Ep 75 Mercury: The cost of progress

When you think of mercury, what springs to mind? Is it the entrancing drop of shimmery liquid that flows from a broken thermometer, giving the metal the name quicksilver? Or is it the warnings of overconsumption of fish and bioaccumulation? Or perhaps it’s the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland? The story of mercury, in both its biology as well as its history, is vast and varied, and in this episode, we attempt to piece together a picture of this heavy metal. We first delve into the pathophysiological effects of the different forms of mercury exposure on the body, and then take a narrow tour of the metal’s history, focusing primarily on Minamata disease, before wrapping it all up with a look at just how widespread mercury contamination is today. Although the relationship between humans and mercury is as old as history itself, there are still so many lessons to be learned from it, especially “what is the true cost of progress?”.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
My love for my husband has become stronger since I
fell ill with this disease. My mouth quivers so badly
that I can't touch the food people bring me, so
I give all my presents to Mohe he's been so helpful,
you know, so kind. Did I tell you before that
I am his second wife. We met through a matchmaker.
I came here from Amakusa. Less than three years after

(00:23):
we got married, I fell ill with this strange disease,
such bad luck. I can't even address my kimono. Look
how I shake. No matter how often I tell my
body to stop shaking, it won't obey me. I can't
control my own hands and legs. Whenever he comes here,
my husband helps me address my kimono, muttering that I've
become a helpless woman. Once he said I should wear

(00:45):
underpants because my kimono kept falling in front. So he
brought me long drawers and helped me into them. As
he helped me into the pants, I said to him,
I have really become a helpless creature, My dear, I
want to get my own body back the way it
was before. I want to go back to the strong,
healthy body with which I came into the world. I've
never been sick, I've never had to stay in bed.

(01:08):
I was brimming with energy. I could work harder than
any man. It used to be so lovely out on
the sea. I want nothing else, just to be like
I was before I got the strange disease, to be
able to row a boat and to land a net again.
I feel so miserable now, a helpless wretch with a
body like a freak. I can't even wash my underwear

(01:29):
when I have my period. If I don't work, my
family won't be able to make ends meet. Minamata disease
is hell. I feel like I was drifting away from
this world. I have no grip. I cannot hold my
husband's hand in mine. My arms shake so hard that
I can't even draw my own dear son close to me.

(01:49):
I might even bear this if I could go on
living somehow. But I can't eat. I can't even bring
the rice bowl to my mouth. I can't hold my
chopsticks when I walk. It's not like putting one leg
in front of the other on the ground, but like
floating on air. I am afraid. I always get the
feeling that someone is trying hard to pull me out

(02:11):
of this world roots and all. I feel so lonely.
You healthy people have no idea what it's like to
lie in bed, sick and forgotten by all. My husband
is the only person I can still rely on. He
is my only hope. I love him so much that
I'd give my life for him. God, I wish I

(02:33):
could use my hands and legs again. I wish I
could work again like I used to.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
This is going to be a tough episode for so
many reasons.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
M hm.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
So that was excerpted from a book titled Paradise in
the Sea of Sorrow by Issimode Michiko.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
And that was a description, of course, of someone suffering
from minamata.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Disease right, also known as methyl mercury poisoning. Hi, I'm erin.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Welsh and I'm erin Alman Updike And.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
This is this podcast will kill you.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
So today we're talking about mercury.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Mercury. Yeah, it's a very big and very challenging topic
for a number of reasons.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, this listeners, we have been just talking amongst ourselves
about how much of a challenge this episode has been
for us. Yeah, the biology has been a real struggle
trying to not only piece all of the complicated parts together,
but be able to tell the story in a way

(04:31):
that makes sense and is like easy for me to explain.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
And I think in both respects, both biology and history,
the scope is enormous, enormous, and so I think figuring
out what to concentrate on has been difficult. But also
like as I did research for this, it was really
emotionally difficult as well, like its is a very heart

(04:58):
wrenching and horrifying like disease, while minamata disease specifically, but
just like the kinds of things that mercury can can cause,
not all the time, as we will find out, I'm sure, Aaron,
But yeah, I do think though it'll be a very

(05:19):
interesting one. This is our second heavy metal yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
But yeah, this will be a very different episode I
think though than Lead. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, for sure. Well yeah, but one thing will be
the same, and that is.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
That it's quarantiny time.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
It is what are we drinking this week?

