No health risks from mobile phone masts, says expert

There are no health risks associated with the signals coming from mobile telephone masts, according to one Dublin electronics specialist who describes the current dispute over masts as a political football.

Dr Philip Perry, of the School of Electronics at Dublin City University, said hundreds of studies had been done, and none showed significant connections between transmissions from the masts and health effects.

Asked yesterday if there was reason for concern, Dr Perry stated: "Absolutely not. It is just a political football. I don't know what the agenda is."

Dr Perry likened studies of claimed health effects to looking for a needle in a haystack. After years of searching no needle had been found, and it was time to question whether it would be found.

His confidence, he said, came from the amount of research that had been conducted into the subject. "It is simply the weight of research that has been done. Nothing has been found, there is nothing there. And there has been no theory as to how there could be a safety issue," he said.

The reason for this related to distance from the source of the radio signals, Dr Perry explained. The amount of energy that could be transferred into a person fell away very quickly the further one got from the source. The signal energy 10 metres from the mast antenna was only one-hundredth of that right at the antenna, and at 20 metres it was only one four-hundredth.

Studies in Ireland had shown that none of the masts installed here was remotely close to the international limit for public exposure to these radio signals, he said. The highest measurements were still 19 times lower than international limits, he added.

No studies had demonstrated a health risk from signals coming from the masts, but much attention is now focused on risks associated with the use of the mobile phones themselves. The energy received from the handset is about 10,000 times higher than that received by a typical mast, according to a number of international studies.

An Australian study published last year found an increased incidence of lymphoma cancers in mice exposed to mobile phone frequencies. Its author, Dr Michael Repacholi, who spoke at an international meeting here earlier this year organised by the Departments of Public Enterprise, Health and the Environment, said, however, the work could not be applied to humans.