US President Donald Trump has continued his war on wind turbines, this time claiming the noise they produce causes cancer during a speech at a fundraiser.
"Hillary wanted to put up wind, wind. If you have a windmill anywhere near your house congratulations your house just went down 75 per cent in value," Mr Trump said at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner.
"And they say the noise causes cancer, you told me that one."
While the speech appeared to be the first time the US President had directly linked wind turbines to cancer, his war against them has been raging for years.
In 2015, Mr Trump challenged wind farm developers in the UK's Supreme Court, claiming that the structures, if built, would ruin the view from his golfing development on the Aberdeenshire coast, Scotland. The legal battle, which had been running for many years, was unsuccessful.
But scientists have said the fears around the health impacts of wind farms are unfounded.
University of New South Wales professor Simon Chapman, the co-author of Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Communicated Disease, told SBS News last year that "It’s a ‘socially contagious disease’ that you can catch by hearing about it and getting anxious about it".
"Most complaints are made by people where wind farms haven’t even been built," he said.
Melbourne University professor Andrew Stock, also a member of the Climate Council, also said studies in the United States and Canada of infrasound or low-frequency sound had found no adverse health impacts.
The day after Mr Trump's speech, a bipartisan group of 19 US senators announced a push to "ensure America remains a leader in wind energy technology", the Washington Post reported.
But Donald Trump isn't the only one to have expressed concerns over the years about wind farms.
In 2015, then Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott agreed with radio host Alan Jones that there may be "potential health impacts" from the windmills.
Tony Abbott in Parliament. Source: AAP
“I do take your point about the potential health impact of these things … when I’ve been up close to these wind farms not only are they visually awful but they make a lot of noise," he said.
A committee set up in 2015 by the former prime minister to investigate the potential health impacts of wind farms has since been questioned for failing to provide formal advice to the government.
The Independent Scientific Committee on Wind Turbines has had research repeatedly rejected by scientific journals and only held one face-to-face meeting in its two years of operation.
