Soil Pollution in Japan and Its Controlling Countermeasures

While Japan’s mining in the late 19th century and the rapid economic development from 1950s to 1970s, it caused serious soil environmental contamination. Japan then began to control soil pollution through the implementation of the “Environmental Pollution Prevention Act”, “Act to Prevent Soil Contamination on Agricultural Land” and other laws and regulations from the 1960s, especially the implement of the “Soil Contamination Countermeasures Act” in 2003. With the strengthening of environmental protection law and the increase of soil investigation during enterprise land transfer, the number of contaminated sites found in recent years has been increasing, showing that soil pollution is becoming more and more obvious. At present, Japan has developed a relatively complete system of administration and technology in terms of soil contamination standards, administration, soil contamination investigation and control technology. In this paper, the occurrence process of soil contamination, related laws and regulations, soil environmental standards, investigation and treatment procedures, and applied technologies and methods of soil contamination in Japan were systematically summarized, in order to provide useful references for soil contamination prevention, management and remediation in China.