THE MINAMATA BAY DISASTER

The Minamata Bay Disaster

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The Minamata Bay Disaster

Introduction

Minamata is a small town of Japan, often recognized as small factory town. The town was recognized globally as the birth place of Minamata diseases, which was developed due to release of water waste in the sea by Chisso Corporation. This all started out in a simple manner, when cats on the streets start dying and collapsing. Moreover, the most negligible acts like dropping chopsticks at lunch or dinner, slurred speech, uncontrollable shouting were the first sign of Minamata disease, which were ignored by authorities for a long time, paving the way for the disease to grow and affect larger population. These unconnected, apparently scattered and a little mysterious events started to occur frequently in the town of Minamata, Japan and began to demonstrate one of the most adverse effects of industrial pollution in the course of history (Tsuda, Yorifuji, Takao, Miyai & Babazono, 2009).

The consequences of this new disease were both figuratively and literally poisoned the entire town. Moreover, for many people who were observing this new issue, it provides a completely new dimension for consideration regarding interconnectedness of human and their environment, and the multifaceted interaction of culture and biology of humans. In simple words, Minamata Bay incident is a paradigm for teaching association between science, society and ecological issues. The incident of Minamata and the increasing concentration of mercury causing mercury poisoning (initially denoted as Minamata disease), which took place in Japan, only briefly given coverage by the newspapers in 70s and then moved away from the public attention for a large part of the world. This paper in relation to Minamata Bay incident will focus on economical, social and environmental impact of the incident.

The Social, Economic, Environmental and Cultural Consequences

At least today, the incident of Minamata is certainly appealing due to the association among the causal agent and its effects are very much dubious. However, the complete account of the incident also entails the more human dimension - these are the factors that have contributed to the poisoning of the city in figurative manner, and this fact makes the case more valuable and striking for reflection. For instance, due to the fact that this disease was associated with the unexplainable attitude and behavior of cats acting wildly, it turns stigmatized, usually from the viewpoint of the victims. In accordance with the perspective of Japanese medicine, the state of the body is basically the reflection of the balance maintained by an individual with the external world - whereas sickness can be considered more as deserved (Harada, 1995). Therefore, most of the victims at that point of time receive the blame of their diseases and body state. Moreover, in accordance with the nature of the infection, residents of the town of Minamata ostracize the patients who develop this disease. People turn against each other, neighbor against neighbor, friends against friends. However, till the people who once disparaged others with diseases started to observe symptoms among them, they ...