Speaker 1 (05:38):
We're drinking quicksilver.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Quicksilver it's the other name common name for mercury.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Do you know that I did not know that until
we researched this episode. Really, I had no idea that
that's what Quicksilver was escape brand to me and a
surf brand.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
It was a banned from the seventies for me, I
had I have had my parents old albums.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah I did not.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
That is hilarious.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah. Anyways, what's in a Quicksilver It is.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
Vodka, cucumber, lime and a little bit of basil simple
syrup and a little splash of soda water at the end.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
So refreshing.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
And we will post the full recipe for this quarantini
as well as the non alcoholic place Brita on our website.
This podcast will kill You dot com other business.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
We have a website. It's this podcast will Kill You
dot com yepy. We have so many things there, from
merch to bookshop dot org to transcripts to all of
the lists of our sources. We now have a Patreon.
We have so much available there. Check it out.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, do it? Okay, should we get started on this episode.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
We should right after this break. Mercury is an element

(07:26):
HG also called hydrogorum something like that.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
There are too many like rs in that word. It's
no wonder that it was changed to mercury to be.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Honest, and like Aaron's had already also called quicksilver, so
this is a heavy metal that is naturally found in
the Earth's crust. However, the majority of this sort of
bioavailable mercury that we are exposed to as humans has
been put into the mercury cycle, which we'll talk a

(08:01):
lot more about very much later in this episode, from
anthropogenic sources, mostly the burning of coal, which releases mercury vapor,
as well as gold mining, some various forms of gold mining,
and a lot of other industrial products. Yep, so mercury.
I'm sure that everyone is at least vaguely familiar with

(08:22):
mercury because it is so fascinating to see because it's
the only metallic element that is liquid at room temperature
and looks like it's something out of a sci fi film.
Absolutely totally doesn't look real. But this liquid form of mercury,
as we'll find out, is certainly not the type of
mercury that causes the most potential harm to humans or

(08:47):
even other animals in wildlife.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah, so I.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Want to just disclaimer, even though we kind of did already,
there's a lot to cover when it comes to this
like nitty gritty of mercury. I hope that I do
an adequate job. Let us try. So. Mercury comes in
a number of different forms, and each of these different
forms has a different level of potential toxicity to humans.

(09:15):
The three overarching categories of mercury that you can be
exposed to are elemental or metallic mercury that's quicksilver. Inorganic mercury,
which is mercury that is bound to like a chloride
or a nitrite. This is what used to be used
not to step on your history toes erin, but as
vermilion many many moons ago. It's like a rock that

(09:39):
is a color that was used for pigment. That's inorganic mercury.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Don't worry, I'm not going to talk about it.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Oh good. And then there is organic mercury. Organic mercury
is mercury bound to carbon and hydrogen. So these all
differ in terms of both exposure like how we could
expose to them, and also bioavailability how much they can
sort of disperse throughout our body and then cause damage.

(10:09):
So let's go over the like broad strokes differences between
these and then we'll talk about how similar they actually
are once they make it into your body. And then
we'll go over the symptoms. Kind of organ by organ
cool sounds good, all right. So elemental mercury aka just

(10:30):
plane HG. That is the liquid metal, but the way
that you're more likely to be exposed to it is
not by that metal itself, but is by mercury vapor.
So elemental mercury if you ingest it like you swallow it,
it's really not absorbed very well through the GI tract.

(10:51):
Something like point zero one percent is one estimate. I
saw it. Definitely less than one percent is absorbed. Do
not drink murcury though, But yeah, so elemental mercury vapors.
It's vaporized very quickly and easily, even at room temperatures,
but definitely when it's heated, and when it's inhaled, it's

(11:12):
absorbed very rapidly across your respiratory membranes. Like eighty to
one hundred percent of it is absorbed across your respiratory membranes,
and from there it can very rapidly diffuse across other
membranes in our body, including the blood, brain barrier, and
the placenta. Additionally, mercury vapor has a relatively long half

(11:33):
life in our body, about sixty days and so it
hangs around for quite some time and can kind of
build up, especially in organs like your brain. M hm. Okay,
So that's elemental mercury and how we get exposed. Then
there's inorganic mercury, which I'm not going to talk a
ton about because it's probably the one that you're least
likely to be exposed to. But these can be absorbed

(11:57):
through the skin or the GI track if ingested, but
only about ten percent of ingested inorganic mercury is actually absorbed,
so again, it doesn't actually absorb very easily.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
And the fact that it doesn't absorb very easily just
has to do with like binding, Like what exactly.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
Listen, I asked for you to not ask me these
difficult questions.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
I'm sorry I couldn't resist.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
But yes, it's essentially that our intestinal membrane doesn't allow
it to easily pass. And when we get into the
next one, maybe that will make a little bit more sense.
Let's get into it, okay, because then there is organic mercury.
I'm going to spend a little bit more time on this.
Organic mercury is formed when bacteria in the ocean or

(12:47):
the soil or our waterways take inorganic mercury, like metallic
mercury or inorganic mercury ions, And what they do is
they methylated, which means they add a car carbon and
some hydrogens. And when mercury is just floating around as
an ion or as a metal, it's not very bioavailable.

