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2016 September 14 - 20 TOP3 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Arsenic found in water covering underground space of new Toyosu market facilities: JCP Tokyo

The Japanese Communist Party Tokyo Metropolitan Assemblymembers’ Group on September 16 held a press conference and published a survey result which showed that water found at the underground space of major buildings in the Toyosu Market site, a planned replacement for the Tsukiji Fish Market, is polluted with highly-toxic arsenic.

The JCP sampled the water in question two days earlier in its second on-site investigation at the Toyosu site. The JCP group asked a private laboratory in Tokyo to analyze the sample. From the water sample, arsenic of 0.004 mg per liter was detected, which is 40% of the maximum environmental standard set by the soil contamination countermeasures act, 0.01 mg per liter.

The JCP assemblymembers’ group at the press conference, while making public the survey result, pointed out that the Tokyo metropolitan government’s survey in June found benzene in rooms at the Toyosu buildings. They argued that the metropolitan government should ask third-party experts to thoroughly investigate air and groundwater quality at the planned market site.

Regarding the JCP announcement, Hata Akio, former president of the Japan Association on the Environmental Studies, commented that as no arsenic is present in rainwater, the water in the Toyosu underground space evidently came from the groundwater.

The Toyosu fish market site is a former Tokyo Gas plant. The soil of the site has been criticized for being heavily polluted with cancer-causing benzene, cyanide, arsenic, hexavalent chromium, and other toxic substances. As a measure to clean up the polluted soil, the metropolitan government explained it plans to replace the surface soil of the new market site with clean soil. However, a survey by the JCP assemblymembers’ group recently revealed that this plan was not fully implemented under the market building in question and shortcuts were taken.

The JCP group on September 15 urged the chair of a metropolitan assembly committee on issues of wholesale markets to conduct on-site investigations and hold committee deliberations on the issue. JCP metropolitan assemblymembers on September 16 along with JCP parliamentarians made representations to the Environment Ministry and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries to look into the matter.

Past related article:
> Tokyo gov’t fails to take countermeasures against soil pollution at new fish market site [September 11 & 13, 2016]