Monitor Your Health Near Existing Kahuku Wind Farm:
The 2.5 MW Clipper turbine, currently in use at the Kahuku Wind Farm has been declared a public health hazard by a Wisconsin county where residents 4.2 miles away are adversely affected and low-frequency sound pulses are detected more than 6 miles away. If you live within 6 miles of the Kahuku Wind Farm (Pipeline through Punaluu), it’s important for you to assess the extent to which the current smaller turbines are adversely affecting you. And in preparation for the possible operation of the largest turbines on land in the US operating on Oahu, if you live anywhere on Oahu, it’s important for you to begin documenting your current health and quality of sleep.
There are already twelve 2.5 MW turbines 1,200 meters downwind from the town of Kahuku. The Kahuku Wind Farm began testing wind turbines in January 2011, commercial operation began March 23, 2011. On August 1, 2012, all but two of the turbines were shut down until February 13, 2014 after a fire burned the wind farm’s battery storage system. Review your personal health records to look for initiation of ringing in your ears, headaches, high blood pressure, nausea, or psychological conditions during periods of operation of the 12 existing 2.5 MW wind turbines.
I recommend you not sleep within five miles of a wind turbine (regardless of whether or not you are aware the turbines affect your sleep). If you decide to stay within 5 miles of a wind turbine, keep a daily journal – track the following on a scale of 0-5 – or for $500 (Dec holiday sale – $300), you can buy a personal EEG to monitor (to track REM and deep sleep) to assess whether you are getting your 3 hours of REM and deep sleep. Even if you don’t currently know if the turbines are on or off, document every day so you can provide information to the health department when the time comes to get the Na Pua Makani Wind Farm declared a public health hazard and removed. Even if you are not aware the turbines affect you, exposure to low-frequency sound (from wind turbines, just like other industrial sources which normally affect people in an occupational setting, not in their homes) at the levels you are exposed to in Kahuku affects tissues in your body – please do not stay in Kahuku until the Na Pua Makani turbines are shut down. Please watch this video – please do not stay in Kahuku. Until the Na Pua Makani turbines are removed, it’s crucial that you move away from Kahuku – even if it’s just at night – do not live in Kahuku. Journal entries should you chose to stay near the turbines:
0 (no),
2 (slight – but does not cause any change in behavior or attitude),
3 (moderate – small changes in behavior or attitude, there is a perceived reduction in quality of life but productivity and activity are not affected),
4 (Substantial/Disruptive: The sensation causes a material change in behavior or attitude, reduced interest in getting up in the morning, changes in productivity or activity because of the sensation, changes in schedule including a few hours of sick leave),
5 (Severe/Physically Harmful): Significant changes in behavior, psychological stress or physiological effects – debilitating, taking the day off from work, children taking the day off from school),
Tired? (0, 2, 3, 4, 5) (was it hard to get up or do you feel well-rested; do you feel leaden during the day; do you just make it through your day or are you bright-eyed and ready to go, have a clear mind?). National Geographic Sleep Issue and the Intro to National Geographic Sleep Issue – Chapters 1-2.
Did you dream Y/N? Did you get REM sleep (which is crucial for short-term memory and learning – infants spend 50% of sleep in REM, children need more REM sleep than the 1.5 hours adults need)? REM and deep sleep are part of 90-minute sleep cycles – cycles that can’t occur if sleep is disturbed/interrupted by stress response to wind turbine pulses. When turbines were off in January, Kahuku and Sunset Beach residents noticed they were dreaming – For $500, you can buy a personal EEG to monitor REM sleep, and less accurate (but useful because the differences turbines on vs. turbines off/away from turbines is so great, the Whoop, Apple, or similar wristbands that monitor heart rhythm and calculates periods of REM sleep are helpful. Three miles away in Sunset Beach, the low-frequency air pressure pulses from the turbine blades prevent me from getting REM sleep, feeling rested, and feeling short-term memory impacts, so we rented a room in Waialua to sleep in (what impact will this have on affordable housing – if we’re all renting a second place to stay).
Dementia: During two periods last year when the Kahuku turbines were shut down for three weeks, I noticed the forgetfulness I’ve developed (not remembering why I went into a room, forgetting thoughts I had in my work unless I wrote them down, having trouble finding words, not being as able to think clearly), that I thought was just from aging, went away and my head felt clear. Memory and learning are affected by lack of REM and deep sleep (so if you are not getting the normal three hours of REM and deep sleep – not sleeping through the night – have disturbed interrupted sleep, and dementia is affecting your ability to function normally, write it down).
