Quiz.

Answer the following questions.

1. Sum up the minamata disease in one paragraph.
2. Considering the Itai - Itai disease video, what could have been done to prevent or
reduce the disease outbreak?

Solution

1. THE MINAMATA DISEASE: CHISSO CORPORATION.

Minamata disease is a serious and permanent neurological syndrome caused by

mercury poisoning. Symptoms include ataxia, sensory disturbance in the hands and
feet, impairment of the senses of sight and hearing, weakness and, in extreme
cases, paralysis and death. Minamata disease is so named because the city of
Minamata, Japan was the center of an outbreak of methylmercury poisoning in the
1950s. In 1956, the year the outbreak was detected, 46 people died. Pets and birds
in the area showed similar symptoms.

The cause of the disease was a terrible environmental problem caused by a plastics
manufacturing company that used mercury as a catalyst and discharged its
wastewater from the production process into the waters where fishermen
encountered the difficult disease when they came into contact with mercury. The
company responsible for this damage, experimented with cats its catalyst and had
the same results that were obtained in humans, mental disorders, suicides,
involuntary movements, seizures causing deaths, lifelong disabilities and serious
damage to the aquatic ecosystem in the region.

2. THE ITAI - ITAI DISEASE: TOYAMA-JAPAN 1947

This disease is called itai itai due to the great pain caused in the joints and in the
spine. It is a disease caused by the consumption of Cadmium in wastewater
intoxicated by the production processes of two companies and discharged directly
into rivers for human consumption.

A proposal to prevent the effect of the presence of heavy metals, in this case
Cadmium, in wastewater from industrial production is Bioadsorption.

Bioadsorption is a technique that takes advantage of different and numerous

natural materials such as microorganisms and algae to absorb metals as they have
bioadsorption capacities. Algae are an abundant and inexpensive source of biomass.
For example, brown algae, mainly those of the Sargassum genus, have shown their
ability to selectively absorb Cadmium, Copper, Nickel and Zinc ions.
In this way, from algae not only would excess heavy metals be removed, but the
present ecosystem would in turn regenerate, since in addition to bioabsorption, algae
are capable of providing large amounts of oxygen to the environment, generating a
natural balance and at a good price for industrial production processes.