(13:10):
It's not like attractive for plants or animals, like they
can't use it when it's just in that form. But
now all of a sudden, it's connected to a carbon atom.
Now it's very bioavailable. So this methyl mercury can be
used by plants, can be taken up by plants, and
then those plants can be eaten by little fish that

(13:34):
will hold onto that mercury, and then larger fish will
eat those fish, and on and on up the food chain.
And this process is called bioaccumulation, where that mercury stays
within the system and by the time it makes its
way up to predatory fish like tuna, sharks, swordfish, or
other large bodied ocean predators especially, you can have very

(13:56):
very high levels of this methyl mercury in their mustle.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Right, which is why there are all those warnings about
how much can tuna you're supposed to eat and so
on the whole biomagnification exactly. Question.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
It's going to be a hard one.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
I maybe, okay, why slash? How do bacteria do this?

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Great question? Bacteria are phenomenal in general at making inorganic
nutrients into organic nutrients and therefore available. That's what they
do with nitrogen, that's what they do with phosphorus, that's
what they do with all kinds of different ions. And
that's the best answer I'm going to be able to
give you. Oh, okay, okay, but yeah, it's like what

(14:39):
they do. That's like their point, not their point, but
that's like a huge part of the contribution of bacteria
and fungi who do this in the soil as well
to the sort of nutrient cycling in the environment. So
that's how methyl mercury exists. And then of course we
eat a fish and now we're exposed to it. So

(15:02):
methyl mercury, this organic mercury is by far the largest
contributor to our general exposure to mercury as humans, not
only because we're exposed to it through the consumption of
things like fish, shellfish, et cetera, but also because it
is almost one hundred percent absorbed through the gi tract

(15:22):
in addition to potentially being absorbed through the skin or
inhalation if you were to be exposed that way. So
it's of the forms of mercury, it's probably the most
easily absorbed, especially through the GI tract, and once it's absorbed,
it can very easily and readily distribute it itself throughout
the body. It can cross the blood, brain barrier and placenta.

(15:46):
And we'll talk a bit more about how it does
that in just a minute. And even more concerningly than
elemental mercury, the half life of methyl mercury in the
body is longer, it's seventy days or sometimes longer, and
the way that it's excreted is different. So it's excreted
in our feces, it has to be conjugated in our

(16:08):
liver and then we have to poop it out, whereas
other forms of mercury, like inorganic and elemental mercury, we
actually excrete in our urine. Huh, Yeah, isn't that interesting?

Speaker 2 (16:19):
That's very interesting.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
So that's all the different sort of forms of mercury
and how we get exposed to them, and the difference
is in how much of the mercury you're exposed to
is going to actually make it into your body. I
will also note there's a lot of other forms of
organic mercury besides methyl mercury, some of which are even

(16:43):
more toxic, like die ethyl or dye methyl mercury. Yeah,
but in general, in fish, for example, by far, the
most common one that you're going to be exposed to
is methyl mercury. That's what is most common in the environment.
The other forms, and to be produced in industrial settings
rather than by bacteria in the environment.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
Okay, gotcha?

Speaker 1 (17:07):
All right, So now that we know all that, what
does that actually look like when this mercury does get
into our bodies? What happens and why does it make
us so sick? So again, here there's a lot of complication,
And what I'll say upfront is that if anyone remembers

(17:27):
our lead episode, a lot of the mechanisms of how
mercury causes toxicity are not very dissimilar to lead. But
the difference was that in lead, there's like kind of
one very compact story, like lead binds to a specific
enzyme that then blocks heme synthesis and causes anemia. With mercury,

(17:51):
because of what it does, it has a much broader effect,
and therefore it's more difficult to pinpoint the precise mechanism.
If that makes sense of toxicity, Yes, so I'm just
gonna kind of look at the broad strokes and I
think that we'll understand a lot of it. So in
all of the various forms, once you're exposed to mercury,

(18:12):
once it gets into our bodies, it generally exists as
a positively charged ion, a cat ion. So either HG
plus or HG two plus or even methyl mercury itself
is a positively charged molecule. And because it's positively charged,
like all positively charged ions, they have an affinity for

