JК
Dogs and Demons :: Керр Алекс
Страница: 41 из 270In other words, according to Japanese law, you may – after a lapse of decades – have to pay for the pollution you are causing, but the courts rarely require you to stop.
One might be tempted to put down what happened in the 1950s or the 1960s to haste and ignorance on the part of a newly developing country. But Japan enters the new millennium with only the most primitive regulation of toxic waste.
There are more than a thousand controlled hazardous substances in the United States, the manufacturing and handling of which fall under stringent rules that require computer monitoring and free public access to all records concerning storage and use. In Japan, as of 1994, only a few dozen substances were subject to government controls – a list that has changed only slightly since it was established in 1968 – and there is no computerized system in place to manage even these. In July of that year, the Environment Agency announced that it was considering creating a registration system like the American one-but computer monitoring and public access to records were not on the agenda. And it would be too much to ask companies to stop dumping these materials. They would merely be required to report to the agency the amount of these chemicals they are disposing of.
Japanese laws do not call for environmental-impact studies before towns or prefectures approve industrial projects. In having no environmental-impact assessment law, Japan is alone among the twenty-eight members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), though such assessments have been proposed eight times during the past quarter century. In October 1995, the U.S. air base at Atsugi complained to Tokyo about cancer-causing emissions from nearby factory incinerators, only to find that there are no cancer-risk regulations in Japan. «It's difficult to deal with the case if there is no violation of Japanese legislation,» an Environment Agency official said.
Despite serious incidents such as the arsenic poisoning of hundreds of farmers in the 1970s in Miyazaki Prefecture, the government has no controls for arsenic, either. The few toxic-waste regulations that do exist have hardly been revised since 1977, and the new regulations have no teeth. Only in 1990 did
Japan begin to draw up standards concerning dioxins, which are among the most lethal poisons on earth. In August 1997, driven by a popular outcry after the discovery of shockingly high concentrations of dioxin around incinerators, the government finally approved new regulations to monitor dioxin, adding it to the list of controlled substances.
One might be tempted to put down what happened in the 1950s or the 1960s to haste and ignorance on the part of a newly developing country. But Japan enters the new millennium with only the most primitive regulation of toxic waste.
There are more than a thousand controlled hazardous substances in the United States, the manufacturing and handling of which fall under stringent rules that require computer monitoring and free public access to all records concerning storage and use. In Japan, as of 1994, only a few dozen substances were subject to government controls – a list that has changed only slightly since it was established in 1968 – and there is no computerized system in place to manage even these. In July of that year, the Environment Agency announced that it was considering creating a registration system like the American one-but computer monitoring and public access to records were not on the agenda. And it would be too much to ask companies to stop dumping these materials. They would merely be required to report to the agency the amount of these chemicals they are disposing of.
Japanese laws do not call for environmental-impact studies before towns or prefectures approve industrial projects. In having no environmental-impact assessment law, Japan is alone among the twenty-eight members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), though such assessments have been proposed eight times during the past quarter century. In October 1995, the U.S. air base at Atsugi complained to Tokyo about cancer-causing emissions from nearby factory incinerators, only to find that there are no cancer-risk regulations in Japan. «It's difficult to deal with the case if there is no violation of Japanese legislation,» an Environment Agency official said.
Despite serious incidents such as the arsenic poisoning of hundreds of farmers in the 1970s in Miyazaki Prefecture, the government has no controls for arsenic, either. The few toxic-waste regulations that do exist have hardly been revised since 1977, and the new regulations have no teeth. Only in 1990 did
Japan begin to draw up standards concerning dioxins, which are among the most lethal poisons on earth. In August 1997, driven by a popular outcry after the discovery of shockingly high concentrations of dioxin around incinerators, the government finally approved new regulations to monitor dioxin, adding it to the list of controlled substances.