Wind turbines don't cause cancer, Donald Trump — but these policies of yours do

Lead-poisoned water, unusual childhood cancers and farm workers in California getting sick from pesticides all deserve our president's attention. 'Noisy' wind turbines don't

In any other timeline, the US president claiming — without any evidence — that a major source of renewable energy causes cancer would be the subject of serious scrutiny and concerned questioning.

In our world, however, it’s just another day with Donald Trump in the White House.

Trump falsely claimed during a Republican fundraising event on Tuesday night that the noise from wind turbines “causes cancer” while sprinkling in other spurious claims about wind energy, like turbines causing property values to plummet by 75 per cent upon their installation.

The outlandish claims — which are not supported by facts — echo a years-long theme for President Trump surrounding renewable energy. Put simply, the man absolutely hates wind turbines (especially when their construction is being considered at sites near one of his precious golf courses.)

Trump lambasted turbines as “ugly” and a “horrible idea” in court documents before assuming the Oval Office; he’s claimed in the past that they don’t work unless it is constantly windy, which negates the groundbreaking discovery of a thing called batteries; he even launched a bizarre tirade at the Conservative Political Action Conference this year about the idea of not being able to watch television when there isn’t any wind, crying, “Darling, please, tell the wind to blow!”

The sheer stupidity of his comments (regardless of political ideology, we should all be able to admit these falsities are just that — stupid) neglect a very real and credible danger to American lives: Donald Trump’s environmental policies themselves.

As the president mocks Democrats calling for a Green New Deal and boasts about his lack of awareness on all things climate change, residents of Flint, Michigan still find it unsafe to drink their tap water four years after poisonous levels of lead were discovered in the town’s water source.

Meanwhile, a district that voted for Trump has been forced to confront his administration over “serious mismanagement” and “significant delays” at the Environmental Protection Agency over a rash of child cancers in their town. A carcinogenic plume of trichloroethylene, or TCE, has been spreading underground from an old industrial site in the town and scientists recently found that it was releasing vapours into people's homes. The Trump administration has been trying to weaken restrictions on TCE and other toxic chemicals in a drive to "cut red tape" which is being touted as friendly to big business.

Harvard scientists have additionally written in the Journal of the American Medical Association that Trump’s environmental plans could spur an additional 80,000 deaths per decade — which they call an “extremely conservative estimate” — thanks to actions like repealing the Clean Power Plan and withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord. “This sobering statistic captures only a small fraction of the cumulative public health damages associated with the full range of rollbacks and systemic actions proposed by the Trump administration,” David Cutler and Francesca Dominici wrote.

The effects of Trump’s anti-environmental policies are already upon us. Farm workers in California are becoming sick thanks to pesticides the previous administration attempted to ban. Methane burning improperly from oil wells near the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation has caused enormous plumes of smoke while the cancer-causing chemical benzene leaks out from storage tanks. West Virginia is suffering from hundreds of pounds of selenium in their waterways, which is contributing to rising arsenic and mercury levels.

All this, as the president attempts to slash funding to the National Cancer Institute by $900m (£684m).

Donald Trump is wrong about wind turbines causing cancer. But if he is serious about rooting out potential public health crises, he can start by reversing the dangerous environmental deregulations his administration has so vociferously implemented.