(18:36):
negatively charged things in our body. That means proteins and
some amino acids. Uh so yeah, oh is right, and
so that's lead does the same thing. Lead exists as
a positive ion and binds to certain proteins. In the
case of mercury, though, mercury has a strong affinity for

(18:58):
proteins and amino appaids that contain two different types of residues,
sulfur groups which are called thiols and selenium groups, which
are called selenols. So there's two big problems with this number.
One there are some amino acids, like, for example, cystine,

(19:19):
which is an amino acid with two sulfurs that when
methylmercury binds to cystine, it looks like another amino acid,
methionine that's a neutral amino acid and is not just
able to cross barriers, but can be actively transported across

(19:41):
barriers like the placenta and the blood brain barrier, okay,
by amino acid transporters. So not only can this ion
itself potentially cross these barriers once it connects with cysteine,
it can be transported like oh hey, you look like methionine.
Come on over, we're going to use you to build

(20:01):
this fetus, or we're going to use you and like
deposit you in the brain right now.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
So that's yeah, that's bad. The other thing, so, because
that kind of tells us that's how it gets into
these structures, what does it do once it's there? Like,
why is that so bad to have mercury instead of
actually methionine By binding two not just cysteine, but a

(20:27):
number a whole suite of proteins, amino acids, and enzymes.
What mercury does is it causes a cascade of downstream effects.
It basically blocks interrupts the actions of these various enzymes
or proteins. And like I said, it's not just one,
it's not just cysteine. There's a whole bunch of enzymes

(20:48):
that have either sulfur or selenium groups on them. So
one of the principal effects seems to be that an
increase in mercury leads to a decrease in the antioxidant
ability of our body. So a lot of the damage
that occurs in mercury toxicity is due to reactive oxygen species.

(21:13):
So basically, mercury is blocking enzymes that normally help fix
oxidative damage, and it blocks their ability to do so
it's like boop, you can't fix this. And so now
there's just this free floating reactive oxygen that can cause
a lot of damage. And when you combine that with
its ability to cross these important membranes like the blood

(21:35):
brain barrier and the placenta, you get oxidative damage in
structures that can't easily be repaired.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
I'm glad because it took me a long time to understand.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
The I mean, it's really complicated and like, these are
things I haven't thought about, like oxidative stress, and I
on is like that's nitty gritty, but that's very and
so this is just this is just because the mercury ion,
once it's in you, is attracted too. It's binding to
these negatively charged things and sort of replacing their function

(22:12):
or preventing them from from functioning the way they should.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Okay, precisely exactly, yeah, exactly, and it can do that
on so many different sort of proteins and enzymes. Yeah,
so it's very bad.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
And so this is why systemic.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
Systemic and why so many of the symptoms like we'll
see are neurologic, right, because once it gets into the brain,
it can kind of just stay there for quite some time,
bound to these proteins and enzymes. So the symptoms in
some ways do depend on the form of mercury that
somebody is exposed to, but what they really depend on

(22:53):
is where that mercury goes and potentially accumulates. And so
that also depends on whether the exposure is a whole
bunch of mercury all at once, like acute toxicity, or
a smaller amount of mercury over a longer period of
time or chronic toxicity. So I'll kind of go through
very briefly system like, organ system by organ system, because

(23:17):
since we're exposed to these different forms of mercury in
different ways, they tend to have most effects on certain organs,
if that makes sense. But the truth is that any
of these forms of mercury can potentially cause any of
these types of symptoms, right, because once it's in your body,
it all acts relatively similarly.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Right, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
There are still some subtle differences, but all right, so
let's talk about our lungs first. You're most likely to
be exposed to mercury in your lungs through mercury vapor,
which is mostly elemental mercury. This happens most often in
industrial or occupational settings, and inhalation of mercury vapor, especially

(24:02):
a large amount, like more than a thousand micrograms per
cubic meter of air, can cause massive interstitial numinitis. So
this means inflammation in the lining surrounding, like the spaces
in between your cells of your lungs. Because this mercury,

(24:23):
you can kind of think of it as just ripping
through the lining of your lungs. So you'll have all
this inflammation, which will lead to a pretty severe cough
because of all this fluid, a lot of chest pain
because that fluid is going to irritate the whole lining
of your chest, difficulty breathing. This mercury does distribute throughout

(24:44):
your body, so it's common to have a rash that
appears on the skin. People often have a metallic taste
in their mouth and might feel nauseous or might vomit.
They might start bleeding from the gums, which is a
pretty common symptom of a lot of different forms of
mercury poisoning is sort of ginge ofvitis, and then elemental

