Part 1: An Interview with Dr. Jerry Punch, a retired, experienced, certified audiologist

March 23, 2025

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Jerry Punch regarding issues reported by some people living close to large-scale industrial wind turbine (IWTs) projects. Dr. Punch is a retired, certified audiologist with 50 years of clinical and research experience in his profession. He has a great understanding about the anatomy and physiology of the human ear, and how sound is produced, propagated, measured, and perceived by humans. Because Dr. Punch has over 10 years of experience as a consulting expert witness in various legal cases on behalf of citizen intervenors who are concerned with the potential adverse health effects (AHEs) of wind turbine noise, I wanted to ask him a few questions regarding the effects of operating large-scale wind turbines. 

Question: Dr. Punch, how did you get involved with the research involving industrial wind turbines and the potential adverse effects? What made you decide to dig deep into this topic? 

I have a long-standing interest in community noise issues, and throughout my career as an audiologist, I served occasionally as an expert witness in the area of hearing loss due to occupational and recreational noise exposure. In 2009, my colleague, acoustician Richard (Rick) James, asked me to accompany him on a visit to Michigan’s thumb area to offer my opinion on the potential effects of a wind project on a family living in the project area. I listened to the complaints of the family members, who were leaving their home to sleep in a motel on nights when the turbines were running. I came away quite skeptical that wind turbines could be at the root of the complaints, but I began to study information on industrial wind turbines (IWTs) that was available on websites and in the scientific literature. Along with Rick James, I interviewed several other families and individuals living near turbines and became increasingly convinced that there is a causative link between exposure to wind turbine noise and AHEs in a substantial percentage of individuals who live near wind turbine projects. Since 2009, I have coauthored several articles on the topic and given invited presentations and testimony in legal proceedings related to proposed and installed wind projects in 10 U.S. states, as well as Ontario, Canada. As a researcher, I’m knowledgeable of research design and the interpretation of research findings, and I view much of the scientific research, coupled with numerous anecdotal reports, as supportive of the existence of a causative link between wind turbine noise and adverse health impacts in humans. 

Question: Given your educational background and research, could you help us understand the impacts of noise, both audible noise and infrasound, especially how they relate to wind turbines? 

Most of the acoustic energy in wind turbines is in the low-to-mid-frequency range. When in idling or normal operational mode, turbines produce a relatively constant, fan-like, “whooshing” sound, which is typically audible. That audible sound, which can be especially annoying outdoors, is caused by interactions of air with the blades and interactions between the blades and the supporting tower. In addition to the fan-like noise, sub-audible acoustic pulsations also occur at the blade-pass frequency, at infrasonic rates, during the blade-to-tower interactions. Those interactions normally occur at a rate of 1 Hz and below, which has been referred to as the “nauseogenic range,” as it is acoustic energy in this range that many experts believe leads to the most serious AHEs. Those symptoms include sleep loss, headache, dizziness, motion sickness, vertigo, nausea, fatigue, stress, depression, memory deficits, inability to concentrate, and reduced quality of life. 

Acousticians and others have begun to view wind turbine infrasound not as a pure tone of 20 Hz or below, but rather as a series of transient pulsations, or spikes, that occur at an infrasonic rate. We now describe those spikes as acoustic pulsations at infrasonic rates, which normally occur at or below 1 Hz. Even though these spikes are not heard by humans, they are sufficiently intense to be felt during wind turbine operations, and they are most troublesome at night when people are trying to sleep. These acoustic pulsations cause the fluid in the inner ear’s vestibular, or balance, portion to vibrate, resulting in signals being sent to the brain, which recognizes that a conflict exists in sensations received by the ears, visual system, and muscular receptors. This conflict causes people to become disoriented and to experience symptoms such as motion sickness, ear pain, and headaches, making sleep difficult or impossible. An everyday example of this conflict occurs when a person riding in the back seat of a car experiences limited visual and muscular sensations, while undergoing various degrees of vestibular fluid movement, which leads to motion sickness. 

Question:  As you know, statements are made about no causal link between wind turbines and the negative effects that people are reporting while living or working in the vicinity of large-scale industrial wind projects. Could you address this for us?

The wind industry takes the view that although associations between exposure to wind turbines and specific AHEs have been reported, those associations do not imply direct causation. In fact, scientists have long distinguished between association and causation. 

To begin, numerous reports have indicated that symptoms occurring during exposure to wind turbines disappear soon after leaving the vicinity of the turbines, and recur on returning to the vicinity, and the cycle is highly repeatable. That is prima facie evidence that turbines are causing the symptoms, and such observations are the basis for an ABA experimental design. Still, other criteria are desirable if one is to prove causation. 

The industry has argued that the health complaints are indirectly related to factors other than noise, such as visibility of the turbines, perceived loss in property values, or jealousy over the fact that participants are receiving financial compensation while non-participants are not. Annoyance, a complaint that the industry readily admits being an issue, is considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a stressor that can lead to health effects, so pre-existing negative attitudes alone do not appear to be a valid explanation for health complaints. 

