In Japan, environmental water quality standards for total zinc were established in 2003 for the protection of aquatic life. Further, the Japanese Ministry of the Environment enforced the effluent standard for Zn (i.e., permitted concentration was lowered from 5 mg/L to 2 mg/L) for the maintenance and achievement of the environmental standards. In this paper, the issues on these standards were discussed and the gaps between the objectives and setting procedures of the two standards in the decision making processes were identified. Subsequently, several suggestions, such as performing ex-post evaluations on the regulations of zinc in terms of their influence on the protection of aquatic organisms, were made in order to confirm and fill the gaps.

View full abstract

The disposal loss of fresh food (ex. box lunch) delivered daily is one of the major problems faced by convenience stores. A franchisee of Seven Eleven, the largest convenience store in Japan, filed a lawsuit seeking the abolishment of restrictions set by Seven Eleven, the franchisor, including the restriction on price lowering as the consume-by date approaches. As a consequence, the Fair Trade Commission ruled that the franchisor is guilty of antitrust. Accordingly, the franchisor announced that it will compensate 15% of the disposal loss incurred by any of its franchisees. Although it figures are unfounded and, if it is inappropriateness, more conflict is expected to happen with franchisee. In this study, we used simulation to inspection the appropriate disposal loss compensation policy for both franchisor and franchisee, to avoid management risks in convenience stores.

View full abstract

A momentum toward risk assessment and management of chemical substances is gathering strength with the enforcement of REACH in EU countries and the revision of KASHINHOU in Japan. The problem of lack of ecotoxicity data of chemical substance which is indispensable to ecological risk assessment thereby become an urgent issue. However, expense of toxicity test of chemical substance (in vivo or in vitro) is expensive, and an effort to reduce use of test animals in the toxicity test from the viewpoint of animal welfare is demanded. Under the situation, researches on in silico technique development to quantitatively estimate the toxicity of chemical substance based on test data and knowledge accumulated in the past, become very active in recent years. This study aims at providing an overview of current situation and challenge in technique development for predicting ecotoxicity of chemical substance. The strengths and limitations of current existing techniques especially focused on the ECOSAR, the KATE, and the OECD (Q)SAR Application Toolbox were evaluated firstly, and then the current challenges in technique development were discussed and concluded.

View full abstract

This study examined the effects of the media on the dual-motivation model of earthquake preparedness. The model proposed that earthquake preparedness was determined by two motivations: the intentional motivation that leads to taking an action consciously and the unintentional motivation elicited by the quiet situation affording not to take an action. 92 university students in Sendai city and 96 university students in Nagoya city answered questionnaire. The results indicated that both intentional and unintentional motivations predicted earthquake preparedness. Moreover, students in Nagoya city engaged in more earthquake preparedness activities than students in Sendai city. Between Sendai and Nagoya samples, we found the differences of the direct effects on earthquake preparedness and the indirect effects through the determinants of the model on earthquake preparedness in local and personal media. This study highlights the importance of the role that media plays in promoting earthquake preparedness.

View full abstract