National policy has played a big role in improvement of environment and promotion of water supply systems, while the emphasis has been historically changed according to the social demands. To improve water supply systems, the government determines policies mainly based on scientific risk assessment, taking actual situation into account. For example, the water quality standard is determined based on the independent scientific risk assessment by the Food Safety Commission of Japan, and also based on risk management while considering existence, treatability, monitoring methods of possible contaminants. In the policy assessment, implementation of scientific risk assessment and consideration of the feasibility in risk management are important. Risk-based and other kinds of assessment methods are introduced to improve water supply and environmental conditions in administrative framework.
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