Strong Evidence From Australia: Wind Health Complaints Contagious Nocebo Effects

A large, historical Australian public health study from the Sydney Medical School concludes that health complaints about wind turbines are heavily influenced by contagious nocebo effects. Many people have lived for many years next to wind farms with very few health effects, except where and until anti-wind groups actively made the issue a concern. Now, however, it is very hard to distinguish real health effects from nocebo effects. The study, Spatio-temporal differences in the history of health and noise complaints about Australian wind farms: evidence for the psychogenic, "communicated disease" hypothesis, concludes:

...the reported spatio-temporal variations in complaints are consistent with psychogenic hypotheses that health problems arising are "communicated diseases" with nocebo effects likely to play an important role in the aetiology of complaints.