#minamatadisease — Public Fediverse posts

In 1956, a 5-year-old girl fell mysteriously ill in Japan; doctors soon uncovered a devastating mercury poisoning disaster | World News

Representative Image of a chemical factory and its impact on the surrounding ecosystem (AI-generated image) On April 21,…
#EuropeSays #Japan #JP #ChissoCorporation #environmentalpollution #industrialdisaster #marinecontamination #mercurypoisoning #methylmercury #MinamataBay #Minamatadisease #neurologicalsymptoms #Nihon #toxicwaste
https://www.europesays.com/japan/77203/

What heavy metal is associated with Minamata disease?
A) Arsenic
B) Mercury
C) Lead
D) Cadmium
#heavymetals #minamatadisease #poisoning #environmentalscience ... Continue to: https://www.facebook.com/1130092409221646/posts/1347453610818857

Japan to begin Minamata disease survey as early as this year

The Environment Ministry plans to begin a health survey as early as this year of residents of coastal…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Environment #kagoshima #KUMAMOTO #Minamata #Minamatadisease #pollution #Science #surveys
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/617298/

A final resolution remains out of reach for victims of Minamata disease despite 70 years having elapsed since official confirmation of the neurological disorder caused by methylmercury discharged by a chemical firm. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/05/01/japan/minamata-disease-70-years/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #minamatadisease #kumamoto #pollution #environmentministry

The Environment Ministry plans to begin a health survey as early as this year of residents of coastal areas hit by the outbreak of Minamata mercury poisoning disease. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/04/30/japan/japan-minamata-disease-survey/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #minamata #minamatadisease #surveys

Hola Titánicos, cada 23 de febrero se celebra el Día del Compromiso mundial del Control del Mercurio, con el objetivo de concienciar sobre sus consecuencias negativas.

https://somosdisca.es/dia-del-compromiso-mundial-del-control-del-mercurio-2026/

#DíadelCompromisomundialdelControldelMercurio #ControldelMercurio #ConveniodeMinamata #MinamataDisease #Minamata #mercurio #salud #enfermedad #sistemanerviosocentral #SNC #saludmental #visibilizandoladiscapacidad #visibilizandolaenfermedad #cuidados #prevencion #visibilidad #Disability #disabilities #discapacidad #titan #titanicos #titanico #gentetitanica #somosdisca #somosgentetitanica

Activists, survivors and filmmakers gathered in Tokyo to mark 60 years since Japan’s second mercury poisoning crisis with screenings and panel talks. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2025/06/11/film/minamata-anniversary-film-symposium/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #culture #film #minamatadisease #pollution #niigataminamatadisease

A ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of the official recognition of Niigata Minamata disease, a neurological disorder caused by polluted industrial wastewater containing methylmercury. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/06/01/japan/niigata-minamata-disease-60-years/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #niigata #minamata #minamatadisease #pollution

Hundreds of people prayed for the victims of Minamata disease in a ceremony, 69 years after the neurological disorder caused by polluted industrial wastewater was officially recognized. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/05/01/japan/victims-mourned-minamata-disease-recognition/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #minamata #minamatadisease

Environment Minister Shintaro Ito met with Niigata Minamata disease sufferers on Wednesday, apologizing over a recent incident in which citizens' remarks were cut short during an earlier meeting he attended in relation to the disease. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/07/17/japan/society/niigata-minamata-disease-sufferers/ #japan #society #minamatadisease #niigata #kumamoto #environmentministry

A district court has acknowledged that 25 out of 144 plaintiffs, who were initially excluded from a special relief program for Minamata disease, were indeed affected by mercury-tainted industrial wastewater from a plant in Kumamoto. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/03/22/japan/crime-legal/minamata-victims-lawsuit-dismissed/ #japan #crimelegal #minamatadisease #kumamoto #japanesecourts #pollution #oceans

Like the #Chisso corporation and #MinamataDisease pattern:
> The new company that emerges from the ashes of Purdue Pharma will be allowed to continue making and selling opioid products, including OxyContin.
> But architects of this deal say future opioid profits will go to help fund drug treatment programs.
> #PurduePharma itself will re-emerge from bankruptcy as a new company operated as a form of public trust corporation.
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1031053251/sackler-family-immunity-purdue-pharma-oxcyontin-opioid-epidemic
#ChissoCorporation #TheCorporation

> Nanoplastics are also small enough to cross the placenta into the generally sheltered environment of the womb, with unknown effects on a developing fetus.
> .. nanoplastics can get inside the umbilical veins that pull blood and waste products back from an embryo, interfering with cell processes that help dispose of cellular debris. They can also cause significant damage to embryonic kidney and reproductive cells, as well as impairing the normal growth of the fetus’s heart.
#MinamataDisease ?

> It turns ‘Never Again’ into a kind of magic spell rather than a political project.

