The World Health Organisation has classed one dioxin as a serious hazard to human health.
In Tokorozawa, residents have helped push a motion through the city council to control dioxin pollution.
Dioxin is linked to cancer, skin disease and reproductive problems such as miscarriages and birth defects.
The cause of his woes -- dioxin, a toxic chemical discharged by the waste facility.
It is to add dioxin to the list of toxic chemicals controlled under an air-pollution law.
Precisely how much dioxin is being released, or where it will land, is still to be confirmed.
But people were not at risk from increased dioxin levels deposited from the burning carcasses of slaughtered cattle.
Mounting evidence of health problems linked to dioxin makes merely issuing guidelines to plant operators seem woefully inadequate.
Some suspect that waste industrial oil containing dioxin and PCBs was placed into a container meant for recycled frying fats.
As a consequence, dioxin levels in the air are now three times those of the United States and some European countries.
He said he was concerned that a two-tier beef market could develop, and that farmers selling dioxin-infected meat would be "severely disadvantaged".
It spews 500 nanograms of dioxin per cubic meter of fume, more than six times the Japanese safe level of 80 nanograms.
"We know dioxin can damage human reproductive functions, " says campaigner Kotani Eiko.
Not good enough, says Fujiwara Toshikazu, founder of an anti-dioxin citizens' group.
Health officials also propose to close the country's seven worst dioxin-belching incinerators.
Last year, Belgium was hit by a dioxin scare affecting meat products.
Dioxin, though, is usually formed as a byproduct in processes such as copper smelting, paper-production and the making of pesticides and chlorine-containing organic chemicals.
Damage seems to stem from dioxin's interference with crucial biochemical messengers such as the thyroid hormones, which regulate metabolism and help the brain to develop.
Dioxin, which is fat soluble, has a "half-life" of seven years in the body: It takes that long to break down half the quantity of the compound.
The source of contamination - an 80, 000-kg batch of fat that a Belgium company sold to feed mills supplying European farms - did not only contain dioxin.
But the agency then began circulating a second set of cancer-based goals, which lowered permissible dioxin levels to 3.7 ppt for residential soil and 17ppt for commercial sites.
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Japan has had scary dioxin problems caused by burning trash.
Take a hypothetical development on land suspected of dioxin contamination.
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The largest source of dioxin in urban areas originates in backyard burning, either in barrels, or from small generators which were widely used until the 1960s in the Northeast and Midwest.
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The agency said it increased dioxin monitoring from quarterly to monthly for the first six months and had also required a review of arrangements for the routing of the boiler protection vents.
The agency had increased dioxin monitoring from quarterly to monthly for the first six months and had also required a review of arrangements for the routing of the boiler protection vents, he added.
The European Commission said it was worried that milk containing dioxin which causes cancer might still be on sale in the country, and complained that the government's response to the food scare had been laggardly.
In short, Mr Yushchenko must urgently establish good relations with Moscow, despite its support for his opponent and despite rumours of Russian security-service involvement in an attempt to poison him with dioxin last autumn.
Naoto Kan, secretary-general of the opposition Democratic Party, proposes several traditional environmental schemes, such as promoting windmills and tightening rules on dioxin, a pollutant produced by some industrial processes which can cause birth defects.
Two years ago, a European Union-wide health alert was sparked when German officials said animal feed tainted with dioxin had been fed to hens and pigs, contaminating eggs, poultry meat and pork at affected farms.
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