(25:05):
mercury is removed from the body mostly through the kidneys,
so we can see kidney failure.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Okay, yeah, but often if.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
With large enough exposures, this is fatal. This is a
very fatal form of exposure, and the death tends to
be due to respiratory failure, especially in the case of
children who are exposed to large quantities of elemental mercury vapor.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
What is a large quantity.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
So in general, these like acute symptoms would happen at
pretty high concentrations, like above a thousand micrograms per cubic meter.
I tried to get a sense of like how many
grams of like liquid mercury would cause to get that,
but I couldn't get that number. I think in part
because it depends on like are you heating it or

(25:52):
is it just at room temperature and all of that.
But even at chronic, like lower levels of exposure between
twenty five to one hundred micrograms per cubic meter of air,
even those levels have been shown to be enough to
cause chronic symptoms, which tend to be more neurologic. And

(26:13):
we'll talk about the neurologic symptoms in just a bit.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
It's hard to picture those amounts, but I know.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
It's so that for a lot of this, even in fish,
it's like I have no idea how much mercury that is.
One number that I saw really commonly was that. So
in a mercury thermometer, there's anywhere from zero point five
to three grams of mercury. So often average is used

(26:39):
as one gram of mercury in a thermometer, and you'll
see the stat that one gram of mercury can cause
contamination of a twenty acre lake. That's a big lake,
that's a big lake. It's not a huge lake, but
it's a lake, and that stat is true, but with
the caveat that that number comes from the annual deposition

(27:04):
of mercury in a lake in Minnesota. I believe it
was Minnesota, where about a gram of mercury was deposited
over the course of a year, and those fish then
had high levels of mercury, like unacceptably high levels. So
it's true, but it's not like if you just took
a thermometer and broke it and dumped it in a lake,

(27:24):
then you would contaminate all those fish because it's a
process that takes time, and if you just dumped a
bunch of mercury, most of it wouldn't actually find its
way into the fish, right, but over time, that amount
of mercury would in fact work its way up the
food chain. Does that make sense? Okay, that makes sense. Yeah,
So then let's move on to the GI tract. Inorganic
mercury is probably one of the most maybe not the

(27:47):
most common, but it's associated with pretty strong GI symptoms
if you are exposed. But again, any form of mercury
can cause symptoms like this, So GI symptoms are things
like very severe abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, bloody diarrhea. I
did find that in the case of inorganic mercury, ingestion

(28:09):
of one gram or more can be lethal, either due
to kidney failure or cardiovascular collapse, because again, even though
only about ten percent of it is absorbed, if that
then makes it into your heart, it can cause damage
there as well. Okay, the other thing too is that
inorganic mercury is something that can be present in most

(28:33):
places this is not legal, but it can be present
in skin care or makeup products, especially skin lightening products,
So that is very dangerous because inorganic mercury can be
readily absorbed through the skin, much better than the GI tract.
And then, of course there is the nervous system symptoms
which we most strongly associate with methyl mercury poisoning or

(28:57):
what we heard about in our first hand account minamata disease.
But again, especially in terms of like long term chronic
exposure to low levels of mercury, vapor or other forms
of mercury can certainly cause these same neurologic effects, and
just like with the other forms, exposure to a very
large dose and acute poisoning is often fatal, but what's

(29:22):
much more common is that people are exposed to low
level or moderate level doses over longer periods of time,
and then this methyl mercury is able to build up
in the nervous system and cause these effects. So in
adults or children who are exposed to methyl mercury, these
symptoms can take months to manifest, and what tends to

(29:46):
happen is that the peripheral nervous system is largely involved,
but then the central nervous system, so like the brain,
also then can become involved. So early it might be
things like sensory impairments, not being able to feel things
the way that you could before, or peristigias, which are
those feelings of like a burning sensation or a tingling,

(30:09):
maybe a numbness or like a pin prick sensation. Any
of those tremors like we heard in our first hand
account are very common, and those are all mostly peripheral
nervous system effects. But then as it affects your central
nervous system, you can have a taxia, which is difficulty

(30:29):
walking because you can't coordinate your limbs. This numbness and weakness,
you can have also rigidity in your muscles because the
nerves are not firing correctly. You can have dysarthria, which
is difficulty speaking because you can't coordinate the muscles of
your mouth. You can also have things like memory loss, dementia,

(30:54):
blurry vision or loss of vision, loss of hearing. So
this can affect any part of the nervous system, and
so especially in the case of large exposure or continued
chronic exposure, this can lead to death in kind of
any number of ways, from respiratory collapse because you've impaired
the nerves that are involved in breathing, or in the

(31:15):
brain like your respiratory drive. It can lead to cardiovascular collapse.
Even though methylmercury is primarily not excreted by the kidneys,
it still does have major effects on the kidneys, so
it can lead to renal failure. It's a pretty devastating disease.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
It is, yeah, absolutely devastating, is yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah. And then of course, methyl mercury also affects the
developing nervous system of a fetus, and so it can
cause abnormal development in a number of different ways. It
can lead to congenital blindness or deafness. It can lead
to an inadequately developed brain or an incompletely developed brain,
so microcephaly. It can lead to difficulties with walking or speaking.