The conjecture of the wind industry that proof of causation is lacking relies on ambiguity in the concept of causation. The Bradford Hill criteria (Hill, 1965)1 are often used to establish causation of the effects of environmental influences; they involve an analysis of nine factors: (1) strength of association, (2) consistency, (3) specificity, (4) temporality, (5) biological gradient, (6) biological plausibility, (7) coherence, (8) experimentation, and (9) analogy. Importantly, with respect to the nine Bradford Hill criteria, all have been identified in scientific literature as pertinent to the relationship between IWT noise and AHEs. Observations that parallel the nine criteria, respectively, are: (1) widespread reports of complaints, (2) consistency of reported symptoms, (3) and (4) concurrence of symptoms with IWT operation, (5) a dose- response relationship between exposure levels (or distance) and symptoms, (6) the role of disturbances of the hearing and balance mechanisms of the inner ear in causing identified symptoms, (7) conformance with WHO, U.S. (federal), and some state noise guidelines, (8) in addition to cross-sectional studies, experimentation is established by the fact that symptoms decline or disappear when receptors leave the area and recur when they return to the area, and (9) noise-induced Sick Building Syndrome. 

In summary, applying the Bradford Hill criteria to the IWT‑related clinical, biological, and experimental data demonstrates that IWT exposure is not only associated with an increased risk of AHEs, but rather is a causative agent.  

Question: Some argue that the claims that people make about health affects related to living near wind turbines is just a “nocebo” effect. What do you say to people who say this? 

Psychological motivations are still among the wind industry’s primary explanation for health complaints. While psychological expectations and the power of suggestion can influence perceptions of the effects of wind turbine noise on health status, studies done thus far that purport to demonstrate the validity of the nocebo effect have failed to do so. As described in detail by Punch and James (2016), 2 those studies have used conditions that do not replicate those in the real world of IWTs. Therefore, evidence that the nocebo effect plays a significant role in influencing turbine-related health complaints is still lacking. 

Question: Have you personally slept in a home located in the area of a wind project? If so, what was your experience like?

Yes, I’ve slept in two homes located within an operating wind turbine project, one in Illinois and one in Wisconsin. In Illinois, I slept one night in a ground-floor bedroom having a window facing several turbines. Turbine activity was not being monitored in the home. I fell asleep without difficulty, awakening around 6:30 the next morning and immediately sensing pulsatile tinnitus, which I determined to be synchronized with my heartbeat by feeling my pulse. I left the home later that morning, not knowing whether the turbines had been on during the night, possibly eliciting the pulsatile tinnitus. Even though I had periodically experienced tinnitus before that time, I could not remember experiencing the pulsatile variation. 

In 2025, I accepted an invitation to spend a night in the Enz home located in the vicinity of the Shirley Wind Project in Brown County, Wisconsin.  The Enz family vacated their home in 2011 to protect and restore their health. In addition, at least one other family in the area also vacated their home for the same reason. The Shirley Wind Project was declared a Human Health Hazard by the Brown County Board of Health, which included Dr. Jay Tibbetts, in 2014.  

A computerized tracking system was turned on during the night of my stay to track turbine operations, and moderately strong turbine activity was detected between around midnight and 4:00 a.m., which was about the time I woke up. My two takeaways from that overnight visit were that, first, I experienced an increased loudness in an existing tinnitus, which consists of ringing in both ears. A second issue was a distinctly different kind of headache from any that I can recall experiencing in the past, seemingly located in the occipital lobe of my brain. I’m not prone to headaches, including migraines, and I remember thinking how odd it felt. I first noticed the headache and increased loudness in tinnitus when awakening, and my effort to return to a deep sleep failed. Feeling anxious to leave, I left around 7:30 a.m. to return to Michigan, and during the drive home, both the headache and loud tinnitus became less noticeable. By my second night in my own home, I was feeling normal again, thinking that I never again want to spend a night in the vicinity of IWTs. 

Question: With all your research and expertise regarding this, is there anything else you would like to add relating to the effects of large-scale wind turbines? 

With little attention to what is needed to protect public health, wind companies routinely propose to install increasingly large-capacity IWTs on farmland inhabited by rural residents who will live within and near the project areas. Their proposals with respect to noise are typically based on lenient regulations adopted by local municipalities or states, which often do not sufficiently take into account current research regarding the need to protect human health. Those regulations are especially dismissive of the probable influence of acoustic pulsations, or spikes, at infrasonic rates, which will be emitted and propagated over great distances. To protect sleep, wind companies should be required to adhere to the noise guidelines advocated by Schomer and the recently revised WHO noise guidelines by limiting nighttime wind turbine noise levels at the façades of residences to 38-40 dBA Leq. Until such a recommendation is enforced, residents will continue to experience a variety of AHEs, and a number of additional families will likely be forced to abandon their homes. These negative outcomes can be mitigated by employing minimum siting distances of several miles from homes, and even further from sensitive sites where people congregate, including schools, hospitals, nursing homes, and workplaces. 

To read more from Dr. Punch, be sure to go to Part 2 of this interview.

Statement: The work you do is so important, thank you for taking time to meet with me, and for sharing your expertise and experience. 

References: 

1 Hill, A.B. (1965). The environment and disease: Association or causation? Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 58, 295-300. 

2 Punch, J. & James, R.R. (October 2016). Wind turbine noise and human health: a four-decade history of evidence that wind turbines pose risks. The Journal at Hearing Health & Technology Matters, Available at: Microsoft Word - 16-10-20 Wind Turbine Noise Post-Publication Manuscript (HHTM Punch & James).