'Erin Brockovich' toxin found at Japan plant

So groundwater doesn't seep more than 11 meters down?

“At the moment, we’re assuming the contamination is limited to the plant’s compound and that no adverse effects have been caused to surrounding areas,” a local government statement said.

Which in local "Japanese-speak" means that people in the surrounding areas had better do some checking on their own OR face the facts that the government types have absolutely no idea WTF they are talking about.

Never safe to ASSume anything.

Minamata flashbacks anyone?

.... up to 15,800 times allowable levels in groundwater........ no hazards to human health or the outside environment were reported....

I wonder if the company spin doctor would like to check what he said again.

assuming the contamination is limited to the plant compound and that no adverse effects have been caused to surrounding areas

Another assumption from a Japanese company looking to avoid expenses

“no hazards to human health or the outside environment”

Yup, never heard that one before. I'm sure non of the water ever evapourates in hot summers or seeps into ground water. I'm sure it's perfectly contained.

See, we need to be looking down for environmental degradation, not up in the air. The poisons released into groundwater and the soil by industry mega-corps are far more poisonous than C02.

Todays reading only gets better, so where does he think drinking water comes from ???? and then"“We voluntarily surveyed the soil and groundwater at the plant between June and August before the closure,” WE !!! notice, not an outside independent scientific authority separate from government interference. "two dozen locations on the site" only the site ??? "“At the moment, we’re assuming the contamination is limited to the plant’s compound" and their assuming with these figures"15,800 times safety limits in groundwater at a Japanese iron plant," I give up.

At least they are being fully open about it.

Seriously fracked up on many levels here! Anyone wanna bet the DIDNT do any testing OUTSIDE the fence so to speak.

Oh & nippon denko for how many yrs/decades have you known about this pollution(I bet many many years!).

Gee how nice to do a little testing once your closing down.

Oh & have the workers been tested............ I mean...............its just an idea

And to the J-govt do pleae let us know how big the fine on nippon denko will be....................oh wait silly me I forgot you wont be doing anything of the sort now will you.................

Folks these polluted factories are EVERYWHERE, there are virtually no rules as regards to toxic waste & even the stuff that gets picked up for "processing" is often only taken somehwere else & dumped.

Ever wonder what kind of mess exists behind all those fenced in lots around the countryside by ricefields.................well take a guess

Also known as chromium-6, cancer-causing hexavalent chromium was at the center of the 2000 film “Erin Brockovich”, which starred Julia Roberts as a real life legal assistant who leads a battle against a California power company accused of polluting a city’s water supply.

And the thing that the film forgot to mention is that there were fewer cases of cancer reported from 1988 to 2008 than expected, a whole 10% less.

I did tell people before that they needed to consider much worse polluters right inside of cities, since many steel mills are within city drinking water range. Next we hear about something it's gonna be a chlorine leak that forces the evacuation of an entire city.

Quote: “At the moment, we’re assuming the contamination is limited to the plant’s compound and that no adverse effects have been caused to surrounding areas,” a local government statement said.

And if they do find pollution outside, it will be 'sotei-gai' ie outside their assumptions.

Quote: Nippon Denko said, but added that no hazards to human health or the outside environment were reported.

We voluntarily surveyed the soil and groundwater at the plant between June and August before the closure, a company spokesman said, adding that two dozen locations on the site were tested.

Just another punchline from the comedic stylings that is the Japanese Industrial Network. Unfortunately I don't get the joke.

S

Chromium salts are pretty nasty stuff. Carcinogenic in small (1 part in 10 billion) doses. And they can be inhaled as well as ingested. So dust and wind dispersion around this facility is also a concern. But this type of heavy metal poisoning is markedly different from methylmercury which causes Minamata disease. Organometallics and hexavalent chromium have both different mechanisms of pathology and behaviours within the environment. The only lessons that can be learned from the past are the sociological ones of dealing with denial and runaround on the part of the polluter and government officials. The ecology and medicine involved with cleaning and healing are going to be different from what happened in Kumamoto.