(32:04):
It can lead to a syndrome that looks a lot
like cerebral palsy, which is like exaggerated reflexes involuntary movements
of the limbs. Limbs are often rigid things that look
kind of very similar to what exposure to methyl mercury
would look like in an adult. But that happen congenitally essentially,

(32:25):
And that's, of course, if the baby survives, because large
quantities of methyl mercury exposure can also cause fetal demise
as well and pregnancy loss. So it's pretty horrific. Yes,
that's all I have for the biology here, and it's
the downer of an ending.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
I mean, it's a reality though, it is.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, and the thing that's I think just so so
much worse. I don't know if that's even the right word.
But there's not really anything we can do, especially in
the case of methyl mercury poisoning. If exposure is from
metallic mercury vapor, you can use key lators, which are

(33:10):
essentially a way to help bind that mercury and help
us excrete it faster, but key lators don't really work
to treat inorganic or especially organic mercury poisoning, so there's
not much that you can do. And especially in the
case of this neurologic damage, it's permanent. You've destroyed those neurons.

(33:31):
So yeah, yeah, yeah, So Aerin, how in the heck
did we get here to this point?

Speaker 2 (33:45):
I mean, I probably won't be able to answer that question,
but I will at least touch on some I think
pretty important things in the history of mercury. Okay, let's
take a quick break first. So, like you, Aaron, I

(34:29):
also got overwhelmed when I first started researching this because
this is a huge topic, not just in the biology,
but also in the history. And I say this for
like so many episodes.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
I know, I would know we're so broken records.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
I know, I know, but I mean I will say that,
like for mercury, there are many different ways that you
can tell the story. There's so many different things you
could focus on, Like you could focus on the role
of mercury in mining, the impact that mercury has had
on trade, mercury in chemistry, in alchemy, and religion, occult practices,

(35:04):
and then there's, of course the role that mercury has
played in the history of medicine, so like the development
of the mercury thermometer and how crucial that was. Mercury
used to treat syphilis and gonorrhea and other conditions.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
We've talked about that.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
We've talked about that, and mercury used in dentistry. I mean,
it just like goes on and on. And then there's
the darker side of mercury and its toxicity, especially in
occupational exposure or industrial exposure. So miners experiencing symptoms due
to chronic exposure, hatters exposed to mercury vapors, giving rise

(35:41):
maybe to the Alice in Wonderland mad Hatter character. And
then of course there's these many accidental and intentional cases
of mercury poisoning through ingestion. And the story of mercury
is not just super broad, it's all so quite deep, right,

(36:01):
because humans have been working with mercury since the early
days of civilization, using it for all of these things
I've already mentioned. It got its name, after all, from
the Roman god Mercury, who was the Greek god Hermes
couldn't resist throwing a little bit of ancient Greek or
ancient Roman trivia, and we've.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Got to have at least a touch, at least a touch.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
But instead of trying to tackle the entirety of mercury
and its role in human culture and society, I decided
to focus specifically on one particular area, and that is
minimata disease and the horrible circumstances surrounding it. And if

(36:45):
you want to know more about these other areas of
mercury that I mentioned, there is a book that I'll
mention again in the sources section called Mercury, A History
of Quicksilver by Leonard Goldwater, and it's full of anecdotes
about its chemical and industrial and cultural history. Okay, but minimata.
So I decided to focus on this incident in particular

(37:10):
because it's a hugely important topic not only in the
history of Japan, but also in the general history the
global history of industrial contamination and putting the interest of
corporations above the health and well being of individuals. And
it's also still extremely relevant for today in its lessons

(37:30):
on the human costs of industrialization and pollution, but also
on the power of grassroots movements in raising awareness and
achieving maybe not justice, but accountability at least in some measure.
And I'm really worried that I'm not going to do
this story the justice it deserves. But at the very least,

