Japan sets water quality safety guidelines for banned pollutants found near US bases

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — Japan plans to join other nations in officially setting its own water quality safety guidelines for banned pollutants that have been found around U.S. military bases near Tokyo and on Okinawa.

The country’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare announced Feb. 19 a combined safety threshold of 0.05 micrograms per liter for synthetic, fully fluorinated organic acids commonly known as PFOS and PFOA, a ministry spokesman said last week. They are typically found in cleaning products, firefighting foam, aircraft grease, water-repellant materials and fluorine chemicals, and have been known to cause tumors, increases in body and organ weight and death in animals.

Japan previously had no guidelines on how much of the acids are safe in its drinking water and relied upon the United States’ threshold of 0.07 micrograms per liter as a baseline.

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