Environmental Risks

Takatorige, Toshio; Hirose, Yukio; Nagamatsu, Shingo

What lifted people's concerns over environmental risks were the four major pollutions that caused serious health damages to people. Large petroleum complexes built during the post-war high economic growth period disposed hazardous chemical substances generated during production directly to the air, water, and ground without treatment and residents in the areas suffered damages to their health. The health damages caused by environmental pollution, lawsuits by the victims and their supporters, public movements, and people's higher concerns over pollution pushed for the establishment of Basic Law for Environmental Pollution Control in 1967. It was followed by Air Pollution Control Act, Water Pollution Control Law, and Waste Management and Public Cleansing Law, one after another, to promote prevention of environmental contamination. These laws for pollution prevention set standards for factory discharges and local environment concentration of mercury, cadmium, sulfur dioxide, and other pollutants. Enforcing these countermeasures against pollution contributed to improving serious air pollution and water contamination, and people's concerns spread to other chemical substances. In her 1962 book "Silent Spring," Rachel Carson (1962) pointed out that the ecosystem of wild birds was suffering damages caused by pesticides like DDT. The book made it to a worldwide bestseller. In 1974, Sawako Ariyoshi's "Fukugo Osen" (Complex Pollution)," a newspaper series alerted the society about environmental contamination caused by multiple chemical substances. These works were followed by further publications and media coverage about the environment and people started to fear for contamination of the living environment and health damages caused by chemical substances in daily products.