Wound not healing? Y/N: Have you noticed any wounds that are taking a long time to heal – this may be related to sleep disturbance.
Poor immune response? Y/N: Your immune response to vaccines can be depressed by 50% if you don’t get good sleep during the six days after vaccination (not to mention your body’s ability to mount an immune response if you get covid 19).
Headache? (0, 2, 3, 4, 5) (a few miles away, residents wake up with a stiff neck and headache when the turbines are on – often the headache goes away during the day or when they go to town to work – but some residents have taken disability retirement and now losing their homes because of headaches they didn’t even realize were from the turbines. At closer distances, like Turtle Bay, Kawailoa/Chuns/Laniakea/Kahuku, occupants get a headache after an hour of exposure even during the day). HMSA is interested in AES reimbursement for the physical therapy and costly prescription treatments for migraine (see note at bottom of page – Dr. Leah Ridge at Invision building on Victoria near Ward is compiling wind turbine headache patients and will present findings to health departments and Jessica Ho at Central Oahu Physical Therapy is best physical therapist for treatment of stiff neck/shoulders);
Ringing in ears? (0, 2, 3, 4, 5) if this is bothersome to you, how bad is it when you wake up each day – does it bother your daily activities (check your medical records – what year was your tinnitus diagnosis – this happens mostly with people who’ve worked around construction equipment, aircraft, worked in a shop with noise – people who have 10 dB of hearing loss in the very high frequency range on their audio gram). DO NOT use white noise machines to try to mask the wind turbine sound – do not expose yourself to any unnecessary random audible noise other than music (avoid exposure to window AC, fan, surf, highway, and other white noise-like sounds) – soundproof your bedroom so your cell phone sound meter app shows sound does not exceed 35 dBA (you have no chance of masking the air pressure pulses, but at least protect yourself from the learning problems associated with audible noise);
Heart Palpitations? (0, 2, 3, 4, 5) Did you have heart palpitations last night – are they more frequent than they used to be (these seem to get more frequent and longer-lasting as years of exposure drag on – unfortunately, sensitization to these wind turbine pressure pulses, occurs rather than habituation – please note these heart palpitations become dangerous when the heart rhythm is permanently altered – my doctor told me not to worry about them (that was years ago when they only happened once a month or so – now that they’re every night and sometimes during the day, I’m taking this for them: I’m taking gaia herbs Hawthorn Supreme supplement and it’s solved my heart palpitations problem – talk to your doctor because hawthorn can also affect blood pressure – but at least I’ve solved one of the problems I have being 3 miles from the turbines;
Pressure in ears/ears popping? (0, 2, 3, 4, 5) When you’re lying in bed are your ears popping when you’re not moving your jaw? (this seems to correspond to nights residents get only 30 minutes of REM sleep – if you feel this ear popping, it can help you decide you should find another location to sleep that night if you want to get REM sleep).
Vertigo, dizziness, motion-sickness? (0, 2, 3, 4, 5) This occurs within about a mile of the turbines. (If you are feeling this at your home, please move away for the next 10 years while this is resolved – the existing turbines will be decommissioned in 11 years and litigation for the new turbines would take about 10 years). Yesterday I drove up to the elementary school to see how feathered the Na Pua turbine blades were and I was only there for about a minute and I noticed I felt dizzy and I burped (like I do when I visit a wind farm – and this was at an elementary school).
Feeling of fullness or pressure in your head? (0, 2, 3, 4, 5) (This often corresponds with ears popping without you moving your jaw a few miles from the turbines – when it’s worse, it feels like a headache – neurologists tell me they are migraines, regardless of the pain level – even if it’s a dull pain, associated with neck stiffness, it’s still apparently classified as a migraine.)
Chest tightness – not taking full breaths/not able to do a full yawn? Y/N (After a few minutes within 3 miles of wind turbines I find my breathing isn’t as full). During the day, you can mask the wind turbine low-frequency pulses using wind turbine acoustic specialist Robert Rand’s Wavepool bunaural beats – you can’t mask 60 dB 1 Hz sound at night because listening to sound higher than 35 dB will adversely affect your sleep. Also try tai chi to help you remember to take full breaths.
