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In 1950, the city of Minamata in Japan suddenly appeared in a strange phenomenon, with schools of fish automatically pouring ashore, a large number of seabird carcasses floating in the sea, and later a large number of cats flocking to the seaside.
Fish
All these strange phenomena actually brought a death disaster to Minamata City later. What happened to Minamata in Japan at that time that would send the entire city into panic?
It all started with a series of strange phenomena in Minamata City at that time. One morning in 1950, fishermen in Minamata City, Japan, suddenly noticed an incredible scene on the bay. They originally went out early to fish and caught a large number of fish without hard work.
Because they saw some fish near Minamata Bay, desperately swimming to the shore as if migrating. Seeing so many fish pouring ashore, fishermen took out various fishing tools to catch these fish ashore.
While people were scrambling to catch fish on the beach, a large number of carcasses of seabirds suddenly appeared near Minamata Bay. The carcasses of these seabirds continue to emerge from the sea, and fishermen speculate that there have been some changes on the seabed, and the sea water is constantly surging, which is why the seabirds die when the fish come ashore.
So without much thought, they caught the fish ashore and immediately pulled them to the local market to sell. As this incident began, Minamata City suddenly and unknowingly changed quietly.
In January 1953, many cats in Minamata City at that time exhibited strange behavior. Stray cats on the streets, including family cats, rush to the beach of Minamata Bay.
Why do these cats flock to the sea like crazy and can't even stop it? And when these cats flock to the sea, they even have strange body movements, as if they are dancing into the bay.
Locals also referred to the strange phenomenon as cat chorea, and they were even more surprised that over the next year, 50,000 cats suddenly flocked to Minamata Bay, which at the time was known as cat suicide.
About 50,000 cat carcasses were slapped on the beach from the sea, and a few years later, in 1956, a strange disease suddenly broke out in Minamata City, which continued to spread in the city, not only very strange disease, but also as the number of patients increased, more and more people died of the disease.
People don't know why? What really happened in Minamata at that time? It all starts with the first sick person.
On April 21, 1956, a five-year-old girl named Shizuko Tanaka was taken to the hospital by her family because of a sudden illness.
After being sent to the hospital, she was observed by the doctor and found that the symptoms were very strange, and now she was unconscious and could not speak normally at all, and when the doctor asked him, he was already unconscious and unable to respond, and at this time he had a walking disorder, unable to walk upright, and his whole body was constantly convulsing.
People began to think of the group of cats who accidentally committed suicide into the sea three years ago, when these cats danced with their hands, and the symptoms of the girl Shizuko Tanaka seemed to be very similar to these dancing cats.
Since they had never seen the disease, the doctors could only observe him and provide emergency treatment.
And at the same time that Shizuko Tanaka was receiving treatment, a bad news came that his sister had the same symptoms one after another, even much more serious than her.
In the following days, Shizuko Tanaka's various relatives were admitted to Minamata City Hospital after they all fell ill one after another, and in less than two weeks, there were almost ten people admitted to Minamata City Hospital because of this similar strange disease.
Lying on the hospital bed, they were slumped with their arms, confused and convulsive, looking very terrible.
What strange disease did they have?
Because this group of people was seriously ill at that time and the number of strange diseases increased significantly, the local government immediately convened Minamata City Hospital to set up a strange disease prevention committee to investigate the strange disease and urgently formulate a treatment plan.
Because the outbreak was very sudden, the doctors did not know the cause of the outbreak, and they had no choice but to carry out emergency isolation and disinfection measures to prevent the spread of the disease.
But what they didn't expect was that even if citizens were isolating at home, or isolating sick people and constantly carrying out strict disinfection, this strange disease still enveloped the entire Minamata City and could not be dispersed.
Later, the number of people suffering from strange diseases increased more and more, and the symptoms of subsequent patients were even more serious, they constantly twitched their bodies, opened their mouths, rolled their eyes, and looked very terrible.
All the people were suffering from strange diseases, and the entire city of Minamata fell into a panic.
It didn't take long for someone to fall down with convulsions one after another. Normal adults could not walk upright because of this disease, and their expressions were painful.
For a while, doctors could not find the cause of the disease and could not treat them. As a result, the local government had to seek assistance from medical institutions in other parts of Japan.
