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Towards the end of June, 2005, major Japanese manufacturing companies divulged data which detailed the deadly repercussions of the county's use of asbestos. As of July 9, 2005, 23 manufactures had declared a total of 357 occupational asbestos deaths (Mainichi Shimbun, July 9 2005). Responding to these shocking revelations, Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Hidehisa Otsuji announced that the partial ban imposed on asbestos use in Japan in 2004 would be supplanted within three years by a total ban. Currently asbestos use is still permitted in the manufacture of gaskets for machinery, insulating plates for switchboards, seals for chemical plants and industrial rope.
The Minister also pledged that the companies which are reporting asbestos-related deaths would be investigated and that civil servants would oversee the expeditious processing of industrial insurance claims; medical consultations at local health centres would be offered to those at high-risk of contracting an asbestos disease. Japanese asbestos victims' groups and health NGOs report hundreds of calls from people worried about exposures at construction sites, in domestic settings and in neighbourhoods near asbestos-consuming factories and demolition sites.
In 2006, an asbestos panel will be convened by the Ministry of Health to draw up plans to phase-in the asbestos ban. Another problem which also needs to be addressed is the large volume of asbestos contained in buildings constructed in the 1960s; these buildings, which are coming to the end of their useful life, will need to be refurbished or demolished in the near future. Unless effective measures are taken, asbestos from these sites will put workers and the public at risk.
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