Osami Nakasugi

Director, Environmental Chemistry Division, National Institute of Environmental Studies
(16-2 Onogawa, Tukuba, Ibaraki 305-0053 Japan)

Abstract

In Japan, environmental water quality standards are set up relating to the protection of human health. In order to achieve these standards, wastes containing these standard items at high concentration, will have to be detoxificated or disposed in places which are isolated from public water areas and subsurface water. This time, 3 items, boron, fluorine, and nitrate and nitrite, have been added to the standards. But, the characteristics of these items are different from old standard items. So, the wastes containing these items at high concentration are treated or disposed based on different points of view. The increase of water quality standards causes the increase of costs for monitoring and test, and therefore a management system for hazardous wastes including bio-assay is necessary in the future.

Key words: environmental water quality standards, standard items, sanitary landfill, leachate