News

【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.

Introduction of JEC

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).

Message from JEC

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.

Our activities

Board of Directors(2023~2024)

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.

Contact

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
E-mail office@j-ec.or.jp