The poisons released into groundwater and the soil by industry mega-corps are far more poisonous than C02.

No-one's complaining about the toxicity of CO2. Apples and oranges.

As with the radioactive coolant water leakage in Fukushima, the Chromium is probably well dispersed through the regions underground water tables only to rise up at a later point somewhere else in the region and probably end up in the food chain.

We use to worry about food made / grown in China, now we worry more about the food grown in Japan.

These issues are probably why many of Japans big food companies are investing heavily in Thailand and Vietnam.

Japans food chain is starting to turn into a poisonous, deadly minefield.

yr 2000 movie??

I could have sworn it was 20 or more yrs old...

shinhiyataDec. 21, 2012 - 01:14PM JST

Chromium salts are pretty nasty stuff. Carcinogenic in small (1 part in 10 billion) doses. And they can be inhaled as well as ingested.

Risks are only known for concentrations above a few micrograms per cubic meter of air. When in water, the toxicity is known to be much smaller, but nobody placed the limit on it, so some countries simply limit it to the same per volume amount.

Luckily, if they need to, they can pump reducing agents into the ground to turn chromium VI to III (and vastly reduce toxicity), though given enough dispersement it might do it by itself in a reasonable timeframe without adding more chemicals.

NessieDec. 21, 2012 - 01:24PM JST

The poisons released into groundwater and the soil by industry mega-corps are far more poisonous than C02.

No-one's complaining about the toxicity of CO2. Apples and oranges.

Theoretically he's wrong even so. ~33 gigatons of CO2 released by man every year, and a toxicity of >10000 ppm (CO2 doesn't generally leave lasting side effects other than death or perhaps brain/muscle injury if near death, number given is for drowsiness, so technically non-toxic even if it can kill you), while 130 thousand tons of hex-chrome are made a year with toxicity of somewhere over 5ppb (can't find studies on levels for quick death, just legal limits to prevent an excess of 1 death per million). Even assuming 50ppb, the CO2 is less dangerous. Considering that in the real world the atmospheric CO2 is less than 400ppm, CO2 has zero chance of killing someone while hex-chrome has some (less than zero but very small) chance of killing someone.

JanesBlond:"We use to worry about food made / grown in China, now we worry more about the food grown in Japan. These issues are probably why many of Japans big food companies are investing heavily in Thailand and Vietnam. Japans food chain is starting to turn into a poisonous, deadly minefield."

Japan's food chain has been heavily polluted for many many years, not just now...

For smithinjapan. The problem is not going to be with evaporated water since it is a salt. The problem is the salt left behind and when it mixes with the ground water, the ground water is dispersed. When people say ground water they try to make you think that it is a reservoir underground like a cistern when it actually is water underground that makes it way into the rivers. Rivers are ground water that has risen to the surface and becomes running water. There is reason for great concern everywhere south of the plant. The nearby rivers should be checked.

Kent McgrawDec. 21, 2012 - 06:55PM JST

For smithinjapan. The problem is not going to be with evaporated water since it is a salt. The problem is the salt left behind and when it mixes with the ground water, the ground water is dispersed. When people say ground water they try to make you think that it is a reservoir underground like a cistern when it actually is water underground that makes it way into the rivers. Rivers are ground water that has risen to the surface and becomes running water

Japanese water has a high level of sulfur, especially the water coming from mountains and quite possibly the ground water of the area in question. Since sulfur (more specifically sulfite) reduces chromium VI to chromium III (the "safe" chromium), evaporation is actually bad for this situation, unless it happens to concentrate both sulfite and chromium (not very likely).

The danger actually depends on the sulfite content of the water in the area as well as the amount of chromium released. The article doesn't state anything about how much was released or even the concentration (typical of AFP, they like to mention things that induce fear rather than logical thinking, even if the logical thinking would still lead to the conclusion this is a horrible thing). If the concentration of sulfite is high enough compared to chromium, it may indeed be perfectly safe by the time it reaches an important water source. If it's not high enough, then water filtration systems for the area should be considered, or proper cleanup methods at the plant.

