Bad science

Dr. Robert McMurtry speaks at a symposium of experts from around the world on wind turbines and human health in 2010.

Former Health Canada advisor offers searing criticism of industrial wind turbine study

When Health Canada announced two years ago it would study the health impacts of industrial wind turbines, Dr. Robert McMurtry was skeptical. For some, it seemed an odd stance. McMurtry had worked for years documenting and presenting a growing mountain of data, research and case studies pointing to serious and alarming health concerns for those living amid massive, electricity generating machines spinning overhead.

At last, a federal government agency was taking these concerns seriously and vowing to examine the issue carefully. But McMurtry had serious doubts. He is a former advisor to Health Canada and the Minister of Health. He knows the agency’s strengths and its weaknesses.

He wrote in 2012 that Health Canada was the wrong body to conduct a study into the health effects of industrial wind turbines on residents living in their midst. He said then that Health Canada was a regulatory bureaucracy, with limited research capacity. He worried, too, about the agency’s objectivity. He noted that the lead investigator for the study, Dr. David Michaud, had published a paper in support of wind turbines prior to his role in this study. In 2008, Michaud cowrote a paper to justify raising the noise threshold for wind turbines.

“We suggested he resign,” said Dr. Mc- Murtry from his South Marysburgh home. “He didn’t.”

So McMurtry was not at all surprised last week by the news that the Health Canada study had concluded that, while industrial wind turbines can be extremely annoying to people living near them—they were unable to draw a causal link between wind turbines and diagnosable illnesses, including migraines, nausea, dizziness and chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.

McMurtry was Dean of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario and the founding assistant deputy minister of the Population and Public Health Branch of Health Canada. He is also a recipient of the Order of Canada.

He reports that experts with a variety of statistical and epidimeological backgrounds from around the world have examined the Health Canada study and have confirmed “a ton of errors.”

“They didn’t count people who left the research area,” said McMurtry. “They didn’t try to find out why they left. It is absurd.”

Others point to flaws in the size of the sample group and the methodology of the study.

“Taken alone, as an individual study, a cross sectional survey ranks as the least reliable method of study, marginally above individual case reports and expert opinion,” wrote Denise Wolfe, in a critique of the Health Canada study published online this week.

Many critics, however, point to the study’s finding that, in fact, there is a relationship between increasing levels of turbine noise and residents’ annoyance related to that noise, as well as to vibration, shadow flicker from the rotating blades, and aircraft warning lights atop the towers.

“Annoyance is an adverse health effect,” says McMurtry. “The World Health Organization says this point blank. The Center for Disease Control says annoyance is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and cancer. This false dichotomy is a flaw in the study that has been identified by every expert who has looked at it. It is a ludicrous argument.”

McMurtry returns to his criticism of Health Canada. He argued in 2012 that this research ought to be conducted by the Canadian Institute for Health Research. He says Health Canada isn’t qualified to do this kind of work.

“All it takes is two or three to affect policy,” said McMurtry. “A hand goes up in a meeting. We’ve got a guy who is a specialist. He has made himself the leading guy on industrial wind turbines for many years.

Then he handpicked his own panel of reviewers. McMurtry says more qualified and experienced experts were overlooked for selection to the panel.

“How do you swing all of Health Canada? You don’t. Just the key people. I know how it works. I was there.”

“I am deeply saddened that Health Canada has fallen,” said McMurtry.