In 1956, a strange disease was discovered near Minamata Bay in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. This disease first appeared in cats and was called "feline chorea". Cats suffering from this disease showed convulsions, paralysis, and even jumped into the sea to die.
Soon afterwards, people with this disease were also found here. Manifested as slurred speech, staggering steps, facial dementia, hand and foot palsy, sensory disturbance , vision loss, tremor, deformity of hands and feet, severe neurological disorders, or sound sleep, or excitement, the body bends and screams until death. This symptom only occurs in residents in and around Minamata Town, so at the beginning, people called this disease " Minamata disease ".
At first, both doctors and scientists were unable to detect the cause of this disease and did not know how to treat it, which made people panic and uneasy. However, the nightmare of local residents has just begun. In the following 12 years, Minamata Disease continued to spread in the area.
directly caused the number of victims in Minamata Town to reach 10,000 and the death toll exceeded 1,000. Animals and people suffering from this disease have one thing in common. They are poisoned by eating fish. In February 1959, the Japanese Food Poisoning Committee, after many years of investigation and research, concluded that Minamata disease was related to heavy metal poisoning, and mercury in particular was the most likely. After investigation by Kumamoto University, toxic methylmercury was found near the outlet of the sewage pipe of the deceased, fish body and Japanese nitrogen fertilizer plant. This revealed the secret of Minamata disease.
Until the current medical technology, it is still unable to treat the neurological damage caused by mercury poisoning. Mercury was originally a toxic chemical substance, but the amount of mercury produced in the contaminated bay of the " Minamata disease incident " in Japan was enough to poison the population of Japan more than twice. It has been severely polluted due to the discharge of industrial waste water throughout the year, and the fish and shrimps in Minamata Bay have also been polluted. These contaminated fish and shrimps enter the bodies of animals and humans through the food chain, attacking the brain and other parts of the body. The methylmercury entering the brain will cause the brain to shrink , damage the nerve cells, and destroy the cerebellum and the sensory system that control the balance of the body.
Mercury poisoning horror
After animals eat mercury-contaminated food, they do not degrade or excrete in the body, but accumulate in the body and move up the food chain. After humans consume mercury-containing pollutants, the severe ones will be disabled for life, and the mild ones have no obvious symptoms, but they will still implicitly inherit the latent poisoning symptoms to the next generations, and many children with congenital Minamata disease will appear. There are barriers to movement and language, and even deformities!
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