#MinamataDisease education and remembrance ceremonies by the big bureaucracies and politicians give me the same feeling. When comparing Minamata's tragedy to a #Taiwanese corporation's mass fish-kill in #Vietnam, an impoverished area where some will have to eat and try to sell the fish... a bureaucrat will ask "Was it mercury?" as if the PR denial and State cover up and other pollutants aren't just as key...

From Minanata we learned of the need to regulate ______________.

#Minamata #MinamataDisease #Pollution #CommonsDamage

.> Minamata disease was above all a disease of the spirit to which Japan succumbed as growth, money, material wealth come to be valued above the natural environment or humanity. Forgetting the basic principle that the purpose of economic activity is so that human society might flourish, MITI and the Economic Planning Agency decided that, even if a few people were to fall ill or die from mercury poisoning, corporations should be protected. The authorities in Minamata and some residents seemed to think that, even if a minority of people from the town had to be sacrificed to the disease, Chisso Corporation should be protected as the major employer in the town. The actions of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, that was supposed to protect the health and wellbeing of the people, and of the Environment Ministry, whose supposed rationale was the preservation of nature, including not only humans, cats and dogs, but fish and shellfish, birds, and all creatures, was inexplicable to ordinary citizens. Why, as soon as doubts were raised about the industrial effluent, did they not take steps to stop it? Why, sorry for not having warned people at an early stage and having failed to prevent more people from being infected, did they not make sincere efforts to help people? While they resorted to the excuse that there was nothing an individual official could do about it, the disease became rampant and enormous suffering and death was caused.

> The head of the.. committee on Minamata Disease was #IgataAkihiro, then president of #KagoshimaUniversity..."I feel a certain shame, as a doctor, about the claim that those who were rejected by the examination board were absolutely not victims of #MinamataDisease."
> Serving the administration, even if it means chipping away at one's conscience as a physician, is undoubtedly done with a view to the "national interest." ...

> Twenty-two years after the suit was first filed in 1982, with 23 of the original plaintiffs already having passed away, the governments' responsibility had finally been established. It was a dramatic victory...
> An editorial in the Asahi shimbun ("The state found guilty of neglect of its duty," 16 October 2004) sums up the situation:

https://apjjf.org/-Yoshinaga-Fusako/1559/article.html
#YoshinagaFusako #FusakoYoshinaga #GavanMcCormack #MinamataDisease #DiseaseOfBureaucracy #TheCoporation

A doctor: "...patients with Minamata Disease for forty years, and I find it impossible to distinguish between Minamata Disease under the compensation law, Minamata Disease the [1971] agency guidelines, and the plaintiffs..."
> The well-built, rather imposing department chief was attempting to hide behind the smoke screen of multiple definitions of Minamata Disease, the medical and the institutional, like some game...
https://apjjf.org/-Kamata-Satoshi/1844/article.html
#MinamataDisease #DiseaseOfBureaucracy #KamataSatoshi

.> Towards the end of the 1950s, the people in a small fishing village on Minamata Bay in Kyushu, Japan, began to suffer from a terrible disease.
.> Their limbs were paralysed, their lips unmovable; and they cried aloud like dogs howling in madness. Japanese scientists discovered that this strange disease was caused by waste from Chisso Corporation's factory, located in Minamata City, which had polluted not only the coastal waters but also the fish and the shellfish.
.> There was one woman visitor to this fishing village who made calls on these poor victims. She was Ishimure Michiko, a poet and housewife. She kept records of all she saw and heard during her visits to the victims. Among those she visited were a blind boy who could not talk but fumbled for a baseball bat with which to hit at stones; a fisherman's wife who, longing to live a healthy life once more and to go fishing with her husband, died in convulsive agony; a beautiful little girl who lived a death-like life; and an old man who died in madness, rending the wall and hitting his head against the head-board of his bed.
.> In profound sympathy, understanding and anguish, Ishimure Michiko wrote her documentary account, Kugai Jodo (Pure Land Poisoned Sea), which was subtitled 'Our Minamata Disease.' This documentary brought the true results of industrialisation vividly to the attention of the Japanese people, and an enormous reaction ensued. The book openly and effectively questioned the 'productivity-first and profit-first' attitude of industrialised Japan.
.> Ishimure Michiko herself organised a civic group to assist victims of Minamata Disease and launched a movement to secure adequate compensation for them from Chisso Corporation.
.> (N.B. This extract uses the Japanese convention of putting the family name first and the personal name second.)

.> Source: Adapted from Matsui, Y. (1975) Protest and the Japanese Woman, Japan Quarterly, 22(1), pp. 31-32.

.> The resistance of local and national authorities and the chemical industry was stubborn. Ostracized by unaffected residents whose living depended upon the polluting company, and over protestations even of relatives, Mrs. ISHIMURE persisted. A collection of essays by her and others, Waga Shimin�Minamata-byo Toso (Minamata Disease�My Dead People), was published in 1972. A second book, a compilation of her own perceptive writings previously carried in leading magazines and newspapers, Rumin no Miyako (City of Drifters), was in its third printing within a month after publication in March 1973.
.> As scientists, publicists and committees of concerned citizens have gained hearing in Tokyo, the Health and Welfare Ministry belatedly has acted. Though the chemical industry has begun corrective measures, the battle still is not won. As Mrs. ISHIMURE chronicles it, the Minamata tragedy is only a part of the ongoing struggle between the simple innocence of fishermen and farmers and the tyranny of mass industrialization that threatens to dehumanize society.
.> In electing MICHIKO ISHIMURE to receive the 1973 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes her as the "voice of her people" in their struggle against the industrial pollution that has been distorting and destroying their lives.

