抄録
Increasingly multifarious and complex environmental risks of chemical substances has prompted their autonomous management. OECD recommends PRTR as a method of autonomous management of chemical substances. Japan is now practicing PRTR in a pilot scale, which requires reporting by the operators of the amount emitted into air, water and soil of the 178 selected substances of high environmental risk, as well as their amount transferred to disposal specialists, while the administration is responsible for estimating the amount of substances discharged by households and mobile sources. Successful implementation of PRTR will depend on harmonization with measures taken by individual enterprises, improvement in data quality, and the use of reported data. While the Japanese pilot program is bound to publish overall data only but not data pertaining to individual facilities, the latter are necessary for satisfactory risk communication. Publication procedure will therefore be a major item to be studied. The Fundamentals of Environment Law, a new principle of environmental protection, requires that each participant plays his/her own role in environmental protection. In this context, PRTR that solicits autonomous management will provide a useful tool for risk management of chemical substances. A cost-effective PRTR system will hopefully be developed on the basis of the pilot project.
