Word: minamata
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Okinawa in 1944 while on wartime assignment for LIFE magazine. After 32 operations and two years of convalescence, Smith returned to work on a series of memorable LIFE photo essays, including "Country Doctor," "Spanish Village" and "Nurse-Midwife." In 1971 Smith moved to the Japanese fishing village of Minamata to begin a three-year task of recording the anguish of townspeople poisoned by mercury dumped into local waters by a chemical company. Although he was severely beaten and nearly blinded by goons, he documented the tragedy in his book Minamata, published in 1975. An intense, uncompromising craftsman, Smith strove...
...been detected in children living near a copper smelter in Ruston, Wash. High levels of lead and other heavy metals, such as arsenic and mercury, are potentially lethal. Mercury poisoning, caused by industrial dumping of toxic compounds into a harbor, killed an estimated 300 people in the area around Minamata, Japan, and crippled almost 1,000 more...
Chisso's trouble began in 1950 after it opened in the fishing port of Minamata an acetaldehyde factory that began to discharge effluents into Minamata Bay. One of the waste substances: a highly toxic methyl mercury compound that was passed up the food chain from tiny organisms to small fish to the larger fish that comprise a substantial part of the townspeople's diet. By 1953 the mercury contamination had reached a dangerous level in some people, who began to suffer the crippling symptoms of what is now referred to as Minamata disease. Howling in pain and racked...
...even harder problem was how to compensate the victims of Minamata disease. Many sufferers had been given court-ordered awards by Chisso in 1970. But under what has come to be known as the three-P policy (polluters pay for pollution), another group of victims sued for more money, and the courts upheld the suit. As a result, Chisso so far has had to pay the staggering sum of $67.3 million to 793 victims. As the less serious cases are identified-and there are 2,700 suspected victims still to be given official medical examinations-Chisso will be liable...
...Prime Minister Takeo Miki points out that "Chisso wants the loan to pay not for the consequences of pollution but to repair its damaged production system." Then, too, says Labor Leader Kaoru Ohta, if Chisso were to go bankrupt, there would be no compensation for the remaining Minamata victims-nor would there be jobs for the company's 1,500 workers and those of its subcontractors. "PPP is fine with me," Ohta says, "but the government should grant that loan." Even if it does, however, Chisso for a long time to come will have to contend with a fourth...