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Minamata Memorial Site.

Date: 1956 onward.

Location: Minamata City, Japan.

Disaster Type: Poisoning.

Fatalities: 2,265 officially recognised victims.

Resulting Damage: Mercury contaminated waters over a large area.

The industrial revolution of the past century brought the world into a modern age where factories could create goods at a much faster pace, and technology could advance further than ever thought possible before. But this revolution didn't just bring good consequences. It also had some very nasty side effects. One potential problem that occurs when a city gets industrialized with factories and shops is the production of waste chemicals and the problem of where to dispose them. In 1956, Japanese authorities had no idea of the disaster that was about to unfold when the Chisso Corporation upgraded its factories in the town of Minamata. As part of the process of producing chemical products, the company ended up dumping large amounts of unwanted mercury into the nearby water sources.

Mercury is a very poisonous substance which can cause a lot of disturbing side effects. Typically, mercury levels are regulated so that we do not come into contact with any high quantities of the substance, but back then people had no idea of what was happening. The plant itself had a good reputation, and had been opened since 1908. Initially, the plant produced fertilizers, but the company branched out and started to produce all kinds of other chemicals, including acetylene, acetic acid and octanol. The factory was carelessly dumping its waste into the Minamata Bay and there was nothing or nobody to stop them.

The first symptoms appeared in April of 1956, where children were found to have problems walking, speaking and were also having convulsions. A very large number of people were hospitalized, and as more cases were found, an epidemic alert was sounded in the region. As doctors and professionals investigated the disease, they learned that pets had been suffering similar symptoms for years in the area, and they finally pin-pointed the source of the problem to be the nearby bay, since all the initial victims lived near fishing huts. It wasn’t until November however for the cause to be identified as a heavy metal, and they immediately suspected the mercury in the waste water that was being dumped into the bay.

It took until 1959 for the investigation to be fully completed, and the results shocked the scientists who were involved. Very high quantities were found in nearby fish, and the quantity of mercury was so high at the mount of the waste canal that it was determined that it would be viable to mine the waste and sell the mercury, which the company eventually did. Meanwhile, Chisso did not cooperate with the investigation. Instead, it tried to hide the cause of the disease by changing its waste canal, sending it to a nearby river instead of the bay. The result was that fish in that river died, and more people became contaminated up and down the river. In the end, almost 2,000 people died, and many more were sick. The company was forced to pay off small sums to fishermen, but these payments paled in comparison to the losses suffered. In 1965, the disease came back in another nearby region due to another company releasing mercury waste.

The 1970s were the beginning of a new wave of reform in Japan. In 1971, a Ministry of Environment was put together by the government, along with fourteen new environmental laws. Businesses had to use clean methods to get rid of any chemicals or pollutants from that time onward. At that time, Japan had the strictest antipollution measures in the world.