fastpitch17 "Japan has a prolific fishing industry and it would be crazy to think anyone there would even entertain the thought of doing it any harm."
Perhaps it is not so much entertaining the thought of doing harm much as easily ignoring the potential of causing harm and then covering up when profit is threatened. Remember Minamata?
In 1908, the
Chisso Corporation first opened a chemical factory in
Minamata,
Kumamoto Prefecture, located on the west coast of the southern island of
Kyūshū. The waste products resulting from the manufacture of chemicals were released into Minamata Bay through the factory
wastewater. From around 1950 onward, cats had been seen to have convulsions, go mad, and die. Locals called it the "cat dancing disease", owing to their erratic movement.
[2] Crows had fallen from the sky, seaweed no longer grew on the sea bed, and fish floated dead on the surface of the sea.
Chisso refused to co-operate with a research team set up to determine the cause. It withheld information on its industrial processes. The Chisso factory's hospital director,
Hajime Hosokawa,carried out own experiments into Minamata disease in July 1959. Food to which factory wastewater had been added was fed to healthy cats. Seventy-eight days into the experiment, cats exhibited symptoms of Minamata disease and
pathological examinations confirmed a diagnosis of organic mercury poisoning. Chisso did not reveal these significant results to the investigators and ordered Hosokawa to stop his research.
In an attempt to undermine researchers' organic mercury theory, Chisso and other parties with a vested interest that the factory remain open (including the
Ministry of International Trade and Industry and the Japan Chemical Industry Association) funded research into alternative causes of the disease, other than its own waste. Later a documentarist was attacked causing him to partially lose sight in one eye and with his health affected. He died six years later but his film helped expose the reality of the damage being caused at Minamata.
At first, children affected by the waste were initially diagnosed as having cerebal palsy. More than 900 people died in agony after eating large quantities of local fish and shellfish contaminated with mercury. Thousands of others were left permanently disabled as the disease attacked their nervous system, causing
blindness, seizures, and a host of sensory disorders
The number of people affected by Minamata disease in Japan is estimated to be between 50,000 and 70,000:
