Japan and asbestos · 2006-04-12 19:07 by Damian
If you’re like me, you consider asbestos a thing of the past, since in most countries its use was banned 20-30 years ago. Or perhaps you’re thinking of the ridiculous amount of asbestos-related lawsuits going on in the the US at the moment. It seems everyone with even the faintest chance of exposure are calling their lawyer. Don’t get me started on that… Anyway, what does this have to do with Japan?
Well, believe it or not, whereas the rest of the world quit using asbestos a long time ago, Japan has been happliy using it for much longer: the most dangerous type of asbestos was not outlawed until 1995, other forms were outlawed in 2004, and a total ban is scheduled to go into effect in 2008. Even those earlier bans were never really enforced anyway, and asbestos in Japan didn’t become a public issue in Japan until summer 2005 when a company decided to reveal some statistics about asbestos-related deaths, such as cases of mesothelioma, the type of lung cancer caused by asbestos. After that followed a stream of similar revelations from other companies, finally causing some public awarenesss, but it’s a safe guess that only the tip of the iceberg has been seen so far.
It is frankly quite pathetic that the world’s second largest economy has failed to deal with this issue for so long time, unfortunately it is not the only case of the government having problems with decisive action. More on this another time.
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