A housewife in Hachioji, Tokyo, fell sick when she ate green beans that were imported from China and then sold at her local supermarket. Two more people in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, also came down with similar symptoms after eating green beans from packages with the same lot number as those in the Hachioji case.
In January, it surfaced that three families in Chiba and Hyogo prefectures became sick from eating gyoza dumplings, also imported from China. Both the dumplings and green beans were imported and sold frozen. The gyoza incidents have not been solved. It is imperative that both Japan and China deepen cooperation to ensure the safety of food imported from China.
The Hachioji woman and the two Kashiwa residents had symptoms of nausea, vomiting and difficulty in breathing. The Hachioji health office detected 6,900 parts per million of dichlorvos, an organophosphate insecticide, or 34,500 times the government standard of 0.2 ppm for imports. It says that a 60-kg person can develop acute symptoms just by eating 0.07 gram of green beans containing 6,900 ppm of dichlorvos.