedback on the manuscript.

 

6. REFERENCES

 

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1 Anne.bolders@rivm.nl

2 Marije.reedijk@rivm.nl

3 Harm.van.wijnen@rivm.nl

4 Irene.van.kamp@rivm.nl