Depression – Most of the people who have no choice but to stay in their homes after a wind farm moves in end up on antidepressants – it sounds like many of them also take several prescriptions for various stress-related illnesses. The most effective treatment is to move away from the wind turbines and the symptoms (unless they’ve caused permanent damage to your organs) will go away after one to three weeks.
If you have children, track the following additional questions:
Children Tired? (0, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Children dreamed last night Y/N? Infants normally spend 50% of their sleep in REM sleep – children also spend a lot of their sleep time in REM sleep.
Children’s behavior? (0, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Other:__________ 0-5 (fill in the blank spot for people to add their own symptom to track)
Also note the following:
How Many Hours Were You In Bed, Trying to Sleep: 0-13?
Did you have difficulty falling asleep, getting back to sleep, or premature awakening? Yes/No
Did you leave your home or workplace to seek relief from one or more of these sensations: Yes/No
High Blood Pressure Note to All Residents: Please monitor your blood pressure at home and if you detect high blood pressure, please ask your doctor to confirm it with 24-hour at-home blood pressure monitoring when the wind turbines are on.
Diabetes and Obesity: Please also be aware diabetes and obesity are also related to sleep disturbance. Not only do you not feel like exercising when you’re sleep-disturbed, but you will eat more and insulin needs are different.
Tips for sleep:
Take Measurements: If you sleep great, feel rested, dream when you travel but not at home and want to examine your REM sleep and insomnia/inability to fall asleep/fall back asleep in more detail, youIf you decide to stay within 5 miles of a wind turbine, keep a daily journal – track the following on a scale of 0-5 – or for $500 (Dec holiday sale – $300), you can buy a personal EEG to monitor (to track REM and deep sleep) to assess whether you are getting your 3 hours of REM and deep sleep.
Always ensure you’re doing the basics of sleep – no caffeine or alcohol, get sunlight and exercise every morning, use blackout curtains or sleep eye mask, ensure bed noise level is below 35 dBA (use cell phone sound meter), do not try to use white noise machines to mask audible sound – need to block the sound – wear earplugs or noise-cancelling headphones (only work down to 20 Hz), keep bedroom cool temp, no blue light/TV/computer screen 30 min before bed. I know it’s not possible to exercise when you feel so tired – no exercise within 3 hours of bed though.
I experimented with supplements for REM sleep like Serenity herbal extracts, Jujube fruit, chamomile, melatonin, ashwagandha, valerian root; I tried sleeping with a CPAP we got for covid (I don’t have sleep apnea – Queens sleep lab tested me with an at-home monitor – but I thought it would pressurize my ears so they wouldn’t notice the turbine pulses – it didn’t work either), I tried sleeping in hammocks in the safe room because I thought the 1 Hz swaying would distract from the turbine pulses – it also didn’t work. and I’m taking L-Arginine because it may prevent development of high blood pressure during this period of REM sleep deprivation. My doctor tried putting me on a couple different sleeping pills/sedatives (that didn’t work – neither did gaba (like from kava) – which is a sedative and REM sleep is very similar to being awake, so gaba may be the opposite of what your brain needs) and then we tried an antidepressent for a few months – it didn’t work (one out of three nights in the safe room, doing all these things, plus going to bed at 7 and coming out at 8 am and I only eked out 1 hour of REM sleep nine to ten nights per month in July and August, the two months leading up to Na Pua turbines ramping up – and then Na Pua Makani started spinning faster and August tradewinds were unrelenting, so even with the safe room (where sound is the same as outdoors, no resonances like in the house) and all these supplements and prescriptions and spending 12 hours in bed I got 16 minutes of REM and then zero minutes of REM – after putting in all this effort to get sleep – so I gave up and rented a room five miles away downwind from Kawailoa – a place just to sleep (and have exceeded an hour of REM and deep sleep every night since and only need to be in bed for 8 or 9 hours to get all that quality sleep) – having this away place makes me notice my breathing becomes shallow/my chest is tight at home – like it’s hard to take a full breath or yawn fully at home (3 miles downwind from the turbines). I’m grateful I traveled for work last year so I could realize how well-rested I feel away from the turbines – I wanted to move to Guam or Rota because I sleep so well there – but my sleep 5 miles downwind from Kawailoa, in Waialua, feels just like my sleep on Rota, CNMI – it’s heaven. I know I can’t afford to rent a spare bedroom long-term – we’ll either get a camper top for our pickup or I’ll go back to sleeping in my car in someone’s driveway if I can find somewhere safe – maybe the County or State can arrange for a place for wind turbine affected to sleep on their land somewhere safe away from turbines. I am ready to sell our house and move to Kauai where they don’t allow wind turbines but for my surfer husband, nothing there compares to our current Sunset Beach home. I know it won’t be long before Na Pua Makani is taken down – declared a public health hazard or bought out with taxpayer money – or nuisance noise litigation gets all three wind farms taken down before the end of the 10 years that remain on those things.