At that time, they approached researchers at Kumamoto University and asked them for support in supporting medical institutions in Minamata City in conducting research on strange diseases and treating patients, including disease prevention and control.
At that time, in order to understand the strange disease in Minamata City, researchers went from house to house to search for information about the sick, including their detailed symptoms and the period of illness, to all the information they were exposed to before the illness.
After expert investigation, it was found that these people will lose consciousness in their limbs when they are sick, and their brains are not controlled at all, unable to perform normal behavioral actions, and it seems that the central nervous system of the brain has been damaged.
Unable to walk upright, hands can't grasp things. The government could not treat them, and the number of people who were sick was increasing day by day, what kind of disease did they have at that time? Why do they continue to die in convulsions and coma after one illness after another?
At that time, in order to find the source of the strange disease and find a way to treat the strange disease, the research and investigation team of the university research institute went around investigating, but the investigation work progressed very difficultly.
Even if they knew all the actions these people did before they got sick, none of this could answer why they got this strange disease.
Moreover, in less than two months after they arrived in Minamata City, 40 people with strange diseases have been found, and the cause of the disease has not been investigated for two months, and 14 of them have died one after another.
The horrific manifestations of the disease, combined with the extremely high mortality rate, make people feel very scared. And just when the experts were having a headache about how to solve the disease, they suddenly noticed that every patient suffering from this strange disease had said a word, and they were very afraid that they would die like those cats who committed suicide in the sea.
Experts noticed that before this strange disease occurred, there had been a series of strange phenomena in Minamata City, 50,000 cats who committed suicide by throwing themselves into the sea plus a large-scale seabird carcass that appeared inexplicably in Shanghai, and the expert group of Kumamoto University Research Institute decided that since it could not find the cause of the human disease, it would start to look for the cause from these animals that died of the disease.
So they found the cats that were constantly dancing with strange diseases and dissected them. But to their surprise, even when they performed a biological examination of the cat's corpse, they did not find anything strange, and even similar germs could not be found between humans and cats.
In other words, they did not die of illness because of a contagious bacterium. Since people and cats will die, it is undeniable that the reason why a large number of people and animals die one after another, there must be something in common, researchers did not find the spread of bacteria, so they turned their attention to the common point of people and cats, that is, the food they ate at that time.
Because according to expert investigations, most of these cats belong to some cats that have survived by picking up human leftovers.
That is to say, at that time, these cats were most likely eating leftover food from people, and the same disease and death would occur. So the Kumamoto University research team prepared to start investigating the same food they had eaten.
Minamata City is close to the sea, so they decided to start investigating seafood in Minamata City. While investigators were busy sampling seafood in Minamata City, an unexpected incident happened.
The Strange Disease Prevention Committee, which is enthusiastically organizing the study of strange diseases, suddenly came forward and said that they did not need the help of the research team at this time, and hoped that they could immediately stop their investigation of seafood.
Why did they make such a decision?
And now that the cause of the strange disease has not been found, it is in a critical period of investigation and evidence collection, why did the strange disease prevention and control committee make such a decision?
So they quietly continued their research in private. And after sampling seafood sold at local markets in Minamata City, they found a shocking investigation.
After studying various fish and seafood shellfish collected in Minamata Bay, they found that these seafood contained a large amount of methylmercury.
At that time, the researchers sampled water samples from Minamata Bay and found that the sediment sediments in Minamata Bay contained excessive levels of mercury. In other words, Minamata Bay was already crowded with mercury at this time.
At that time, everyone was very scared, because methylmercury is a fatty and highly neurotoxic property. When methylmercury enters the stomach of the human body or living organisms, it interacts with the stomach acid. Methylmercury chloride is produced, which then enters the human intestine and is absorbed into the bloodstream.
Methylmercury chloride absorbed into the blood binds to red blood cells in the blood and hemoglobin, and is transported to various organs in the human body. Due to the human body's virus invasion barrier, can not block the invasion of methylmercury chloride, a large amount of methylmercury chloride will accumulate in human brain cells, damage human brain cells, and also have irrecoverability.
In other words, it is very likely that the sick people in Minamata City at that time, as well as these cats with strange symptoms, had mercury poisoning by eating seafood containing methylmercury.
