The Toxic Fallout from Wind Turbine Blades ‘Should Not Be Underestimated’

Recent research reveals that as blade coatings degrade, they leach thousands of tons of noxious metals into the water -- and your seafood.

Monopiles and turbine blades stacked up at the New Bedford (Mass.) Marine Commerce Terminal. Screenshot PBS Newshour

When one of the massive turbine blades at Vineyard Wind fell apart last July, an intense although short-lived focus on the numerous chemical components that comprise the gigantic 351-foot-long blade revealed a wide variety of “complex industrial materials.”

As requested by the island town of Nantucket, Mass., which saw the first wash-up of blade debris, the manufacturer, GE Vernova, forked over a 485-page material safety data sheet. Through that, it was learned that along with fiberglass, the massive 70-ton blade contained adhesives, resins, gel coats, chemical “balancing materials,” hardeners, epoxies, coatings, and polyvinyl chloride (the latter known to be the most environmentally damaging plastic there is).

But if a wind turbine blade scatters a witches’ brew of industrial chemicals and environmental pollutants when it falls apart, that’s nothing compared to when it keeps spinning.

“A major human exposure route”

Research published in Nature Partner Journals Ocean Sustainability at the end of January found that the chemicals used to protect turbine blades from corrosion leach “thousands of tons of metals such as aluminum, zinc, and indium” every year, enough to reach toxic levels.

The researchers estimated that current annual amounts of metals shed from blades at operating European offshore wind facilities to be high enough that, when taken up by seaweed and shellfish, “could exceed safe limits for human consumption.”

Such “accumulation in seafood is a major human exposure route,” the study notes, further stating that “…high tissue concentrations in oysters, mussels and kelp…” could “greatly exceed” the “tolerable weekly intake” for an adult.

The study listed annual amounts of leached toxins to be as high as 3,219 tons of aluminum, 1,148 tons of zinc, and 1.9 tons of indium (a byproduct of zinc mining).

The press release for the research out of the University of Portsmouth noted that “Locating seaweed and shellfish farms in close proximity to offshore wind farms, like the world's first co-located commercial-scale seaweed farm in the North Sea, could see metals from turbines build up in these species…” (The seaweed farm, called North Sea Farm 1, received major monetary backing from Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund and became “fully operational” at the end of last year.)

Other recent research in the form of a laboratory study by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany looked at the effects of turbine-blade particle emissions on blue mussels.

Researchers there found blue mussels had “moderate to pronounced uptake of metals, particularly barium, and chromium,” concluding that “…polymer particle emissions from rotor blades, produced by the degradation and surface erosion of the blades’ coatings and core material, should not be underestimated.”

Meanwhile, off the East Coast…

Although these are certainly hard times for Big Wind in the U.S., construction has nevertheless continued on four major offshore wind areas:

• Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (off of Virginia Beach),

• Vineyard Wind 1 (located south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, Mass.),

• Revolution Wind (southeast of Point Judith, Rhode Island), and

• Sunrise Wind (stretching over 86 thousand acres offshore 30 miles east of Montauk, N.Y. to 19 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard).

If allowed to be completed, these will pollute ocean waters with 425 gigantic spinning structures nearly 900 feet tall (not counting the blade tip height), which would make each one taller than the Eiffel Tower.

On Feb. 12, a letter to the newly minted Secretary of the Interior, Douglas Burgum, from the group CFACT (Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow) cosigned by 46 other individuals, politicians, and environmental groups, asked the Department of the Interior to “…immediately revoke the Letters of Authorization and order an immediate cession of construction until a review is complete.”

A “Letter of Authorization” (LOA) allows for the “take” (defined as activities that “harass, hunt, capture, or kill, or attempt to harass, hunt, capture, or kill any marine mammal”) over five years during construction.

Despite dangling by a worn thread, the fully permitted but not yet under- construction project off the New Jersey coast, Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, had its LOA go into effect this January, allowing for the mindboggling “take” of 20,976 marine mammals.

Whether Burgum will put any stops to the four projects currently being constructed remains to be seen. When questioned about offshore wind before his confirmation he stated “…if they make sense and they are already in law, they’ll continue…”

Hopefully, an in-depth analysis of the absurdity of allowing hundreds of thousands of marine mammals to be put in harm’s way and countless unsuspecting seafood lovers to be exposed to an insidious infusion of toxins will educate the agency’s new boss on how little sense offshore wind really makes.