The Minamata disease incident in Japan should make us
Minamata Town is located in southern Kyushu, Japan, and belongs to Kumamoto Prefecture. There are 40,000 people in the town, and more than 10,000 farmers and fishermen live in the surrounding villages. Due to the unknown sea of fire and Minamata Bay, which produce fish to the west, the fishing industry in this town is very prosperous. However, no one imagined that it would become a "land of hatred" and a "land of wailing" in many years.
In 1925, the Japanese Nitrogen Fertilizer Company built a plant here, expanded the synthetic acetic acid plant in 1932, started producing vinyl chloride in 1949, and produced more than 6,000 tons in 1956. Behind this "prosperity" is a human catastrophe brewing. Because the factory discharges untreated wastewater into Minamata Bay.
In 1950, in a small fishing village near Minamata Bay, some cats were found to have unstable gaits, cramps and paralysis, and finally jumped into the water and drowned. The locals called it "cat suicide", also known as "cat chorea", but no one studied this matter. In 1953, a person was found in Minamata Town with a strange disease. At first, he was slurred in speech, concealed in walking, dementia in the face, paralysis in the hands and feet, then deafness and blindness, and numbness in the whole body. Finally, he became mentally disturbed. He slept soundly for a while, was excited for a while, and bent his body until he died. As a result, panic spread immediately, but this nightmare of the local residents was actually just beginning. In May 1956, four more such patients appeared, and later the number of patients with the disease increased to more than 50, which attracted the attention of some people at the local Kumamoto University Medical School. In the investigation, the various phenomena of "cat death and human disease" were linked and analyzed, and the root cause of fish poisoning was initially found. The fish and shrimp in Shuihou Bay could no longer be caught and eaten, the local fishermen lost their dependence, and many families were trapped in poverty.
In the spring of 1958, the Japanese Nitrogen Fertilizer Company extended the poisonous water discharged into Minamata Bay to the northern part of the Shuizhigawa River. Six or seven months later, 18 patients with mercury poisoning appeared in this newly polluted area. This caused the anger of the fishermen. Hundreds of fishermen seized the New Japan Nitrogen Fertilizer Company and destroyed the local official institutions. But the Japanese government did nothing, so that the management still refused to admit the fact that the sewage was poisoned and continued to discharge the sewage with impunity.
In 1963, the "Minamata Disease Medical Research Group" of Kumamoto University isolated and extracted methylmercury chloride (CH3HgCL) crystals from mercury residues discharged from the factory and fish and shellfish from Minamata Bay. The crystals and fish and shellfish caught from Minamata Bay were used for cat feeding experiments. As a result, all 400 experimental cats suffered from typical water-climate diseases. By infrared absorption spectrum analysis, it was found that the methylmercury chloride crystals in mercury residues and fish shells were exactly the same as the infrared absorption spectrum of pure methylmercury chloride crystals. Pathological examination of the brain tissue of the dead Minamata disease cases also found that the pathological changes of brain and cerebellar cells under the microscope were the same as those of CH3HgCl poisoning.
In September 1968, the Japanese government confirmed that Minamata disease was caused by people's long-term consumption of fish and shellfish contaminated with mercury and methylmercury wastewater. According to the statistics of the Japanese Environment Agency in 1972, there were more than 180 patients in Minamata City, of which more than 50 had died, and about 10,000 residents were affected.
On March 23, 1979, at 10 am, the second section of the Kumagata Criminal Court sentenced Kiichi Yoshioka, the former manager of the Nitrogen Fertilizer Company (at the age of 77), and Eiichi Nishida, the former director of the factory that caused Minamata disease (at the age of 69). The judge, Shixiu Uda, pronounced that the responsibility of the organization must be strictly investigated for public nuisance crimes caused by corporate activities, but according to the advanced age of the two defendants, they were sentenced to two years in prison and suspended for three years. This is the first time in Japanese history that public nuisance offenders have been investigated for criminal responsibility.
"Minamata disease" has cost the Japanese government and companies extremely expensive treatment, treatment and compensation in the future. Protracted court proceedings over Minamata disease continue to this day.
