Strangely, since 21/07/2010 Japanese major and minor presses have released a flood of news to criticise the soil clean-up tests practiced by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) for the old gas works site at Toyos where it is planning to relocate the Tsukiji Market. Most of the criticism, however, is limited within frame of the preceding question posed by Natureabout availability of initial data and does not extend to its logical consequence, ie, what the opened information means, as well as the reason why the TMG had covered it up. So, without undergoing any essential damage, the TMG declared "safety" of all the future results of its soil clean-up project at the Technical Panel, held on 22/07.
Presses give the explanation by the TMG without review:
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
Tokyo metropolitan government not open about experiment to detoxify soil at Tsukiji replacement site
Tokyo metropolitan government officials said that because the initial value at Toyosu was low, a different experiment was conducted involving the artificial creation of soil with concentrations of benzene 200,000 times the environmental standards. That test confirmed that the soil could be detoxified by heating it, even with such high concentrations.
"We are certain about the effects because we were able to remove toxic substances even at concentrations of 200,000 times. We did not intend to hide the initial value, but planned to publicize the figure in the final report after considering the opinions of experts," a metropolitan government official said.
These are nothing but in vitro tests, not only lacking of identity of samples, but also ignoring complexity of multi-contamination. Indeed, of several hundreds kinds of contaminants listed by the original land owner, Tokyo Gas, only seven or less, including benzene, cyan, arsenic etc, are targeted by the tests. Conditions of the complexity are even not surveyed. It is also neglected to identify vacterias for microbial treatment. Apart from that, benzopyrene is diregarded because there are no standards for it in Japan.
The Daily Yomiuri
Pollution data on market site 'hidden'
However, the location that the metropolitan government said it had been able to detoxify from a level of 43,000 times the environmental safety standards had actually contained a benzene level just 2.7 times the standards.
It sounds as if the 43,000 times had been anything like a failed datum. There are some presses which gave such missleading or deceptive headers as "In actuality 2.7 times" (jiji.com in Japanese), "Pollution is 'low-concentrated'" (SankeiBiz in Japanese) etc. It was originally known that there was a mixture of the spots widely varying in the density of contaminations. So, one can see some arbitrary choice of sampling spot.
Arsenic was another contaminant targeted by the experiment. But at a location where arsenic had been detected at a level 3.4 times higher than the standards in the 2008 survey, the arsenic level was found to be lower than the standards at the time when the experiment started this year.
The gas works at Toyosu were active in operation from the 1950s to the 1980s, and thereafter its site was a vacant lot. Then, is it possible that the contaminant which had remained there for two decades or longer decreased to the convenient level between 2008 and 2010? Again, one can see some arbitrary choice of sampling spot.
Despite all the problems, Dr. Fumio Harashima, chairman of the Technical Panel, approved the validity of all the soil clean-up project only by the fact that the limited in vitro tests were successful.
On 21/07, the previous day of the Technical Panel, the Asahi Shimbun released a report (in Japanese - now shotened by half) that a new contamination was found in the mound which had been built up as high as 2.5 metres, on the old gas works site at Toyosu, with soil brought about from other remote areas. The earth of some 800,000 cubic metres is pulluted with cyan 25 times the environmental standards and other contaminants. Tokyo officials admitted that there was the high probability that it was due to groundwater rising.
Notwithstanding, on that next day, a member of the Technical Panel remarked that it was possible to curtail the clean-up cost further.
