April 17, 2000

A shipment of waste material containing low levels of PCB's (polychlorinated biphenyls) from U.S. military bases in Japan and sent to Canada for disposal is currently en route back to Japan. Upon arrival at Yokohama port, the fourteen containers of waste material will be off-loaded and stored by the Defense Logistics Agency's Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office (DRMO) in an appropriate and safe manner for no more than one month before they will be reshipped out of Japan.

The 100 metric tons of carefully packed waste material consist of transformers, oil, circuit breakers and various debris, such as rags, contaminated with PCB's. Prior to shipment, the PCB level of the waste material was tested and was found to be less than 50 parts per million (PPM). This does not exceed levels permitted under the 1989 Basel Convention to which both the U.S. and Japan are signatories.

The decision to ship the waste from Japan was made because neither Japanese law nor DOD standards permit destruction of PCB's in Japan. Although PCB waste can be safely stored virtually indefinitely, storage space at Sagami Depot, where the waste had been kept, is limited.