Minamata city (水俣市) is by no means a beautiful city, but it has a nice bay. Located on the west coast of Kyushu island (one of the four large islands in Japan), the city is still quite remote even by Japanese standard.

This little town in the spring of 1956 looked not much different from that in previous years. Walking in the street, you could see cats rolling or dancing madly, and occasionally people stumbled stupidly. Not far away, there were dead fish floating in the bay. Residents had gotten used to these bizarre things.

But something was strange this year. It seemed more and more people behaved like a mad or drunk person. Rumors had spread all over the town. There was an infectious disease circulating in the town. Superstitious people suspected that those affected people had committed sins, or were haunted by ghosts.

In April, a girl was admitted to the hospital for similar neurological symptoms. Physicians were puzzled. How was such a young girl contracted that disease?

Research was finally carried out. The result made Minamata city famous and the disease was called Minamata disease. The disease also completely changed the city, and to some extent, the world.

Minamata disease is mercury poisoning. Investigation found that there was an extremely high concentration of mercury in fish which were caught from the Minamata bay and were the local staple food for protein at that time. Now we know that mercury dumped from the local Chisso Corporation was consumed by bacteria in the bay and was converted to methylmercury. Along the food chain—bacteria, plankton, small fish, and big fish, the mercury concentration became higher and higher, and eventually when it reached human body, it was way too high. It was poisonous.

50 years have passed. The outbreak of mercury poisoning at the scale of Minamata city is uncommon, but mercury is now everywhere. Chemical factories keep on dumping mercury into the river; power generating factories emit tons of mercury smoke every day. Researchers have found mercury in almost all animals including migrating birds and polar bear. We eat, drink, and breathe mercury all the time.

Luckily, the mercury concentration in our environment is only at a trace level. But unfortunately, if mercury keeps building up in our body, eventually some of us may develop mercury poisoning symptoms such as mental disorder. Maybe a lot of mentally disabled old folks can be attributed to toxic substance in our environment?

To reduce mercury pollution is not easy. It cost billions of dollars to upgrade hardware or install containing equipment. Politics plays a major role. A notorious example is that GW Bush intentionally lowed down the goal of controlling air pollution for power-generating industry. In China, environment protection is often bought out by local economic development. Heavily polluting smoke and sewage are discarded at factories’ liberty. Public health is never a priority to be considered. Millions of people are in a situation similar to those residents in Minamata city fifty years ago.

Necessary action is needed. But who will do it?