methylmercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan

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by Germaine K2 views·Updated Nov 10, 2021
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  1. Hello. My name is Jermaine capital, aka.
  2. And today I will be going over minamata disease which is a disease that
  3. occurred to methylmercury poisoning in minamata japan
  4. in the 19 fifties and sixties.
  5. This is our table of contents and what will be going over today.
  6. Starting off with our purpose and objectives.
  7. Today I'll explain the events that led to methylmercury poisoning of
  8. the population in Minamata Japan in the 1950s and 60s.
  9. I'll also be clean over the health and environmental implications of the poisoning
  10. and discuss the actions taken to treat and prevent further spread of the disease.
  11. The minimum to disaster happened in Minamata City, a town,
  12. a coastal town located in southern Japan where much of the
  13. town is reliant on the surrounding body of water Tachira,
  14. noisy in Minamata Bay for their subsistence and lives.
  15. Yeah,
  16. This event first started in May of 1956.
  17. The first reported diagnosed case of Minamata disease is found
  18. in a five year old female resident of the town.
  19. Her symptoms were neurological, which included difficulty speaking and walking
  20. After this first case was identified. A few cluster cases occurred right after.
  21. So in response, the minamata Research disease research group was formed.
  22. The disease research group found a further symptoms
  23. associated with the disease and also found the cause
  24. which was methylmercury poisoning associated with consuming large
  25. quantities of fish and shellfish contaminated with methylmercury,
  26. the source of the poisoning was found to be from Chisso company.
  27. A chemical plant that operated in the town and
  28. dumped their untreated chemical waste into the ocean.
  29. The impact that was found at that time was
  30. that 2,252 residents were infected with the disease.
  31. And out of those 1,043 died, causing a case fatality rate of 46%.
  32. Delving further into the reported symptoms associated with this disease.
  33. The research group also found that not only did it affect adults,
  34. but also congenital minamoto disease was also discovered.
  35. The symptoms of this disease can range from mental retardation
  36. to deformities of the limbs, tremor, mental disturbance and even death.
  37. The disease was also found to disproportionately affect males.
  38. As we see in figure four were 64% of the minamata deaths were male.
  39. We see in figure five that this disease also disproportionately
  40. affected those between the ages of 60-89 years old.
  41. Not only did this have this disease have health implications,
  42. but there were also environmental impacts to the poison.
  43. In 1959,
  44. it was found that mercury levels in the water and in the food that
  45. a lot of the town consumed range from 10.6 to 20 parts per million
  46. being as the FDA recommendation maximum for methyl mercury to
  47. be found in seafood is one part per million.
  48. We can see the dangers.
  49. The true dangers that the poisoning caused for the population
  50. In terms of response to this disaster in October of 1959,
  51. she sold company installed a waste liquid processing facility called Psych later,
  52. the purpose of this was to clean out their
  53. chemical waste before being dumped into the ocean.
  54. As we can see in figure six,
  55. Starting in the year 1962 we see that the
  56. level of mercury's in Minamata Bay does drastically decrease,
  57. but we can't say that it was due to cyclone tore.
  58. But there is a correlation
  59. In terms of other forms of response.
  60. In December of 1959,
  61. she so started paying 78 identified
  62. patients and annual compensation of 100,000 yen
  63. compensation in the form of money
  64. seen in this breakdown of minamata
  65. disease patients application for disease certification.
  66. As of 2000 and five,
  67. We see that as of 2005 there were a
  68. total of 2,955 officially certified patients of MD.
  69. We also see that there were 12,700 recipients.
  70. The medical task of comprehensive measure of MD.
  71. These 12,700 victims of MD were able to have
  72. their medical expenses paid for and have compensation.
  73. Though this is a large amount.
  74. As of 2004,
  75. only 50 patients with health effects of methylmercury were recognized
  76. by the Supreme Court and more than 3300 applicants for
  77. certification. We're awaiting and we're in the prejudgment face
  78. Seeing as the first reported case of empty was about 50 years ago.
  79. From when this information was published.
  80. Quite Sad to see that there is still
  81. a line of people waiting for their compensation on
  82. a disaster that is not also unable to be cured but also could have been avoided.
  83. Yeah.
  84. The disaster of Minamoto brings me to my final
  85. presentation slide where we learned that human decisions,
  86. our health and the environment are intricately connected and actions
  87. can have lasting effects on the health of generations.
  88. As we've seen the previous slide where in
  89. 2005 people were still waiting to be compensated.
  90. It's also we also learned that it is important to make companies
  91. accountable for the sake of the population's health and the environment.
  92. As I stated before, this could have been a situation that could have been avoided.
  93. Mhm.
  94. And this concludes today's presentation.
  95. I hope you learned a lot as much as I
  96. did and I hope that you can understand our intricate
  97. relationship between human health and the environment and we do
  98. better to not only improve the environment but also our health
  99. again, thank you very much.