The Health and Welfare Ministry envisions setting up two state-run facilities in Japan to dispose of waste containing such hazardous substances as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), ministry sources said.
The ministry, which plans to ask the Finance Ministry to earmark an allocation for the project in the fiscal 2001 budget, aims to reinforce the government's ability to dispose of waste, the sources said.
The facilities will also research recycling of packaging materials, home electric appliances, construction waste, personal computers, motor vehicles, motorcycles and pianos, they said.
One of the facilities will possibly be set up in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, and the other either in Aomori Prefecture or the Kanto region centering on Tokyo, according to the sources.
The ministry also plans to submit a bill to the next regular 150-day Diet session beginning in January to revise a law governing a ministry-affiliated corporate entity to allow it to dispose of PCBs, they said.
The entity currently researches waste disposal technologies but is not directly engaged in waste disposal.
The ministry said earlier this month that the whereabouts of 4,942 transformers containing the carcinogen went unknown in the six years ending March 1999.
PCBs are a group of carcinogenic compounds that tend to accumulate in animal tissues and can interfere in human reproductive systems. They were formerly used as insulation in products such as transformers.
Production and distribution of PCBs have been banned in Japan since 1972 and goods made with PCBs are subject to strict controls under the Waste Disposal and Public Cleansing Law.
The ministry has decided to play a more active role in waste disposal following a series of incidents in which some private industrial waste disposal companies have been found to have incinerated waste in a way to cause dioxin pollution, the sources said.