One of the owners of Scituate’s new wind turbine, Gordon L. Deanne of Palmer Financial, said recently there is no evidence linking wind turbines to human health problems. He speculated that the people who are getting sick near turbines may be falling victim to mind tricks. He added that people can be annoyed, but that “annoyance is not a health effect.”

A number of sources counter his opinion. “Annoyance, in medical usage, exists as a precise technical term and defines annoyance as a mental state capable of degrading health”; “. . . physiological reactions to sound annoyance include increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, hypertension, hearing impairment, tinnitus. . . ”