DESPITE the effects of disasters such as Chernobyl, lifestyle remained a bigger cause of cancer than environmental factors, the Association of Health Boards has been told.
Dr Michael Moriarty, head of radiotherapy and oncology in St Luke's Hospital in Dublin, said the biggest risk of cancer came from smoking. If people stopped smoking tomorrow, there would be one third fewer cases of cancer in the population in 15 years' time.
"Chernobyl was a huge, huge accident, and a vast humanitarian disaster, especially for the people of Belarus and Ukraine, but its health effects were relatively minor", he said. "The impression is that it will have a huge cancer inducing effect. Probably not."
While there was much publicity about dioxins in the environment and the destruction of the ozone layer, in terms of cancer causation these were of critical importance for children rather than adults. Their importance decreased for those over 20 or 25 years of age.
He predicted that there would be screening for bowel cancer the most common form of cancer in the Republic in the future. Asked about screening for prostate cancer, he said that some prostate cancers did not change, so they did not require treatment.
As well as the existing cancer treatment centres in Dublin, there should be centres in both Cork and Galway. These should offer surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy on site.
Prof Philip Walton, professor of applied physics in UCG, said that Esat masts needed for mobile telephones produced non-ionising radiation at levels much lower than the minimum safety levels set by various international protection bodies. The maximum safe level set by the International Radiation Protection Association was 0.46 milliwatts per square centimetre.
The National Radiation Protection Board in the UK had set a limit 10 times higher than this. The actual rate of emissions from Esat masts was in the region of 0.001 of a milliwatt per square centimetre, a 46th of the international limit.
However, he pointed out that the emission from a hand held mobile phone was 3,000 times that received from a base station. Yet these phones, because of their small size, were exempted from IRPA guidelines.