** Japanese
- https://www.soshisha.org/jp/about_guide

** English
- https://www.minamatadiseasemuseum.net/

#怨 #怨民 #水俣病 #相思社 漁業 #MinamataDisease #MinamataSoshisha #MInamataDiseaseMuseum

> In 1962, it was found that methyl mercury causes unborn children’s poisoning via the placenta. It is called congenital Minamata Disease.. . All its patients are such that another member or other members of their family had also suffered from #MinamataDisease and their mothers ate much fishes and shellfishes during pregnancy. The site and timing (1952-1963) of #CongenitalMinamataDisease agreed with those of #AcquiredMinamataDisease.
http://www.einap.org/envdis/Minamata.html
#MasazumiHarada #HaradaMasazumi

> Dr. #HaradaMasazumi.. an expert on the Minamata disease, writes, “The #MinamataDisease is the first occurrence of widespread methylmercury.. poisoning caused by man-made environmental pollution that the world has ever experienced.”... Many of the symptoms of mercury poisoning are similar to those seen in cerebral palsy. #Methylmercury damage is irreversible. To deal with their conditions, the patients I discuss had to be creative about how they lived.
https://apjjf.org/2014/12/34/Tom-Gill/4169/article.html
#MasazumiHarada

One day it would be great to work on views (visualizations) of #BioAccumulation ( #BioMagnification ) for Minamata, and for the great desciption of Clear Lake in Rachel Carson's _Silent Spring_

The panel in this digital photo is from the MInamata Disease Municipal Musuem.

https://minamata195651.jp/list_en.html

#MinamataDisease #MunicipalMusuem #MinamataDiseaseMusuem

> It is with this holistic notion of the relationship between humans, soul, other living things as well as inanimate nature in the life-world that Ogata and sixteen other Minamata disease sufferers established the 'Association of the Original Vow' (Hongan no Kai 本願の会) in 1995.

https://apjjf.org/2012/10/42/Shoko-YONEYAMA/3845/article.html

One of these statues has Masazumi Harada's name on it. He is a key person for learning Minamata. #StoneBuddha #Jizo #Nobotoke #地蔵 #野仏 #Minamata #MinamataDisease #MasatoOgata #OgataMasato

> On the field of the reclaimed land, members of the Association have enshrined small stone statues of Buddha and other deities, including ‘Totoro,’ as a special Minamata deity for deceased children and other young lives lost.

https://apjjf.org/2012/10/42/Shoko-YONEYAMA/3845/article.html
#OgataMasato #YonezawaShoko #StoneTotoro #StoneTottoro #Minamata #MinamataDisease

I went to learn from Minamata again today and still need to digest the more important experiences. It would have been great if we had the time and energy to visit OtomeTsuka (Maid Hill) but we didn't so we took a look at this art memorial while walking to a view of the sea and back. Brass balls might serve to represent corporate attitudes toward externalities like poisoning an ecology and killing poor people.
- https://minamata195651.jp/guide_en.html
#MinamataDisease #Chisso #TheCorporation #MethylMercury

.> The Supreme Court on Friday held the state responsible for the spread of Minamata disease after January 1960.

.> The ruling brought to a close the only Minamata disease-related lawsuit that had sought to establish government responsibility over the outbreak of the mercury-poisoning disease.

.> It marked the first judgment by the top court on government responsibility in preventing the outbreak and spread of the disease, which killed hundreds of people, disabled thousands and produced birth defects in Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, and surrounding areas.

New Court Ruling for Minamata Disease Victims
- https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15015862
- https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15016119

#MinamataDisease #MinamataCourtCase #MinamataDiseaseRuling #Japan #PollutionIssues #CommonsDamage #公害

.> The mercury poisoning “incident” in Minamata has been grandly pronounced resolved at least four times since the pollution began in 1932 and Minamata disease was officially recognized in 1956.2 In 1959 the Chisso Corporation paid compensation to fishing cooperatives and “sympathy payments” to patients that required them to renounce all future claims against the company. It did not accept responsibility for the disease. At the same time, it also installed a “Cyclator” to purify its wastewater, without announcing that the Cyclator did not remove mercury. At a ceremony at the end of 1959, Chisso’s president publicly drank a glass of water from the Cyclator, without announcing that the wastewater from the acetaldehyde plant, which contained mercury, was not being run through the Cyclator. An eerily similar performance took place on March 24, 2011 when Tokyo’s Governor Ishihara Shintarō drank a glass of tap water on national television to “prove” that it was safe from radioactive contamination.