Answer:
It was in the early 1950s that fishermen and their families in the city of Minamata, Japan, first began to show the symptoms of what was to become known as the Minamata Disease. The first signs were loss of sensation at the extremities of the hands and feet and in areas around the mouth.
These symptoms were followed by difficulty in walking, slurred speech, reduced vision and hearing loss. Unfortunately, many persons fell prey to eventual paralysis, followed by coma and death.
Public Health Department officials were at first unable to ascertain the cause of such new disease. Similar symptoms were also reported from sea birds and cats in Minamata. Later it was evidently proved that this is a disease of Industrial Toxicity, more precisely “mercury poisoning”. This poisoning of the food chain was local and quite direct. The Chisso Corporation, a plastic manufacturer, was releasing mercury laden wastes into Minamata Bay.
The mercury—in its toxic methyl form—was then concentrated in the predatory fish through food chain of the bay ecosystem. The fisher folk were first to suffer the effect of the disease, for they subsisted largely on fish. By 1976, over 10,000 people were suffering from this disease.
