James M. Jeffords: “I will spend a few minutes expressing my concerns about a serious public health crisis that this country faces due to…”

“I will spend a few minutes expressing my concerns about a serious public health crisis that this country faces due to mercury pollution. Perhaps some of you have heard of the small fishing community of Minamata Bay in Japan. If you know this village, you know also that it was nearly devastated by mercury pollution. Over 70 years ago, a chemical plant began dumping mercury waste into that bay. For the next 30 years, local citizens who depended heavily on the bay for commerce and daily sustenance saw strange and debilitating health problems emerge. At first, those eating fish out of the bay began experiencing headaches, numbness, tremors, blurred vision, hearing loss, speech problems, spasms, and loss of consciousness. As fish consumption continued, more people became sick. Plus, pets started becoming violent and birds fell from the sky. Naturally, the public's panic grew. Then, a generation of children was born with shriveled limbs and severe physical deformities. The woman in this photograph is one of the survivors of what was called Minamata Disease. In all, over nine hundred people died and thousands more were crippled by the poisoning. The Japanese government, which discovered the cause of these illnesses as early as 1956, hid the truth from the ailing public and refused to halt the industrial pollution. The dumping eventually stopped in 1968.”