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Residents who live near data centers say a constant low-frequency vibration is ruining their health and homes (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[+] -42 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (21 children)

so same thing as for wind turbines then

Edit: as in, they should not be built where people live because you can feel the vibrations and it has a measurable effect on your vascular health. i linked a paper.

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  • [–] 26 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Wind turbines don't make infrasound like datacenters. While they do make some infrasound, it's less loud than datacenters, and most impostantly, doesn't get transmitted really far (air is pretty inefficient at transmitting infrasound).

    However, datacenters are louder, and have better mechanical connection with the ground. The ground is very good at transmitting infrasound, and it can even vibrate an entire building if the structure resonates. This effect is not new, and we've also seen it with other industrial buildings with heavy machinery. Furthermore, due to regulations, you can't build as close to a wind farm as you can to a datacenter.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    I noticed this effect when city buses were idling about a block away from my old house. It would hit just right (just wrong?) on a really noticable resonance frequency for that place. It used to make it hard to fall asleep if I went to bed after midnight.

    I don't notice weird vibrations like that much at my current address, fortunately.

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  • [–] -3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    that's why i mean it's the same thing. don't build them near people. we know ground-transferred infrasound is bad for your health.

    as for louder, idk. i worked next to a facebook dc for years, it was eerily quiet.

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  • [–] 16 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    There's tons of evidence for data centers, but I've never heard the same for wind turbines. Do you have a source?

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Can confirm I have seen tons of articles over the years of residents complaining about low frequency hum from wind turbines. Just Google it. In comments sections, it generally gets written off as bullshit or the residents just hating clean energy. Now the same scenario comes up for data centers and people want to accept it as a legitimate problem.

    I dunno, but maybe being exposed to a constant non-stop noise that never turns off might not be good for humans, no matter what the source is.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    To be fair, wind turbines have a positive use for society, while all these AI data centers do not. Proximity to communities should be considered in both situations though, but the data center push is far greater right now, especially considering that the dumbasses pushing this shit are also shitting on wind turbines and pushing far more destructive energy sources.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    I would love to see your explanation for why wind turbines have as much a negative impact on people's health as hyperscale data centers.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    apparently low-frequency noise causes heart rate variations. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97107-8

    the conclusion is the same for both things too: don't build them where people live.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (5 children)

    From the first scimming, I would not give much credit to that study. Only 29 participants. But most importantly it was not double blind. The participants where instructed on what exactly the study wanted to find out and could easily see, how far they where from the wind turbine at the testing sides. Thats a programmed placebo effect.

    Also: They only measured at 2 sites. The outdoor site was only 20m from the wind turbine. That is a distance not even relevant to placement of wind turbines. The safety distance to the spinning blades will already be significantly higher, at least 100m. So the measurement at that side might be interesting, but irrelevant.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (4 children)

    yeah it's not very good. but it's one study of many and it was more to show that people are actually having issues with them.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (3 children)

    Thats not what it is effectively saying though. It says, that if you suggest, that infrasound from wind turbines is a medical problem, then people will have medical problems. That is the nocebo effect for you, not infrasound.

    Also: There are many other sources of infrasound in our lifes. For example using a car. Wind turbines at typical distances are about 75db while driving in a car is more like 100db. If you open one of the rear windows while driving 130db. Where are the adverse effects of these?

    You might want to look at these https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/handle/10024/162329 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2014.00220/full#h11

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

    most people aren't driving 24 hours a day though.

    also, that finnish experiment had only 26 self-selected participants so the same argument applies.

    not that this lends any credence to the "wind turbines are harmful"-side, either; that was never what i was driving at. i pointed out that the article makes the same claims about dc's as the paper i linked did about wind turbines.

    someone else pointed out that even though the claims about their effects lack merit, *we still build them away from people". which is what i think we should do to dc's as well, for the same reasons.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Ok, then I misunderstood your arguments. I understood "Away from people" an argument for increasing the distance to wind turbines. They are already normally build 500 to 1500m away from people. I also saw it in my local context. In germany we had the conservatives argue for increasing the mandated distances further, triggered by the far rights hate for renewables, which would make it impossible to build them in large parts of the country.

    When we talk about wind turbines vs datacenters, I think a big argument is the actual direct value for the community. Providing clean energy gives more and direct value to a community, while the AI datacenter are mainly bringing the benefit of slop. Both are done in the capitalism way, but Datacenters (especially AI DCs) are way farther away from the consumer.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago

    For those speaking german, I'm linking to a podcast episode of the Quarks Science Cops (Public Broadcast) about this topic. Link to Youtube

    Spoiler: We already have way louder infrasound producers near us. Wind turbines are already build in quite a distance to be safe from flying debris in case of a catastrophic mechanical breakdown of the spinning blades.

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