Farmers in the Shannon estuary have repeated their demand that the Government review the EPA investigations of the deaths of hundreds of their animals in the light of research co-ordinated by the Irish Equine Centre (IEC).
The Askeaton/Ballysteen Animal Health Committee spokesman, Mr Donagh O'Grady, said the EPA should also review the terms of integrated pollution control licences issued to industry in the area. The findings also warranted "bringing the ESB under the terms of the licensing system immediately", he said. The ESB has power stations at Moneypoint and Tarbert.
These stations, together with the Aughinish Alumina facility in Askeaton, were found in an EPA study during the 1988-1994 period to be producers of significant amounts of sulphur dioxide, which can cause acid rain. Significant investment in curtailing such emissions was made in recent years, but no link between the animal deaths and these facilities has been found in a series of studies since 1995.
Mr O'Grady said they were "deeply disturbed by the way in which a study initiated by a single family has succeeded while the multi-million-pound study co-ordinated by the EPA has failed".
He was speaking before meeting Dr Ursula Fogarty of the IEC, a pathologist, on the research she completed with leading toxicologists in the United States.
Dr Fogarty said their findings opened up "a whole new area of science" on the issue of acid rain, primarily because they suggest it can cause an accumulation of aluminium in animal tissue. Up to now the metal was considered relatively inert.
"We offer an explanation of how aluminium gets into tissues. A lot of the science is already proven, but this indicates the link."
Aluminium was present in nature in many forms, but it was very difficult to say if the aluminium in tissues came from industrial sources. Their findings, nonetheless, had implications for a range of diseases.
Mr Simon White of the IFA industrial and environmental committee, who has lost pedigree livestock on his farm in the area, said: "This breakthrough will have massive repercussions.
"It is a huge morale-booster to those who have been at the receiving end of not alone the awful problems but also a campaign of innuendo mounted inferring that industrial pollution was in no way the cause and therefore farming practices must be to blame."
Accountability for damage caused and compensation for that damage must now be addressed in this case and in all licensing by the EPA, Mr White said.
