Advocating for the public: isn’t that what nurses do?

Wisconsin public health nurse Judy Friederichs, RN, BSN, was so concerned about the state of families exposed to industrial wind turbine noise that, as Director of the Health Department for Brown County, she put together a resolution to the state government, asking for emergency funding to help the victims of turbine noise.

Sponsors of the resolution were Audrey S. Murphy BSN, Chair of the Brown County Board of Health, and Jay J. Tibbetts MD, vice-chair of the Brown County Board of Health.

The resolution passed the County Board of Health and has now gone to the state government.

The link to the document is here http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/2012/board-of-health-asks-state-for-emergency-financial-relocation-assistance-for-wind-turbine-syndrome-victims-wisconsin/

Among the clauses in the Resolution is this: “WHEREAS the State’s inaction to enact wind siting rules that protect human health and safety has allowed development of the industrial wind project known as Shirley Wind LLC to be constructed in the Town of Glenmore, Brown County, Wisconsin (dedicated November 2010)

and

WHEREAS Shirley Wind LLC has created an environment that has resulted in the very same ‘undue hardships’ that the JCRAR suspension of PSC 128 sought to prevent. These ‘undue hardships’ have forced two families to vacate their homes to regain their health and continue to force at least two other families to suffer adverse health effects significant enough that they seek refuge away from their homes but do not have the financial ability to temporarily relocate…

WHEREAS the Brown County Board of Health has in the past, and continues to, advocate for the health and safety of Brown County families.”

The resolution then asks for emergency funding to help families suffering adverse health effects from the “irresponsible placement” of industrial wind turbines.

This is just sensible–actually, sensible would have been not to locate the giant machines near people in the first place–you would think, and that health professionals are just doing their job, looking our for the health and safety of people in their care.

Interesting that the source of many references used as background for the Resolution are Canadian and in fact from Ontario, including a paper by Dr Robert McMurtry (see our Links page for a video of Dr McMurtry), the decision by the Environmental Review Tribunal in 2011, Dr John Harrison’s work on wind turbine noise, and even the (flawed) report by Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health.

Many of the other references such as the paper on quality of life by Dr Daniel Shepherd et al are quite familiar here in Ontario … but hasn’t cut much mustard with the Ontario government, or the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO). A recent document prepared by the RNAO on the need to promote wind power to replace coal is fraught with errors, and in some cases relies only on news releases from so-called environmental groups as sources of information.

Advocating for the health and safety of Ontario citizens: that is what the Ontario government and the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario ought to be doing for the people of Ontario, not accepting at face value what the wind power developers tell them.

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