Abstract
In Japan, the Soil Contamination Countermeasure Law was established in 2003 for the protection of human health. This law, as a countermeasure method, admits the inexpensive risk management method with leaving the contamination, as well as expensive cleans up. However decision makers of countermeasure method who were mainly developers and industrial companies, were often select the expensive cleans up method in many cases. As a result, economic problems have arisen by soil contamination in Japan. In this paper, the concept of the law was explained and the reason why people select the expensive cleans up were discussed, and then, the gaps between the objectives of the law and people’s decision making processes were identified. Finally, several suggestions were made for the harmonization of the environmental risk and economic risk related with soil contamination.
