A team of researchers from the University of Toronto and Ramboll, an engineering company funding the work, set out to investigate how residential distance from the wind turbines — within a range of 600 meters (1,968.5 feet) to 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) — affects people’s health.

The team’s new assessment confirmed Statistics Canada’s initial findings. “Respondents who live in areas with higher levels of modelled sound values (40 to 46 decibels) reported more annoyance than respondents in areas with lower levels of modelled sound values (<25 dB),” Barry said. Unsurprisingly, the survey’s respondents who live closer to the turbines “were more likely to report being annoyed than respondents who live further away.”

The team’s more recent study didn’t explicitly find evidence that exposure to wind turbines actually impacts human health, but in the future, “measuring the population’s perceptions and concerns before and after turbine installation may help to clarify what effects — if any — exposure to wind turbines may have on quality of life,” Sandra Sulsky a researcher from Ramboll said.