Airbags disposal costly in Japan

22/10/04: by Ray Bernard — European carmakers who sell into Japan have come up against a new problem relating to airbag disposal.

Under new legislation there, airbags from end-of-life (ELV) scrapped cars must be sent to one of three licensed facilities for disposal of the various components - freon gas, detonator and the bag itself.

This makes it more expensive than the traditionally-preferred method of firing the bags while still in the scrapped vehicles, but that has become difficult to do because the Japanese treat the procedure as a source of noise pollution.