Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda (second from right) speaks at the Cabinet meeting on the asbestos issue Aug. 26.

The government aims to submit the bill to the Diet in January, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said.

The legal step is needed because the government has conceded it didn't do enough to protect people against asbestos, even though it was warned by international experts that it could cause cancer as far back as 1972, he indicated.

"There is room for us to learn lessons because collaboration among ministries and agencies was not necessarily sufficient," said Hosoda.

The Environment Agency, now the Environment Ministry, failed to put asbestos under the auspices of the Air Pollution Control Law until 1989, because it was not fully aware of the need to take countermeasures and deal with the problem, the government claimed.

Even after 1989, the government allowed the fireproof material to be used in a range of products.

It was not until this summer, when hundreds of asbestos-linked deaths surfaced, that the health ministry announced a plan to slap a blanket ban on asbestos use by 2008. The government later said it would ban the remaining use of asbestos as soon as possible.

The legislation will cover those people ineligible for compensation under current compensation laws for industrial accidents and pollution-caused health hazards.

The government had recognized 743 workers as asbestos victims under the workers' accident compensation insurance system by fiscal 2004. Of the group, 604 have since died.

The asbestos debacle first came to light in late June, when machinery maker Kubota Corp. said 79 of its employees had died of illnesses believed linked to asbestos. Kubota said family members of employees and residents near the factories had developed such illnesses, setting off a flurry of similar announcements by other companies.

The Japan Times Weekly: Sept. 3, 2005
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