_Dioxin latest in Japan

[Neil Tangri <ntangri@essential.org>]

>From the Japan Times, Monday June 21:

	The government was poised Friday to announce a revised value for
the acceptable amount of dioxin that can be ingested daily, dropping the
level to 4 picograms of the chemical per kilogram of bodyweight per day.
	 The Health and Welfare Ministry and Environment Agency were to
announce the revised figure at a joint press conference Friday afternoon,
before a joint advisory committee of experts to the two organs meet on June
21 to debate and finalize the new value.
	The tolerable daily intake is the amount of dioxin scientists
believe that people can safely ingest without impacting their health.
	The new TDI value of 4 picograms will coordinate for the first time
the until now disparate tolerable daily intake levels espoused by the
Environment Agency,  set at 5 picograms in , and  the Health and Welfare
Minstry which was set at 10 picograms in 1996. A picogram is a trillionth
of a gram.
	The government based its decision on data from laboratory tests on
animals, domestically gathered data and the World Health Organization's TDI
figure that were revised from 10 down to between one and four picograms a
day in May 1998.
	The WHO has recognized that dioxin may already be subtly affecting
people in developed countries and that effort needs to be made to minimize
exposure to the chemical.
	The newly established value is one result of policy guidelines
released by the Cabinet-level committee the end of March outlining national
dioxin policy and calling for  nearly a 90 percent reductin of dioxin
emissions as compared to 1997 levels within the next four years. The
government is slated to release a study of national emissions of the
chemical in the next week or two.
	Sparked by a mistaken February news report alleging that produce
from Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture was indordinately contaminated with
dioxin, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi created the Cabinet-level committee to
expedite dioxin policy and reduce levels of the chemical in the
environment.
	The new TDI level will form the basis for the establishment of
environmental standards regulating the levels of dioxin in the nation's air
by around September, with an eye to possibly setting soil and water
standards at some later date.
	Dioxin is an unintentional product in some chemical processes and
factory process, but most is alleged to result from waste incineration - or
the burning of chlorine-based products at low temperatures. Dioxin is a
carcinogen and in recent years been implicated as a and potent endocrine
disruptor, believed to impair the immune system as well as reproductive and
mental development in animals.

mick corliss




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Neil TANGRI