More than 60 years on, Japan's mercury-poison victims fight to be heard

Record ID: 925807

  • Title: More than 60 years on, Japan's mercury-poison victims fight to be heard
  • Date: 20th September 2017
  • Summary: MINAMATA, JAPAN (RECENT - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017) (REUTERS) 61-YEAR-OLD CONGENITAL MINAMATA DISEASE PATIENT, SHINOBU SAKAMOTO, AND MINAMATA DISEASE VICTIM SUPPORTER, YUI TANI, AT HOSPITAL FOR SAKAMOTO'S REHABILITATION VARIOUS OF SAKAMOTO DOING REHABILITATION STRETCHES AND EXERCISES SAKAMOTO'S FEET SAKAMOTO WALKING WITH A WALKING AID VARIOUS OF SAKAMOTO TALKING TO JAPANESE JUNI
  • Embargoed: 4th October 2017 13:07
  • Keywords: Minamata disease mercury poisoning mercury conference Minamata bay chemical poisoning Japan mercury United Nations Environment Programme Minamata Convention on Mercury
  • Location: MINAMATA, KUMAMOTO, UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION, JAPAN
  • City: MINAMATA, KUMAMOTO, UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION, JAPAN
  • Country: Japan
  • Topics: Society/Social Issues
  • Reuters ID: LVA0026ZJGLL1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Shinobu Sakamoto was born with congenital Minamata disease, a neurological syndrome caused by severe mercury poisoning.
    For most of her life, she has been undergoing treatment, including physio, in her hometown in southern Japan, after which the illness is named, struggling to live with a sickness that is the result of an industrial disaster.
    Sakamoto is now 61 and one of a shrinking group of survivors from the 1950s disaster, when waste water from a chemical plant polluted with methylmercury seeped into Minamata bay, poisoning tens of thousands. The waste contained the toxic metal methylmercury, which can cause severe damage to the brain and nervous system, leading to the condition first identified in 1956 and now known as Minamata disease.
    She believes it is her duty to "tell the world that the disease hasn't ended", and gives talks about the horrors of mercury poisoning to people - high school students as well as national-level delegations.
    On Sunday (September 24), she will be giving a talk in Geneva to the signatories to the first global pact limiting mercury use, the United Nations-backed Minamata treaty, after it came into effect last month. She first travelled overseas to speak when she was just 15, leaving her fishing village to go to Stockholm.
    As victims like Sakamoto age, they are struggling with worsening symptoms, legal fights, and the question of what will happen to them once their siblings and parents die.
    Born in a family of shipbuilders whose home overlooks the Minamata bay, Jitsuko Tanaka, 64, used to play on the beach with her older sister, picking and eating shellfish, unaware they were contaminated.
    She was almost three, and her sister five, when they lost their ability to move their hands freely and walk properly, becoming the first to be identified as sufferers of Minamata disease. Tanaka's older sister died at age eight. Tanaka survived, but the poisoning left her too weak to walk without support. A few years ago, her family says, even that became impossible.
    As she lies motionless in bed, her brother-in-law, who also suffers from the same illness, said he worried about the patients who will be left with no one to care for them when their parents die.
    Over 20,000 people have applied to be certified by the government as Minamata disease patients. About 3,000 have been certified, environment ministry data shows, making them eligible for legal compensation. Of them, only 528 are still alive.
    "There are tens and hundreds of people with (Minamata disease) symptoms," said Yoichi Tani, director of the Collaboration Center for Minamata Disease Victims, at a recent rally of people trying to win legal recognition as Minamata disease patients.
    Before the government named methylmercury as its cause in 1968, disease sufferers faced discrimination over fears it was contagious, which also deterred many from seeking legal recognition.
    People still send in decades-old umbilical cords to be checked for contamination, hoping for evidence to support their claims to be designated as victims, said Hirokatsu Akagi, director of Minamata's International Mercury Laboratory.
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