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Toyota Introduces Water-borne Vehicle Body Painting in Japan

Tokyo, Japan, Apr 5, 2006 - (JCN Newswire) - TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION (TMC) announced today that it has completed introduction of metallic water-borne paint for the top coat painting process at all nine TMC vehicle body paint lines in Japan, greatly promoting measures to reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

Capping an effort that started with the introduction of water-borne paint - hich is more environmentally friendly than conventional paint - or the top coat painting process at its Takaoka Plant in August 1999, TMC recently introduced water-borne paint for the top coat process at its Motomachi Plant. This has resulted in an average VOC emission level of 30g/m2 (unit of weight per painted surface area) across all lines, compared to 55g/m2 in FY2000, or a 45% reduction, enabling TMC to meet its FY2005 goal to reduce VOC emissions to an "average of 35g/m2 or less on all lines", as stipulated in the Third Toyota Environmental Action Plan (FY2001-2005).

Toyota has long been actively implementing initiatives to reduce VOCs, which generate suspended particulate matter and photochemical oxidants, both of which are thought to contribute to atmospheric pollution and negatively affect human health. The shift from organic-solvent paints to water-borne paints in the vehicle body painting process, which is one of the major sources of VOC emissions in automobile manufacturing, is an important step in promoting further reduction of VOCs.

TMC intends to reduce VOCs even more - the Fourth Toyota Environmental Action Plan (FY2006-2010) states a FY2010 goal to reduce VOC emissions to an average of 25g/m2 or less on all paint lines, and, to achieve this goal, TMC is currently expanding introduction of water-borne paints to the vehicle body surfacer coat (middle coat) painting process and to bumper painting lines.