Chemical weapons abandoned at the end of World War II around Japan pose far more danger than previously thought, according to a government study released Friday.

Weapons stockpiles were abandoned in nearly 140 locations — including several Tokyo suburbs and other major cities — and may have contaminated soil or water in at least 41, according to the Environment Agency study.

"We have to take appropriate measures," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told reporters after the study was announced. "The related agencies will come up with measures quickly."

The survey follows several poisonings earlier this year and re-examines the findings of a similar report issued 30 years ago.

In the most serious case, some 20 residents in the town of Kamisu, near Tokyo, developed health problems after drinking well water contaminated by arsenic believed to have leaked from an abandoned military stockpile. The town had a military airfield and research lab at which chemical weapons are believed to have been stored, officials said.

Last year, about a dozen construction workers fell sick after they stumbled upon beer bottles containing poison gas at the site of a former navy chemical weapons factory near Tokyo.

In the previous national survey, in 1973, the agency said Japan had stored 3,875 tons of chemical weapons in 18 stockpiles, and dumped them in eight locations around Japanese shores after the war on orders from U.S. occupation forces.

The report said officials then knew of no other locations where chemical weapons were stored or dumped. Japan has said the disposal was a military secret and that many documents on its chemical warfare were destroyed when the war ended.

But on Friday, the agency said it now believes chemical weapons were stored and dumped at more than twice as many locations as previously thought. It called for further water and soil sampling to determine contamination levels.

Experts estimate Japan produced about 7,000 tons of chemical weapons during the war — mainly mustard gas and lewisite, an arsenic-based blistering fluid — and traces have been found intermittently around the country.

Japan also left behind about 700,000 Japanese bombs with chemical warheads in China and is helping with the cleanup. But in August, drums of mustard gas ruptured at a construction site in Qiqihar, northeast China, killing one and sickening 33 others.

Beijing says the abandoned chemical weapons have killed at least 2,000 Chinese since 1945.

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