The danger actually depends on the sulfite content of the water in the area as well as the amount of chromium released.

Seeing as the hexvalent chromium is already in the ground water in quantities 15,800 times the safe level, I'm going to assume that there isn't near enough sulfites in the water to make a difference.

FadamorDec. 21, 2012 - 10:20PM JST

Seeing as the hexvalent chromium is already in the ground water in quantities 15,800 times the safe level, I'm going to assume that there isn't near enough sulfites in the water to make a difference.

If the legal limit is 1 part per trillion, then it's only 3 times above the level other countries use and nature can take it in just fine. If the legal limit is 1 part per million, then that area should be completely shut down and possibly mandate evacuation of all nearby cities. Without either the release concentration or the legal limit, you can't make any assumptions on the hazard level, which is exactly what I stated before. As this is an AFP article, the legal limit will never be stated unless it adds to the fear mongering.

If the legal limit is 1 part per trillion, then it's only 3 times above the level other countries use and nature can take it in just fine. If the legal limit is 1 part per million, then that area should be completely shut down and possibly mandate evacuation of all nearby cities.

Wow, that's a lot of "if's". A nice attempt at confusing the issue, but:

(A) toxic chemical... has been found at up to 15,800 times safety limits in groundwater at a Japanese iron plant, the factory’s operator said Thursday

That quote pretty much says that WHATEVER the legal limit is, the measured amount in the groundwater was 15,800 times higher. Unless the regulating authority just rolled a die and picked the resulting number to be the legal limit, I think it's safe to assume that a health risk definitely exists with the measured levels.

When one reads an article like this one, then no one should forget for one moment, that this is not about the country, this is only about one place that has by chance been discovered. This says nothing about the reality of the rest of Japan.

FadamorDec. 22, 2012 - 04:12AM JST

Unless the regulating authority just rolled a die and picked the resulting number to be the legal limit, I think it's safe to assume that a health risk definitely exists with the measured levels.

Given some of their other legal limits, they probably did just roll the dice. One example is arsenic levels in water, where some factories had to install filtration systems because their output was above the legal limit, and then they found out the river upstream (straight from the mountains) had much higher levels than downstream. Radiation in food is also up to 20x more stringent than the WHO recommendations. And of course, there's also plenty of regulations that are far too lax, like mercury, which has no regulations on certain fish that are high concentrators of it, and can have many times the legal limit, which in itself is far higher than it should be given the fish consumption here.

Legal limits in Japan are mostly arbitrary, having nothing to do with actual health impact.

Sulfur does "lock in" many metals. MSM/DMSO being particularly good at this. There is also the -methyl to the brain effect which is a +.

:Human beings have a very difficult time with many metals. Chromium is one of these and humans need to stay away from certain brands of industrial chromium. Chrome does look pretty and looks good to humans, but chemically there are costs to human biology. Mercury (methyl mercury) is maybe the better example and better understood (Minamata).

=please be careful with Chromium (and other immunologic metals)

***Calcium is also a metal, but human biology is able to accept and benefit from it. =many metals are "bizarre" to human biology like mercury, but some like calcium are common and known to human biology. This is a bizarre concept, but people need to understand this. Hard to explain, but people need to take care around metals like chromium.

badsey3Dec. 22, 2012 - 12:55PM JST

Chromium is one of these and humans need to stay away from certain brands of industrial chromium. Chrome does look pretty and looks good to humans, but chemically there are costs to human biology

Interestingly, only Chromium VI is actually an issue, and not because it's poisonous, rather because it interacts with hydrogen peroxide in cells and releases free radicals (and converts the chromium from VI to III) known to damage DNA. Chromium III doesn't have that issue since the oxidation state is fairly stable biologically speaking.