【News from NARO】Publication of provisional manual for analyzing PFAS in agricultural soil
Updated:July 3, 2024 (Wednesday)
National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) has developed a method for simultaneous analysis of PFAS in soil and published the provisional manual (in English and Japanese) on its website. This manual will enable the efficient and stable analysis of a variety of PFAS in soil, which has been difficult until now. We anticipate that many experimental researchers use the manual and give us comments to improve the contents of the manual, reliability and versatility of the analysis method. We also expect that a large amount of data will be accumulated by using the manual, which will lead to a clarification of the actual state of PFAS distribution in soil all around the world.
The society started in 1990. JEC made up of about 1,000 individual members including overseas and students, 16 public interest organizations and 66 private supporting corporations as of April, 2013. JEC has been working for the sound management of environmental chemicals through development of analytical techniques and waste treatment, understanding geochemical cycling of elements and molecules, and risk assessment. In addition, JEC has held international conferences for facilitating communication between researchers and stakeholders in different countries and exchanging knowledge related to environmental pollution by micro-pollutants by cooperating with societies in foreign countries: the first time in Hawaii in 1996, the second time in China in 2004 and the third time in Korea in 2010.
We have been continued international session since 2007 in the annual symposium of JEC (177 presentations).
Even the Earth is a small planet in the cosmos, it is real vital one for our human being's sustainability. It is said that the environment of the earth that ensures our all lives has been changing by our own hands and it comes to be very serious. We are facing lots of such critical problems as a global warming by CO2 and others, ozone layer depletion by organic halogen compounds, various chemicals expanding long and wide even in polar habiting large carnivorous animals like a white bear and a seal, and etc. As a domestic problem, toxic substances countermeasures become the current main environmental theme. We come to find out that not so small numbers of certain chemical compounds cause cancers. The authorities are in the direction defining environmental regulations to control them and environmental scientific knowledge is quit important for them to promote the policy. As we can see in RoHS and REACH instructions in Europe, they have dramatically been innovating their area policies against chemical compounds control. In order to enhance the policy, they need much more information about those chemical's neurotoxicity, immunotoxicity, and hormone-disrupting chemicals. It is getting to be more important for even Japanese companies to know more about such scientific knowledge so as to secure their own control.
There is another aspect of natural resource issues, that is to say, those resources exhaust and expansion of use about substitute of them are getting not only industrial structure but also environmental influence appearances changed. Therefore, we will have to cultivate and develop new technology by all means.
It is absolutely important for our human-being to let our all wisdoms together and establish more comfortable and peaceful sustainability of conditions. On the bases of this policy, our society has accomplished our tasks providing discussion opportunities about general environmental issues and the future human being society that there should be through interactive information exchanging among center positioned chemists and other wider field of scientific panelists. What is more, we published our original seasonal booklets and several professional books, and held annual domestic, irregular international symposiums and seminars for the past 20 years since 1990. In these 2 years, our society has reconstructed our organization and enhanced our social contribution to environmental scientific field of develop and research as a General Incorporated Association.
| President | Noriyuki SUZUKI | National Institute for Environmental Studies |
|---|---|---|
| Vice president | Mayumi ISHIZUKA | Hokkaido University |
| Nobutoshi OHTSUKA | Center for Environmental Science in Saitama | |
| Takumi TAKASUGA | Shimadzu Techno-Research Inc. | |
| Hideshige TAKADA | Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology | |
| Takeshi NAKANO | Osaka University | |
| Executive director | Daisuke NAKAJIMA | National Institute for Environmental Studies |
| Director | Takashi AMAGAI | University of Shizuoka |
| Yoshiaki ISHII | Environmental Contorol Center Co., Ltd. | |
| Hideyuki INUI | Kobe University | |
| Hiroshi OKOCHI | Waseda University | |
| Natsuko KAJIWARA | National Institute for Environmental Studies | |
| Tatsuya KUNISUE | Ehime University | |
| Takanori SAKIYAMA | Osaka City Institute of Public Health and Environmental Sciences | |
| Miho SHINOMIYA | Otsuma Women's University | |
| Nobuyasu SEIKE | National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences | |
| Shin TAKAHASHI | Ehime University | |
| Teruyuki NAKAO | Setsunan University | |
| Haruhiko NAKATA | Kumamoto University | |
| Yasuhiro HIRAI | Kyoto University Environment Preservation Research Center | |
| Yoshinori FUJIMINE | Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. | |
| Jun'ya HOSHI | Tokyo Metropolitan Research Institute for Environmental Protection | |
| Yuichi HORII | Center for Environmental Science in Saitama | |
| Yuichi MIYAKE | Yokohama National University | |
| Terumi MIYAZAKI | NIPPON STEEL | |
| Izumi WATANABE | Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology | |
| Auditor | Kou NISGHIJIMA | JEOL Ltd. |
| Yasuko YOSHIDA | Sumika Chemical Analysis Service, Ltd. |
| Japan Society for Environmental Chemistry Secretariat | |
| Address | 3-18-7-103 Koyadai, Tsukuba, IBARAKI 305-0074 Japan |
| TEL | +81-298-86-3185 |
| FAX | +81-298-86-3186 |
| office@j-ec.or.jp |
Journal of Environmental Chemistry
Environmental Monitoring & Contaminants Research