Tests found the toxic material in 0.04 hectares of rice fields in Houbi Monday, but there were doubts that steel slag from a nearby plant had also affected more agricultural land in the neighborhood.

The EPA said yesterday it had asked the Tainan County Government to order nearby Chao Hsiang Co., Ltd. to stop its operations immediately. It was up to county environmental officials to determine how long the closure would last, the EPA said.

Acting on government orders, the company covered up the slag with black plastic sheets yesterday.

In order to allay public fears about the safety of farm products from Houbi, Tainan County Magistrate Su Huan-jy ate rice in the company of Huang Kun-pin, the star of a documentary about the Houbi rice farmers.

Su also said that the amount of chromium found in the rice field was too low to harm consumers.

About 100 farmers from Houbi were planning to visit the Legislative Yuan in Taipei today, hoping for more support from the COA to compensate their losses, reports said.

There were fears that middlemen would refuse their rice in the future, causing even more economic hardship for the rice farming area.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs was reportedly planning to restrict the recycling of steel slag, now often used for landfill and for building roads.

In future, businesses planning to use the waste material would have to apply for permission with the MOEA's Industrial Development Bureau.

If there was any doubt about the possibility of damage to the environment, permission would be refused, the IDB said. About 130 companies a year would be checked for their use of recycled waste, and any problems would be reported to the EPA and to local environmental departments, according to the IDB.