October update: I’ve been reading about enduring torture and I’m interested in seeing if I can teach my mind to accept/ make the low-freqency pulses “your friend”. I am going to work with Dr. Lev – He helped a friend of mine, who had chronic untreatable pain come to terms with and live “with” it. If it’s possible, I hope to find a way to live in my home rather than rent a spare bedroom in Waialua while these turbine removals are processed.
Tips for headaches: The best doctor for migraines is Dr. Leah Ridge in the Invision building at Victoria near Ward (808) 486-7199. She is interested in compiling the migraine wind turbine patients to submit information to the health departments – she is ideal because she will give you specific forms to use to track your headaches and she is also able to help you get the very best treatments available and the best physical therapist to help you if the turbines are causing stiff neck/shoulders is Jessica Ho in Wahiawa (808) 621-6400. Also if you can afford the out of pocket costs with the risk the wind farm won’t reimburse you, chiropractor Bob Kennedy at Paumalu is very skilled and uses the latest/greatest medical muscle relaxing equipment to relax your neck/shoulders – He has package-deals that cost around $65/session.
Night turbine shut down to slightly reduce kills of endangered bats: April – November, turbines are required to be off at night to protect bats when wind speed is less than 5 meters/second (11 mph) (which has been just a few hours this year). Starting December 1, the turbines can be on all night even at the low wind speeds. (I notice this wind speed shutdown for the bats almost never affects the Kahuku turbines – they are unrelenting, on all the time because it’s windier there – versus Kawailoa turbines are off many nights because wind speed is lower there/they meet the shutdown wind speed often). Low-frequency sound increases with wind turbine power output (power output increases with increasing wind speed). The best weather station to assess wind speed at both wind farms is the weather station at the James Campbell National Wildlife Refuge by clicking Daily Summary (and viewing the current and previous day) at either Mesowest, Kii weather station or https://raws.dri.edu/cgi-bin/rawMAIN.pl?hiHKII
Note: If you notice you’re not taking full breaths because of stress, help your body remember how to take full breaths by doing at least 5 minutes of tai chi every day – here’s a link to a free beginner 5-minute tai chi video.
If you find the current wind turbines have affected your health, send confidential health information to: webmail@doh.hawaii.gov
More Information About What to Expect:
Here’s the simplest graph I can find showing what decibel level of wind turbine low-frequency sound impulses cause humans to say they are severely impacted (“5”, severe impact, red squares, and “2”, blue squares is reported slight effects that don’t impact behavior). This graph is from a study of homes within 1,600 meters of turbines, Cape Bridgewater, Australia).
Kahuku is currently experiencing 63 dB of 8 Hz sound from the 2.5 MW turbines (and the Na Pua Makani turbines would cause 8 Hz 83 dB – 83 dB is not even on this graph, it’s so high). Na Pua Makani would increase sound pressure pulse levels everywhere but we don’t know by how much because these large turbines have not yet been measured anywhere in the world (by anyone willing to provide the data).
An estimated 10 to 30% of residents within 4.2 miles are presumably affected by the low-frequency sound pressure pulses. These are normal people, not just people with autism and seizure disorders.
Sunset Beach sound pressure levels typical of high wind, low wind, and turbines off are shown below. High wind 55-60 dB at 1-3 Hz at Sunset Beach I get zero to 16 minutes of REM sleep; low wind, I typically get 30 minutes of REM sleep, turbines off I typically get 1.5 hours of REM sleep (here at Sunset Beach, three miles from the Kahuku Wind Farm turbines):
We assume that now that the health effects are known to the public, the existing turbines will be required to shut down before their scheduled decommissioning dates, 2031 and 2032.
Honolulu Approves Construction of Most Dangerous Wind Farm Ever Built in the United States 