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Minamata disease is a poisoning disease that affects mainly the central nervous system and is caused by the consumption of large quantities of fish and shellfish living in Minamata Bay and its surroundings, the major causative agent being some sort of organic mercury compound.
Dec 5, 2022 · Minamata disease refers to a tragic event where people in the coastal community of Minamata Bay, Japan, developed severe neurological disorders following exposure to methylmercury.
Jul 10, 2023 · Minamata disease is methylmercury poisoning that leads to neurological symptoms. The condition develops after a person has been eating heavily contaminated seafood daily. The first record of Minamata disease was in Japan in the 1950s.
May 24, 2024 · Minamata disease, Disease first identified in 1956 in Minamata, Japan. A fishing port, Minamata was also the home of Nippon Chisso Hiryo Co., a manufacturer of chemical fertilizer, carbide, and vinyl chloride. Methyl mercury discharged from the factory contaminated fish and shellfish, which in turn.
Oct 30, 2021 · Masami Ogata is a survivor of Minamata Disease, a debilitating illness caused by industrial mercury poisoning, which originated in the Japanese town of the same name in the 1950s. As a UN...
Methyl mercury intoxication, known as Minamata disease, causes damage to the granule cell layer in the cerebellum, bilateral diffuse cerebellar atrophy, and microscopically diffuse loss of the granule cell layer in the cerebellar cortex [24].
Minamata disease is an encephalopathy and peripheral neuropathy caused by daily intake of fish and shellfish highly contaminated by methylmercury. Through gills and gastrointestinal tracts, fishery products such as fish, shrimp, crabs, and shellfish, take in methylmercury discharged from chemical plants into rivers and seas.
Minamata Disease, which is a typical example of the pollution-related health damage in Japan, was first discovered in 1956, around Minamata Bay in Kumamoto Prefecture, and in 1965, in the Agano River basin in Niigata Prefecture.
In the late 1950s Minamata Bay, Japan became contaminated with mercury from a nearby factory manufacturing the chemical acetaldehyde (Chisso Corporation's chemical waste pipe). The mercury was biotransformed by bacteria in the water into methylmercury, or organic mercury, that bioaccumulated and biomagnified in the muscle of fish.
After 1956 a sometimes-fatal disease that came to be known as “ Minamata disease” was recognized among local fishermen and their families. The cause was determined to be an organo-mercury compound in wastes discharged by local chemical factories into the sea.
