A theory to explain some physiological effects of the infrasonic emissions at some wind farm sites.

For at least four decades, there have been reports in scientific literature of people experiencing motion sickness-like symptoms attributed to low-frequency sound and infrasound. In the last several years, there have been an increasing number of such reports with respect to wind turbines; this corresponds to wind turbines becoming more prevalent. A study in Shirley, WI, has led to interesting findings that include: (1) To induce major effects, it appears that the source must be at a very low frequency, about 0.

A systematic rationale for defining the significance of aircraft noise impacts.

Regulatory agencies often define strict, decibel-denominated thresholds of significance of noise impacts to protect some fraction of the residential population from exposure to highly annoying noise. Definitions of the "significance" of aircraft noise impacts and recommendations of land use "compatibility," however, typically lack detailed, systematic rationales. Instead, the definitions are justified by reference to decades-old policies that were adopted without benefit of modern understandings of noise-induced annoyance, by appeals to authority, and by generic citations of non-peer reviewed documents.

Respondents' answers to community attitudinal surveys represent impressions of soundscapes and not merely reactions to the physical noise.

Noise dose as a sole independent variable accounts only for less than half of the variance in community response data. Non-acoustic factors, such as attitude to the noise source identified by Job [(1988). J.

Role of community tolerance level (CTL) in predicting the prevalence of the annoyance of road and rail noise.

Fidell et al. [(2011), J. Acoust.

A first-principles model for estimating the prevalence of annoyance with aircraft noise exposure.

Numerous relationships between noise exposure and transportation noise-induced annoyance have been inferred by curve-fitting methods. The present paper develops a different approach. It derives a systematic relationship by applying an a priori, first-principles model to the findings of forty three studies of the annoyance of aviation noise.