Asia Times: Pollution victims seek cleaner growth



	July 03, 1999	atimes.com

Japan

Pollution victims seek cleaner growth
By Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO - Susuze Kajiura often has a hard timebreathing, but she has no trouble mustering energy when it comesto joining anti-pollution campaigns. The 55-year-old says she got her asthma as a result of living a few meters away from a major expressway in the middle of Tokyo.

According to Kajiura, thousands more Japanese have also fallenill due to pollution, and she says she will not stop fightinguntil the government promises environment and health assessmentchecks to be carried out before any road construction begins.

''I am a state-recognized victim of air pollution and thus amentitled to medical compensation,'' she claimed. ''But what's the useof that, when I am so sick I cannot even hold a job or go on aholiday?"

Kajiura is not the only person in Japan these days who feels morehas to be done about industrial pollution. Indeed, more and moreJapanese are putting pressure on local governments and Tokyo tolimit - if not stop altogether - activities that damage not onlythe environment but also pose health risks.

Just last week, more than a thousand demonstrators braved foulweather in Tokyo to march on the Environment Agency. There, they submitted a petition, addressed to Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, calling for, among other things, measures to checkdioxin pollution from garbage incinerators. Dioxin has beenreported to be carcinogenic.

The protesters also asked that government ministries and agencies todeal with noise pollution around Fukuoka airport, to curbreclamation of the Inland Sea in western Japan, to reconsider plansto build a river dam in Kumamoto Prefecture and to reconstructpolluted regions.

Measures to contain the various kinds of pollution created by allsorts of industrial activity had been left at the wayside aspostwar Japan surged forward to become an economic superpower. Industrial development had been the engine of Japan's phenomenal economic growth. But just how dangerous such a ''productivity first'' policy was became evident in the late 1950s, when peopleliving along Minamata Bay in southern Japan began exhibitingsymptoms of damage to their nervous systems.

Their strange disease was later traced to the methyl mercury inthe effluents dumped into the bay by the Chisso Corp. In 1968,Tokyo officially recognized Minamata disease as an illness due topollution, but it took three decades for the case filed by victims in court to be resolved. Some of the Minamata victims were among the protesters who walked for hours in the pouring rain this week to deliver the anti-pollution petition to the Environment Agency.

So was Kajiura, as was Fumiko Tsujikawa, 71, who has sub-acutemyelo-optico neuropathy (SMON), which affects the nervous system. Although Tsujikawa did not get her illness from pollution, it was apparently the result of the same kind of government negligence and corporate indifference that activists say has madeenvironmental pollution so widespread in Japan.

As Tsujikawa explains it, she and more than 10,000 other Japanesedeveloped SMON in the early 1960s after taking a drug thathad quinoform, which causes the disease's more debilitatingeffects. Tsujikawa and other SMON victims sued, and in 1978, the courtsruled that several pharmaceutical companies should be held liablefor selling the drug.

''I am now on state compensation, which helps me,'' admitted thestooped Tsujikawa. ''But I joined the march to show my support forthe thousands of victims of pollution and for Japanese companiesto be made responsible to the people [for the destruction thatthey do]."

There have been a significant number of companies that have beenforced to hand over hefty compensation to people who describethemselves as victims of the firms' filth. In February, nine companies accused of polluting the air in Kobe agreed to pay 2.42 billion yen ($200 million) tohundreds of people there who had filed a case against them. Thecompanies also pledged to improve the environment.

Despite such victories, Kajiura observes that victims ofpollution face the new century with mixed feelings. ''There arecases we have won against the government and companies [and theserepresent] a major step forward in the fight for a cleanerenvironment,'' she said. ''But at the same time, there are newcases of pollution with younger victims.'' One example she cites is the current dioxin-spewing incinerator issue.

Still, Kajiura says that while they have yet to see concretemoves from Tokyo, at least the Environment Agency has promised toconduct tests for dioxin pollution. Other activists have also noted growing support for consumer protection through safer products as well as environmentalprotection. The Diet has even passed a Product Liability Law andis discussing a proposed Environment Assessment Act.

Says Kajiura: ''While these new laws may be watered down fromwhat we want exactly, there is still no doubt that we are in abetter era and Japan's economic development will no longer be atthe cost of people's health."

(Inter Press Service)

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©1999 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.