A Mysterious Sound Is Driving People Insane – Nobody Knows What's Causing It

I wonder if you could get subjects who travel a lot to record, before going to sleep each night, in a secret journal they do not share with each other, about whether or not they experience a hum in any given location. If those journals substantially agreed, you might be able to get a clearer picture of what, if anything, is going on.

If there is any sort of community built around a potentially hard to observe phenomenon, it's likely going to be a mess sorting out true stuff from false stuff.

It's not very clearly stated, but they say the ELF radio waves may be able to excite nerves and hence be "sensed" by the body.

The author follows the intro to that topic (which says nothing about EM waves causing 'sound' I might add) by saying:

    Finally, there's a body of empirical evidence that makes this theory more appealing. A study funded by the Canadian government and led by University of Windsor mechanical engineering professor Dr. Colin Novak spent the last year listening to the "Windsor Hum" that's been torturing residents in the Windsor area of Ontario since 2011. 

If you read the intro to that paper, it's very clear that it was acoustical noise that was measured and likely to be caused by a blast furnace. So that study provides no evidence at all that EM waves are causing 'noise'.

The author continues with:

    The study concluded that not only does the Windsor Hum actually exist, but its likely source was a blast furnace at the U.S. Steel plant on Zug Island, which reportedly generates a high volume of VLF waves during its hours of operation. 

The study did not find that the blast furnace was radiating VLF waves (VLF being a term limited to EM waves) but rather that it was emitting sound waves in the 30-35Hz range. 30-35Hz is the SLF EM range, so even if the author conflated the types of 'waves', I'm not sure where they got VLF from.

And then:

    Dr. Novak's study caps off decades of Hum theories

No, it really doesn't, it just found a loud blast furnace. Not to take anything away from the work needed, locating a sound source at frequencies that low in a complex environment isn't trivial.

The article was really hard for me to read, because the author just thinks so much differently from me. i.e. if an area is driving you mad, do you get instant relief if you leave the area?

It could still be chemical / something in the air that makes you hallucinate, but not talking about such basic questions is just so different from how I think.

the next most basic question is whether there are actually any physical sounds at any frequency - if microphones aren't sensitive enough at certain frequencies to tell us, then I would lead with that. If they're sensitive enough, but show nothing, then I would lead with that and then show a differential as to why it's not psychosomatic, or a chemical poison that gives you this effect, etc.

I just found this article too different from how I think to read through.

My take away from the article is "environmental pollution is no fun": Noise pollution, particularly low frequencies that travel huge distances and through most materials, can be infuriating, especially if other people aren't as sensitive to it, making you seem overly sensitive.

I can actually appreciate that it could test people's sanity over long periods of time.

That part seems obvious and a given. The whole bit about radio waves... The article tries to bridge the two by claiming that the suspect furnace near Windsor is producing "VLF waves" (maybe they're adopting it to audio frequency, but given the other parts it seems like they're trying to bridge the radio thing), only it's actually creating low frequency acoustic waves, measured seismically. Just normal noise, carrying enormous distances and irritating people. Just as irritating as the guy in the Honda Civic with the giant subs playing rap music.