The Ministry of the Environment has commissioned research into three groups, including Hokkaido University, to clarify the health effects of PFAS, some of which are considered harmful organic fluorine compounds.
PFAS does not originally exist in the natural world, and three out of the more than 10,000 artificially created types are considered harmful, and they are being detected one after another in tap water and rivers around the country.
In November of last year, the World Health Organization's cancer research institute assessed that two types of harmful substances are carcinogenic, but the government has not had enough scientific knowledge to date. The clear effects on health are unknown.
However, due to growing concerns about PFAS in Japan, the Ministry of the Environment has decided to commission three groups including universities to begin full-scale research in the new fiscal year.
One of these, a group at Hokkaido University, targeted children and young people who are said to be susceptible to the effects of PFAS, and investigated the effects of approximately 30 types of PFAS in the blood of 700 people from the fetal period to the age of 17. They plan to analyze the concentration and clarify the effects on growth.
Furthermore, ahead of other studies worldwide, we hope to elucidate the mechanism by which PFAS affects growth and immunity when taken into the body by analyzing cells.
In addition
, a group from Hyogo College of Medicine and
the National Institute of Health Sciences conducted research for three years, and
the Ministry of the Environment determined how much of a substance considered to be harmful would be ingested and what kind of effects it would have, as well as what kind of effects other than the three types considered to be harmful would have. The plan is to find out whether there are highly toxic PFAS in the products.