Mercury and Minamata Disease
According to United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the amount of mercury discharged to the air in 2010 was 1960 tons.
The largest source was gold digging by small businesses, accounting for 37% of all the discharged amount of mercury. In order to extract gold from gold ores, they made alloy of gold and mercury. And then the alloy was heated so that mercury is evaporated. And it is estimated that millions of people are engaged in this trade being carried out mainly in developing countries.
One of the most well-known diseases caused by mercury in the world is the Minamata Disease that was confirmed in Minamata City of Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, in 1956. Minamata City faces a rich inland sea connected to the East China Sea.
Minamata disease , sometimes referred to as Chisso-Minamata disease, is a neurological syndrome caused by severe mercury poisoning. Symptoms include ataxia, numbness in the hands and feet, general muscle weakness, narrowing of the field of vision, and damage to hearing and speech. In extreme cases, insanity, paralysis, coma, and death follow within weeks of the onset of symptoms. A congenital form of the disease can also affect foetuses in the womb.
Minamata disease was first discovered in Minamata city in Kumamoto prefecture, Japan, in 1956. It was caused by the release of methylmercury in the industrial wastewater from the Chisso Corporation's chemical factory, which continued from 1932 to 1968.The evil of the Minamata Disease lies in that the Japanese Government promoting industrial development policies after WWII helped Chisso Corporation deny its responsibility and hide real conditions of the pollution. Some elite bureaucrats of Japan clearly took a stance to protect the company and sacrifice poor fishermen and residents eating contaminated fish and suffering the Disease. Indeed any company should have gone bankrupt if it had fully compensated tens of thousands of Minamata victims for their damage and diseases.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease
However, as time went by, a trend of respecting human rights and enhancing anti-pollution measures was intensified. And along with the Japanese society getting rich, consumers came to directly face the evil of industrial pollution. Accordingly the Government gradually changed its policy from industry-centric one to resident-centric one.
In this context, patients of the Minamata Disease are classified as follows:
1. Those who were not officially identified as patients of the Minamata Disease but received lump-sum money of 2.6 million yen as a final settlement of a political sense. Total 10,353 citizens fall into this category.
2. Those who were judged to be patients of the Minamata Disease in a law suit called the Kansai Minamata Disease litigation in 2004. The number of those identified as Minamata patients in various law suits was 7,890.
3. Those who are hiding their Disease or living without noticing that they are patients of this Disease. (Once Minamata Disease patients were treated badly and alienated by the public as if they had been suffering contagious diseases, since people did not realize the true cause of the Disease.) Total 20,000 to 30,000 citizens fall into this category.
4. Those who have been officially identified as Minamata Disease patients by public offices. Total 2,265 persons have been somewhat saved、though 1,582 patients among them were already dead.
If a citizens is officially identified as a Minamata Disease patient, he or she can receive damages of about 17 million yen and a special pension of about 150,000 yen per month. Chisso has already paid $1.2 billion though half of this amount was debts from Kumamoto Prefecture. As Chisso is a big company and a big employer, the prefecture office cannot let it go bankrupt.
Once, anti-Minamata Disease movement was very much highlighted along with anti-Vietnam War movement in Japan around 1970. Many liberal students and activists went down to Minamata City from Tokyo and other big cities to support victims of Chisso. Many notable journalists in Japan had an experience of having visited Minamata City for any purposes. It became a touchstone for proving one's passion and philosophy for justice in the industrialized nation Japan.
It is estimated that Chisso's plant in Minamata City has leaked total about 100 tons of mercury in the form of organic mercury in these decades. Incidentally Chisso means nitrogen in Japanese. And there is another location in Japan where people are also plagued with the same symptoms: the Aganogawa River region of Niigata Prefecture facing the Sea of Japan.
http://www.env.go.jp/en/chemi/hs/minamata2002/ch4.html
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Exo 10:14 And the locust went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such.
Exo 10:15 For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt.
Exo 10:16 Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron in haste; and he said, I have sinned against the LORD your God, and against you.
Exo 10:17 Now therefore forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and intreat the LORD your God, that he may take away from me this death only.