(37:52):
what I hope will happen is that you will become
interested enough that you'll want to check out more of
these wonderful sources that I will list at the end
of the episode, because they are really like, there's so
much more to the story, and I really want people
to read more about it, okay. Minamata is a small
coastal city in the very southwestern tip of Japan, and today,

(38:18):
if you do a Google image search of Minamata, you
won't find many pictures of the beautiful Minamata Bay and
the shimmering Sharon Nui Si and the lush green mountains
surrounding the city. Instead, you'll find images from one of
the worst environmental disasters the world has ever seen. And

(38:40):
this is the legacy left behind by the Chiso Corporation,
still in operation today. The company first setup shop in
Minamata in nineteen oh eight, producing fertilizer, but then in
nineteen thirty two it expanded its operations when it began
to produce acid aldehyde, which importantly uses mercury sulfate as

(39:02):
a catalyst. Over the next few Decadeschiso ramped up production
of acidaldehyde, producing thousands or tens of thousands of tons
each year, and all of these tons of acidaldehyde meant
also the production of thousands of tons of waste, and
that waste, which was not great to begin with, became

(39:25):
incredibly deadlier when in nineteen fifty one, the Chiso Corporation
changed the co catalyst in this reaction to ferric sulfide,
which led to the production of mercury waste, which was
much more readily transformed into methyl mercury when it was
dumped into the sea next to Minamata, where there were

(39:46):
lots of bacteria to take up that mercury and turn
it into methyl mercury. And so, like you talked about aaron,
methylmercury is an organic compound, so it can be readily
absorbed by plants and animal and so all of this
mercury waste that was being unloaded into the water wasn't
sitting harmlessly on the seafloor. It was being immediately turned

(40:09):
into methyl mercury and then taken up by plants, and
then the plants were eaten by fish and then bigger fish,
and it's the classic story of bioaccumulation. Right If you
were living in Minamata in the nineteen forties, in the
nineteen fifties, if you weren't working at Chiso, there was
a pretty good chance that you either fished or farmed
for a living. And no matter where you worked, there

(40:33):
was an even better chance that locally caught fish and
shellfish and seaweed constituted a pretty substantial portion of your diet.
And so as this toxic mercury continued to be dumped
into the sea outside Minamata and then be transformed into
methyl mercury and accumulate in the plants and fish living

(40:53):
in it, it of course found its way into the
diet of the residence of Minamata. There Signs that anything
was wrong came pretty early on, right around nineteen fifty one.
Some fish seemed to be just floating in the bay
and could be easily caught by hand. Barnacles stopped appearing

(41:14):
on boats near the factory dumping grounds, and seaweed began
to float to the surface. Its color appeared to be fading,
and its roots became more brittle birds, especially crows, began
to fall from the sky, crashing into the sea or
the ground dead, and you could snatch a seabird easily,

(41:35):
just like with your bare hands. That's not good, no,
And by nineteen fifty three things had gotten worse. More
fish began acting strange, swimming in a bizarre way in
the thick, greasy, stinking patches of water outside the factory
that people compared to like turning the sea into a swamp.

(41:57):
It was so thick. People were finding their nets emptier
and emptier. Seaweed began to disappear, and you couldn't find
shellfish anywhere close to the shore. But the most noticeable change,
the thing that would really kind of sound the warning bells,
was the cats of Minamata. People had started noticing that

(42:19):
their cats had trouble moving. They seemed super uncoordinated. They
would suffer convulsions, they salivated profusely, and they would bring
their noses close to the ground, almost looking like they
were trying to do a headstand by kicking their back
legs up. They ran round and round, running into rocks
or trees, with many just jumping into the sea and drowning.

(42:44):
Soon there were nearly no more cats left in the area, like,
for example, in nineteen fifty four, in one hamlet, one
hundred of the one hundred and twenty cats died within
two months. What Yeah, The loss of cats was devastating, obviously,
not just because they were pets, but because cats also

(43:06):
performed an invaluable service by killing mice and rats who
would damage fishing nets by chewing through them. And so
when all the cats started to die, the mice and
rat populations exploded, making it impossible to keep a fishing
net intact. But it didn't even matter because there were
almost no fish to even fill these nets with. Between

(43:29):
nineteen fifty three and nineteen fifty five, fish catches went
from four hundred and ninety thousand kilograms a year to
about a third of that one hundred and eighty three
kilograms a year.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
Whoa.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
But it wasn't just the fish and the birds and
the seaweed and the cats that had started showing worrying changes.
It was also the residence of minamata. Several people began
developing problems walking or talking, or getting numbnus or in
their fingertips or shaking in their limbs, Tunnel vision and

