Dioxin Risk Controversy in Japan

In this risk society, we are confronted to many kinds of environmental risk and involved risk controversy. Whether the risk is small or large, we have right to choose that risk or not. But we sociologist should try to grasp the quantitative size of the risk to analysis the discussions of scientists or experts in the public sphere. So I try to propose the sociological analytical method of symmetrical scientific controversy through the case study. The case I focused in this paper is Dioxin risk controversy in Japan.

Dioxin had caused a great deal of public concern in the 1990s. It was exhausted from industrial waste incinerators and municipal waste incinerators all around Japan. People around the incinerators started anti-pollution movements. And some of dioxin researches in Japan helped them and measured the exhaust of dioxins in environment. At last those movements resulted in the enactment of anti-dioxins law. However, risk studiers in Japan consisted that dioxin`s risk is not so large, according to their own risk comparative studies.

On the context of environmental movement, this kind of risk studiers may be often criticized; “they are political.” But in many cases it is not clear how it is political and on what point it is political. In this study, I analyzed the scientific paper of risk studiers and compared those of dioxin researchers. As a result, several assumptions were found in the “scientific” paper of risk studiers. Especially, average values they used are different from that of dioxin researchers. We can say this is political. And we have to pay attention to the point that this is not derive from the risk study, but it is from the attitudes of risk studiers. This distinction is important in the debate in public sphere. Symmetrical analysis can make this distinction possible.