The Environment Agency on Tuesday sent off a letter asking prefectures to check waste water from incinerators similar to the one in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, that has been found to be spewing record levels of dioxin into a local river.
At a news conference following Tuesday's Cabinet meeting, agency chief Kayoko Shimizu said the government is instructing prefectures to check the effluent water from incinerators like that at the Ebara Corp. factory in Fujisawa.
Samples taken from the Hikichi River in Fujisawa late last year showed dioxin levels up to 16 times the state's recently set standards.