Annoyance Related to Wind Turbine Noise
Archives of Acoustics
2014
No 1
Małgorzata PAWLACZYK-ŁUSZCZYŃSKA, Adam DUDAREWICZ, Kamil ZABOROWSKI, Małgorzata ZAMOJSKA-DANISZEWSKA,Małgorzata WASZKOWSKA
wind turbines, noise, annoyance
Nauki Techniczne
A questionnaire inquiry on response to wind turbine noise was carried out on 361 subjects living in
the vicinity of 8 wind farms. Current mental health status of respondents was assessed using Goldberg
General Health Questionnaire GHQ-12. For areas where respondents lived, A-weighted sound pressure
levels (SPLs) were calculated as the sum of the contributions from the wind power plants in the specific
area.
Generally, 33.0% of respondents were annoyed outdoors by wind turbine noise at the calculated
A-weighted SPL of 31–50 dB, while indoors the noise was annoying to 21.3% of them. The propor-
tion of subjects evaluating the noise produced by operative wind turbines as annoying decreased with
increasing the distance from the nearest wind turbine (27.6% at the distance of 400–800 m vs 14.3% at
the distance above 800 m, p < 0.016). On the other hand, the higher was the noise level, the greater
was the percentage of annoyed respondents (14.0% at SPL up to 40 dB vs 28.1% at SPL of 40–45 dB,
p < 0.016). Besides noise and distance categories, subjective factors, such as general attitude to wind
turbines, sensitivity to landscape littering and current mental health status, were found to have significant
impact on the perceived annoyance. About 50% of variance in annoyance rating might be explained by
the aforesaid subjective factors.
Committee on Acoustics PAS, PAS Institute of Fundamental Technological Research, Polish Acoustical Society
ISSN 0137-5075
;
eISSN 2300-262X
10.2478/aoa-2014-0010