Windmill Noise Cancer

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About

Windmill Noise Cancer refers to jokes mocking a statement by United States president Donald Trump during his speech at the National Republican Congressional Committee's dinner in which he referenced the disproved theory that noise from wind turbines can cause cancer. Following the media reports on the subject, numerous memes poking fun at the statement were posted online.

Precursor

In 1960s, French scientist Vladimir Gavreau published a research paper in which he described harmful effects of infrasound, later proved partially false by later works by other scientists.^[1]^[2] In his research, Gavreau claimed that infrasonic soundwaves could harm humans regardless of their volume. While extremely loud infrasonic sounds were indeed shown to have harmful effects on human bodies akin to any extremely loud sound of any frequency, the assumption that low-volume infrasound frequencies could have any negative effects was not proven. Thus Gavreau's research, spread in several publications in later years, served as basis for a conspiracy theory that infrasound is innately harmful.

In the 1990s, wind turbines were discovered to emit weak levels of infrasound, causing a negative public reaction based on the false belief that infrasound is harmful.^[1] In 2009, Dr. Nina Pierpong published a book titled Wind Turbine Synrdome: A Report On a Natural Experiment in which she coined and described an alleged condition suffered by people living close to wind turbines, which symptoms included ""internal pulsation, quivering, nervousness, fear, a compulsion to flee, chest tightness and tachycardia -- increased heart rate".^[3] The book, despite not receiving recognition by any formal international classification, helped form global anti-wind energy community.^[1]

Origin

On April 2nd, 2019, the United States president Donald Trump held a speech at the National Republican Congressional Committee.^[4] During his speech, he mentioned a theory that the noise produced by wind turbines could be a cause of cancer for those living in their vicinity.

Hillary wanted to put up wind – wind! If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations: your house just went down 75 percent in value. And they say the noise causes cancer, you tell me that one, okay? And of course it's like a graveyard for birds!

Spread

On the same day, Twitter user @atrupar posted a short clip from the speech which gained over 600 retweets and 1,600 likes in six days.

In the following days, several media outlets reported on the story, including articles ran by Vox,^[5] Esquire^[6] and Washington Post.^[7]

Following multiple reports by the media, memes and jokes referencing the false statement were posted by users on Twitter, Reddit and other social networks. For example, a post by Twitter user @WisePaxCat, made on April 5th, 2019, gained over 1000 likes and 4,000 retweets in four days.^[8]