Please skip the main menu to view the main text area of ​​the page.

If JavaScript is disabled in your browser, the page may not be displayed correctly.

Tokyo-Following the discovery of asbestos in bath mats, coasters and other items widely circulated in Japan at the end of last year, the problem that various products still contain highly carcinogenic mineral fibers has attracted great attention from Japanese consumers. nation.

Behind the problem is that large amounts of asbestos imported in the past are still circulating in Japan even today, and products containing asbestos are imported through regulatory barriers. The threat posed by asbestos-containing products is not limited to products containing diatomaceous earth. Diatomaceous earth is a highly absorbent mineral material.

Cainz, a large hardware store, announced in December that about 290,000 products sold in May 2018 and beyond, including bath mats and soap dishes, may contain asbestos content that exceeds regulatory standards. Furniture manufacturer Nitori also decided to recall approximately 3.55 million similar products sold since 2016. If all these products are damaged, there is a risk of asbestos spreading, and the company calls on consumers to stop using them. Products with the same problem were also found in products sold at 100 yen stores (such as dollar stores or pound stores) and other stores.

Asbestos is a highly durable and fire-resistant mineral that has been widely used worldwide. However, after it was discovered that inhalation of fiber can cause serious health problems (such as mesothelioma and lung cancer)-even after decades of incubation period-one country after another in Europe banned the use of asbestos since the 1980s. In Japan, the use of asbestos has been banned since 2006. So why is it still found that products containing asbestos are still in circulation?

The asbestos found in bath mats and other items was discovered after an investigation conducted by the local government, which used these products as gifts for people who donated money to the city as part of the "hometown tax" system.

The Kaizuka City Government of Osaka Prefecture in western Japan began using diatomaceous earth bath mats and coasters as gifts in 2016 to give people who donated to the city under the hometown tax plan. These products are manufactured in a woodworking shop in the city. Diatomaceous earth is composed of layers of diatom fossil shells. It is a kind of algae, which has strong water absorption and can even absorb moisture from the air. Diatomite began to be used in products around the mid-2000s and gradually became popular. The shell mound government became the first country in the country to adopt diatomite products as a tax gift for its hometown. As of February 2020, it has shipped about 15,000 bath mats and about 2,500 coasters, making them popular products.

In the early 2000s, when a woodworking shop tried to dispose of the remaining parts of extruded cement boards used to make bath mats and other products, a garbage collector asked the shop to check whether the boards contained asbestos. Although diatomaceous earth produced from the earth is said to contain almost no asbestos, these panels contain other materials, and in some cases, it is suspected that asbestos has entered these panels during the production process.

According to the municipal government, the woodworking shop’s investigation of panels did not find that asbestos exceeded the national government’s regulatory standard of 0.1% of the maximum product weight. However, the city decided that “as a local agency that handles gifts (for hometown tax donors), it should respond cautiously to this matter” and conducted a review on its own. As a result, asbestos up to 0.61% of the product weight was detected in these panels.

The extruded cement board used in this woodworking shop was produced in 2001 by a now-defunct company in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan. It was in 2006 that the Executive Order of the Industrial Safety and Health Law was revised to prohibit the use of asbestos exceeding 0.1% of the weight of the product. Before that, products containing asbestos up to 1% by weight of the product were called "asbestos-free". Therefore, in the case of Kaizuka City, even after the regulations were tightened, the extruded cement board manufactured before the law was revised was ultimately processed and distributed.

Because of the long incubation period, asbestos is called a "silent time bomb." According to statistics collected by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 1,512 people died of mesothelioma in Japan in 2018, more than three times the number when the government began to retain statistics in 1995.

(Original from Japan, Mirai Nagira, Ministry of Science and Environmental Information, Japan)

Copyright Daily Newspaper. all rights reserved.