Abstract
At the beginning of this chapter, a brief background on Japan’s geographical, meteorological, and economic conditions is presented.
The chapter then introduces the status of air pollution in Japan, including the observation network in Japan, observation methods, atmospheric environmental standards, their achievement evaluation methods, and changes in concentrations and emissions from 1970 to 2020 for conventional air pollutants such as CO, SO2, NOx, Oxidants (O3), and PM (Suspended particle matter and PM2.5). Concentrations of most air pollutants, other than oxidants, have steadily declined, and Japan’s environmental quality standards (EQSs) have generally been met. Although oxidant concentrations are no longer high enough for oxidant warning announcements to be issued, average concentrations have increased or remain flat.
Changes in NMHC (VOC) concentrations and emissions, the nationwide status of 23 designated hazardous air pollutants, and the results of analysis of PM2.5 components monitoring are also discussed.
In addition, this chapter reports the measures Japan has taken to improve poor air quality in the past, both for fixed and mobile sources. Emission controls for stationary sources are listed, and guidelines for the number of air pollution monitoring stations required in each region are presented.
For future perspectives, the focus is on oxidants, discussing recent oxidant concentrations and the effects of climate change.
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Acknowledgments
All environmental concentration data of air pollutants used in this chapter are from the database of the National Institute for Environmental Studies unless otherwise noted (https://tenbou.nies.go.jp/download/). Without this excellent database, it would not have been possible to describe the evolution of the atmospheric environment in Japan.
Geographical features and climate data were created from GSI Tiles (elevation) from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan and numerical national land information (climate normal values) from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. We also acknowledge this.
The authors express their gratitude toward Mr. D. Yamada, Mr. T. Sato, and Ms M. Kikuchi of the Kawasaki City, Dr. T. Maeda and Dr. S. Kobayashi of Institute of Integrated Atmospheric Environment (IIAE), and Dr. M. Hayasaki of Japan Automobile Research Institute (JARI) for their support in preparing the diagrams for chapter 4.
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Morikawa, T., Ito, A., Wakamatsu, S. (2023). Regional and Urban Air Quality in East Asia: Japan. In: Akimoto, H., Tanimoto, H. (eds) Handbook of Air Quality and Climate Change. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2527-8_65-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2527-8_65-1
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