Mercury poisoning will not only cause very serious mental retardation in the human body, but also appear physiological appearance behaviors such as inability to walk and dancing. After mercury poisoning, human muscles will atrophy rapidly in a short period of time, resulting in epilepsy, strabismus and the strange condition of constant laughter.
At that time, investigators from Kumamoto University found that the reason for the excessive mercury content was that industrial wastewater containing methylmercury continued to be discharged into water and alkanes, through the food chain and bioconcentration, poisoning some fish and shellfish in the water, and humans ingested excessive methylmercury after ingesting these poisoned organisms and causing disease.
At that time, because the disease first occurred in Minamata Bay, people called this strange disease Minamata disease. After many investigations, the research team identified the real source of the disease in an asphyxia factory in Minamata City.
Built in 1908, this suffocating plant is one of the more developed chemical plants in Japan for the production of chemical fertilizers, mainly producing acetaldehyde, acetic acid, vinyl chloride and other chemical products on weekdays.
After the investigator investigated, it was found that due to the surge in sales of acetaldehyde in the asphyxia factory, the methylmercury discharged into the seawater at that time originated from the acetaldehyde produced by the factory, and mercury sulfate was used as a catalyst for the production of acetaldehyde, and a large amount of methylmercury discarded after the production was discharged into the sea of Minamata Bay by the black manufacturer, which led to the occurrence of local strange diseases.
In fact, as early as 20 years ago, local fishermen protested to the government, saying that the chemical business of the soctaning plant not only brought huge chemical pollution, but also caused huge pollution to local fisheries and water resources.
However, all this was whitewashed by the suffocation factory. They openly told the fishermen that they would use non-polluting technologies for production, and they also paid various compensation to local fishermen after buying up local government relations.
Because the important tax revenue of Minamata City at that time came from the highly profitable local suffocation factory, they also neglected to manage the suffocation factory, which led to the discharge of waste methylmercury in the local area.
It was only later that a large-scale mercury poisoning incident occurred, and the spread of Minamata disease was finally revealed. Because the local government has not done anything, the people of Minamata City at that time were very angry, a large number of people suffered from strange diseases, the government not only did not investigate but also covered up the truth of the investigation, the people suffered greatly, but the government ignored it.
Then, until early November 1959, local fishermen and local factory security clashed violently with the city police, and the Japanese people continued to cry out to defend their homeland.
At that time, they even carried pictures of the victims in their hands and white strips on their chests to protest at the government gate. It was precisely because of the people's protests that the government could not hide this secret and was exposed, and the cause of the strange disease was finally made public.
Minamata disease is a neurological central disease caused by local people suffering from a central neurological disease after ingesting seafood containing large amounts of methylmercury.
But helplessly, this disease is irreversible, the victims can only gradually die in an epileptic coma, and Minamata City has been covered in the shadow of Minamata disease for a long time, and has not been able to disperse, and Minamata City has been branded with the seal of the city of strange diseases.
And to make matters worse, since then, many newborn babies in Minamata have had an impact on their babies because pregnant women have ingested large amounts of seafood containing methylmercury.
Many children are born with congenital Minamata disease, deformed limbs and mental imperfection.
And all this was not until 1971, after nearly 20 years of hard work, that the Japanese district court handed down Japan's first judgment to seek justice for a victim of Minamata disease. Since then, the victims of Minamata disease have finally been able to seek justice for themselves.
Later, on July 29, 1997, after half a century of environmental protection, the water quality of Minamata Bay, which had been tormented for half a century, was finally declared safe, and later Minamata Bay also resumed normal fishing.
On October 10, 2013, countries around the world signed the Minamata Convention on Mercury in order to regulate the production and discharge of mercury compounds, and 128 countries and regions around the world signed the Convention, taking the world disaster in Minamata City as a wake-up call to remind countries and regions around the world to pay attention to the governance of mercury emissions.
Unfortunately, in this Minamata disease, a total of 12,615 Japanese residents of Japan at that time suffered from Minamata disease, and 1,246 people died of Minamata disease.
It can only be said that the issue of environmental governance is related to the livelihood of the country, and more importantly, to the safety of everyone's life when we live together on the blue planet.
The predecessors planted trees, and the descendants took advantage of the coolness. Only when each generation of us does a good job in environmental governance can our future generations and even generations continue to thrive in a healthy environment.
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