HEALTH EFFECTS:PEOPLE WOULD need to have been eating contaminated pork for years before it would pose a real threat to their health, a number of experts said yesterday.
Alan Reilly, a scientist and deputy chief executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, said people would have to be eating the contaminated meat for "quite a number of years" to suffer adverse consequences.
He stressed a short-term peak exposure to dioxins and PCBs such as happened here does not result in adverse health effects and therefore people should not be concerned about their health.
He stressed the dioxins in the pork recalled would have been concentrated primarily in the fat element of the product.
Asked if someone who ate the contaminated pork every day since September 1st last, the date from which product is being destroyed, would be at risk, he said: "Well you see people don't eat pork every single day. That's a reality. We know what the average weekly intake of pork fat is.
"We know the levels of the actual dioxins . . . from our own exposure we are firmly of the belief that the risks to public health are extremely low. And this is backed up by colleagues in the food standards agency in the UK, colleagues in the European Commission and also colleagues in the World Health Organisation."
Dr Tony Holohan, the State's chief medical officer, also stressed there was no need for people to be worried about their health. "Our information about the nature of the exposure that has taken place here shows that any risk is going to be extremely low."
He said an expert group of the best medical and scientific opinion in Ireland had been convened to look at the issue. "This group conducted an assessment of maximum likely exposure levels on Sunday 7th December. It shows that the exposure that has taken place in this incident is similar to that which occurred in a similar case in Belgium in 1999. The Belgium incident covered a slightly longer time period prior to the recall on contaminated products. It is on that basis that we are able to reassure the public that we do not anticipate any public health repercussions," he added.
He said follow up work carried out in Belgium indicated "there have been no impacts on public health there".
Asked how long one would have to be eating the contaminated pork for their health to be at risk, he replied: "Well you would have to be eating it for a very long period of time . . . we are talking about years."
But Prof James Heffron, a specialist on the biochemistry of detoxification at UCC's biochemical toxicology lab, insisted that people needed facts on how the risk assessment was calculated rather than "bland assurances".