Thank you for this opportunity to join you. I suspect that you asked me here primarily for two reasons: first, I am the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which does have jurisdiction over legislation dealing with victim compensation for environmental pollution. Second, I have been an advocate of victim compensation for five years. For the first time, there seems to be a chance that legislation in this field will be enacted.

I would like to discuss the prospects of the Congress enacting a victim compensation law this session. Those of you who follow the issue of victim compensation are well-aware that it is not a new issue. It first attracted widespread attention when the Japanese government established a compensation system for mercury-poison victims. Few people know that the research establishing the link between organic mercury and brittle bone disease was funded not by the Japanese government, but by the U.S. Public Health Service. Our task now is to achieve a comparable compensation system in the United States.