After having recently provoked outrage in the trucking industry over a controversial plan to regulate diesel cars, "environmentally friendly" Gov. Shintaro Ishihara has just submitted a budget proposal to the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly that has one less allocation for green initiatives: that for asbestos monitoring.
The metropolitan government has set aside funds every year since 1990 for measuring the atmospheric levels of the cancer-causing mineral around firms that manufacture products that contain the carcinogen. While the figure had been gradually shrinking, some 1.2 million yen was used to monitor 10 firms last year.
The amount is only a tiny fraction of the capital's 6 trillion yen budget, but it has been the only administrative expenditure earmarked for keeping an eye on the potential health hazards it poses.