A new study by the Infrasound Working Group has identified a correlation between a high density of wind turbines and an increased risk of heart failure and cardiac arrhythmias.
Presented by authors Oliver Dietz and Professor Christian-Friedrich Vahl at the German Society for Internal Medicine congress in April, the study analyzed health insurance billing data from 70,000 patients between 2021 and 2024.
The researchers compared heavily affected municipalities in the Paderborn district—Borchen and Lichtenau—with less affected control areas, finding significantly higher rates of new cardiac cases in the wind turbine-dense regions.
The North Rhine-Westphalia State Association for Renewable Energies (LEE) heavily criticized the research, questioning its methodology for ignoring other potential health factors and accusing the authors of politicization.
The LEE highlighted that the University of Mainz had previously retracted a similar study by Vahl and publicly distanced itself from his work.
Conversely, the anti-wind power initiative Vernunftkraft NRW strongly endorsed the study. The group’s chairman lauded the results as the most robust evidence yet that wind turbine infrasound causes direct physical harm, declaring the situation in the Paderborn district a public health scandal.
