MINAMATA, Japan (Reuters) - Shinobu Sakamoto was just 15 when she left her home in the southern Japanese fishing village of Minamata to go to Stockholm and tell the world of the horrors of mercury poisoning.Forty-five years on, she is traveling again, this time to Geneva, to attend from Sunday a gathering of signatories to the first global pact to rein in mercury pollution.Sakamoto is one of a shrinking group of survivors from a 1950s industrial disaster in which tens of thousands of people were poisoned after waste water from a chemical plant seeped into the Minamata bay. 2007;109(5):420-37.Environ Res. But such testing is only conducted when the government deems it necessary. Have any problems using the site? For decades, it has been assumed that micro-organisms in the muds and sediments of Minamata Bay had converted the toxic inorganic mercury from the factory wastewater into a much more lethal organic form called methyl mercury, which targets the brain and other nervous tissue. Mercury poisoning was discovered in Niigata some years after the Minamata disease in Kumamoto. We think that this was the dominant mercury species in the acetaldehyde plant waste. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. New potential cause of Minamata mercury poisoning identified.University of Saskatchewan. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200213135755.htm (accessed September 20, 2020).Below are relevant articles that may interest you. This compound was thought to spread to humans from eating contaminated seafood.Recent studies have suggested that methyl mercury itself may have been discharged directly from the Minamata plant.But USask research -- involving 60-year-old Minamata feline tissue samples -- has found these assumptions may be misplaced.Using a new type of spectroscopy and sophisticated computational methods, the USask researchers have found that the cat brain tissue contained predominantly organic mercury, contradicting previous findings and assumptions.
Or view hourly updated newsfeeds in your RSS reader:Keep up to date with the latest news from ScienceDaily via social networks:Tell us what you think of ScienceDaily -- we welcome both positive and negative comments. Even today, such tests could help identify people suffering from high mercury levels, he says.Japanese law requires routine and meticulous testing for food poisoning. 2005 Jul-Aug;27(4):643-53. doi: 10.1016/j.ntt.2005.03.008. More than 20,000 people have sought to be designated victims, hoping for legal compensation.“We need to take seriously the fact that there are still many people raising their hands,” said ministry official Koji Sasaki, referring to victims’ efforts to win recognition.Born in a family of shipbuilders whose home overlooks the Minamata bay, Jitsuko Tanaka, 64, used to play on the beach with her older sister, picking and eating shellfish, unaware it was contaminated with mercury.She was almost three, and her sister five, when they lost the ability to move their hands freely and walk properly, becoming the first to be identified as disease sufferers.Tanaka’s older sister died at age eight. More work is needed to explore the molecular toxicology of these compounds, to understand the ways they could be toxic to humans, animals and the environment," said George.The 12-member research team included researchers from USask, Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource at Stanford University, Japanese National Institute for Minamata Disease, and the environmental medicine department of the University of Rochester.While USask is home to the Canadian Light Source synchrotron, there are only two synchrotrons in the world set up with the specialized equipment needed for the advanced work that the team does with these precious samples -- one in Grenoble, France and the other at Stanford.The USask research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.The new findings coincide with renewed public interest in the tragedy due to the much-anticipated premiere on Feb. 21st at the Berlin International Film Festival of a new movie "Minamata" which stars Johnny Depp as photojournalist W. Eugene Smith whose work publicized the devastating effects of the mercury poisoning.Get the latest science news with ScienceDaily's free email newsletters, updated daily and weekly. Thousands of people who ingested the mercury by eating local fish and shellfish died, and many more displayed symptoms of mercury poisoning including convulsions and paralysis. It was in May 1956, that M. d. was first officially "discovered" in Minamata City, south-west region of Japan's Kyushu Island. All rights reserved. Questions?University of Saskatchewan. Mercury poisoning of thousands confirmed Thirty years on, the victims of Japan's worst case of industrial pollution are getting support from scientists and the courts - … 705 ppm). One of the world's most horrific environmental disasters -- the 1950 and 60s mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan -- may have been caused by a …
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