A Report from Tokorozawa
We live in Tokorozawa City in Saitama Prefecture, Japan. Tokorozawa is northwest about 30km from the center of Tokyo. There are abundant beautiful copses and vegetable fields.
But in the past 8years, the Goverments of Tokorozawa City and the periphery cities and Saitama Prefecture have allowed more than 50 refuse incinerators for industrial waste to be built in our area.. Since then, we have seen burning off wastes and large refuse dumps here and there. What is worse, there are some even located near by schools.(pic.1)
Everyday a huge load of industrial waste is brought into Tokorozawa from Tokyo area.(these are mostly construction firms' wastes). After these are burned or stored here, they are finally buried somewhere else. Therefore air and soil in Tokorozawa has been polluted dangerously by dioxin from these industrial waste incinerators (table 1,table 2, fig.1,fig2). Prof. Hideaki Miyata from Setsunan University who investigated the dioxin levels in the soil of Tokorozawa area warned that children could absorb a much higher level of dioxin from the soil than TDI recommended by WHO(1-4pgTEQ/kg/day) (table.3). In addition the municipal disposal facilities in Tokorozawa had given off smoke stack emissions that are polluted by dioxin(12,000ng-TEQ/�G!) . We have called for effective countermeasures to decrease dioxin. But the Japanese Goverment and Tokorozawa city goverment has told us; Don't worry about it, it is not especially high risk to the residents.
Japanese Goverment didn't start to regulate dioxin until 1997. And the regulation that finally started against dioxin is very weak (for urgent counterplan;to keep dioxin level under 80ng/N�G in the emissions from chimneys built before 1998.12; table 4) . We have great fears for whether this regulation is effective against dioxin pollution in our town. Tokorozawa city has enacted dioxin ordinance, but it is weak,too. According to our trial calculation, the total amount of Dioxin from incenerators near Tokorozawa is about 180g/year under this regulation(80ng/N�G) (table 5).
We think enterprises which discharge these industrial wastes should be held responsible for this pollution. They include largest enterprises in Japan. However, the responsibilty of these enterprises is not clear in Japan. For example, when we asked Saitama Prefecture to disclose to the public who discharged these industrial wastes in our area., they told us ;we could not open to the public this information because it concerned trade secrets. The Japanese National Goverment was the same. So we can't know from where and what is brought into Tokorozawa, how it is disposed here, and to where it is carried finally.
Now we are required by Tokorozawa city Government to divide household garbage into four types: burnables, things which should not be burned(eg.vinyl chloride),cans and glass bottles to be recycled, and plastics, which are incinerated as RDF. But we can hardly know what materials are used in products with no labels. When we asked a maker which use polyvinyl chloride, they said there is no problem for dioxin because we can correctly control burning to avoid outbreaks of dioxin. However, we have no guarantee for correct burning control in Tokorozawa now.
We want to get back beautiful Tokorozawa.. Please give us your advices.
A paper on dioxin pollution in Tokorozawa is here
A story of inhabitant in Kunugiyama
”Group for Improvement of the Environment of Nakaarai District of Tokorozawa”
Fax 042-943-7578
E-mail ; ekitaura@tk.airnet.ne.jp