Vol. 490 No. 4
74 Mr. Ring asked the Minister for Public Enterprise the effects, if any, mobile telephone masts have on livestock; if a report or research has been done on this topic; and if not, the plans, if any, she has to commission this. [10341/98]
I wish to inform the Deputy there is no basis to support nor evidence to suggest that livestock are affected by exposure to telephone masts.
Considerable research has been carried out on the response of laboratory animals to radiofrequency emissions. Exposure of farm animals — cattle, sheep and pigs — to electromagnetic fields has been the subject of major outdoor experiments carried out in the United States, Canada, and Sweden. In Switzerland the health of cattle in the vicinity of a powerful short-wave radio transmitter was also studied.
Except for a single unreplicated study, where mice genetically bred to develop cancer were exposed to fields several thousand times greater than the normal field level from a telephone mast, none of this work has shown that livestock or any other animals are affected by environmental exposures to telephone masts, radio or TV transmitters, radar or high-voltage powerlines.