(44:03):
they went to the hospital to receive a diagnosis of
anything ranging from Japanese encephalitis to alcoholism, anything other than
mercury poisoning before many of them died. But it took
a few years of this before anyone recognized that what
they had on their hands was not some Japanese encephalitis

(44:25):
or whatever, it was an outbreak of an unknown, debilitating
and often deadly disease. In nineteen fifty six, two young girls,
sisters were brought to the hospital by their mother after
they began showing trouble walking and talking, and the mother
of the girls told the doctors that their neighbor, who

(44:46):
was another young girl, had also been showing the same symptoms,
and so the doctors went to investigate, and they found
that they actually had at least eight people with these
same symptoms with the same disease, which was an enough
for them to declare to the Public Health office that quote,
this is an epidemic of an unknown disease of the
central nervous system. And not long after this declaration, more

(45:11):
cases started appearing, with some families entirely affected. But there
was such a stigma surrounding it that people stayed behind
doors as their neighbors shunned them. For some people, the
disease came on rapidly. A strong, healthy fisherman yesterday woke
up today unable to stand on the boat and cast

(45:33):
his net. Soon he would be in the hospital, suffering
from convulsions and bloody fingertips as he rips off his
nails by scratching at the walls. Horrifying and terrifying don't
even begin to cover it, and you can imagine how
neighbors and friends and family nervously watched for signs of

(45:54):
the disease in themselves. Probably May first, nineteen fifty six
marks the day when the mysterious disease affecting the residence
of Minamata was officially discovered, But the doctors didn't yet
know what the disease was or what was causing it,
which meant that they could do nothing to prevent it.
City authorities went to the homes of people who had

(46:16):
come down with this disease, and they ordered them out,
forcing some into isolation so that they could disinfect like
spray the entire house, which only furthered the fear and
stigma associated with it. After interviewing the patients, many of
which were from fishing families. The people in charge of
the investigation came to the conclusion that it was likely

(46:38):
something from the seawater, but they weren't sure exactly what
it was, although immediately several heavy metals were proposed, but
these surveys tended to be super focused, which kind of
led to this picture of Minimata disease as just one thing,
like the most extreme case, and it overlooked the people

(47:02):
who had less severe symptoms, which ultimately meant that they
weren't recognizing the extent of the exposure, both in terms
of like the number of people impacted and like the
scope of disease symptoms, but also how widespread it could
be geographically. But it's also not as though narrowing down

(47:24):
the cause was like super duper easy. The Chiesau Corporation
was dumping a lot of chemical waste into Minimata Bay,
and so trying to figure out which of the possible
I think at the beginning of the investigation there were
like sixty four possible poisons proposed, and so figuring out
which one of those was causing the symptoms wasn't necessarily

(47:45):
this easy thing to do, and the factory certainly didn't
help narrow down things. In one of the books I
read for this, the author describes a four stage model
for all pollution events. First, people become aware of the
problem in Minamata. This happened in May nineteen fifty six. Second,

(48:06):
they begin to search for the cause, which does take
some time usually. Third, the polluter proposes or supports alternative
theories to draw attention and responsibility away from themselves. Okay,
and so then the public becomes confused as to who
to believe. Fourth, all of these theories or hypotheses compete

(48:28):
with and then neutralize each other, so that still no
one knows what.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
To believe, oh gosh.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
And so whenever mercury was proposed, the Chiso Corporation was
there to say, no, we actually think it's red tide,
or no, we don't dump any mercury at all, it's impossible,
or no, it's actually mercury from the agriculture whatever. And
they also directly tried to prevent research linking the disease

(49:00):
is to the waste that they dumped into the sea,
like in one instance, they bought up all the fish
in the markets so that a researcher from the NIH
in the US couldn't take any back to conduct research.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
On Oh jeez.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Yeah, And in nineteen fifty eight they changed the dump
site from Minamata Bay from the sea to the river
to try to mislead the investigations that were going on
at the sea dump site, which actually led to only
more widespread exposure because people started showing up with Minamata
disease like farther away.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Yeah, if anything, that's just going to like show more support.
Like if you move your dump site, then you're gonna
move where people get sick. Yeah, people are going to
get sick in your new dump site. I mean, good
forethought on that, right.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
But like if there were forethought, then maybe there would
have been no methyl mercury poisoning in the first place.
What a concept, Darin, What a concept. But one of
the most egregious things they did was they hid the
results of experiments that the Chiso Hospital doctor had done
which conclusively showed that they were responsible for the waste.

(50:10):
So he was feeding cats like different waste. And then
there was this like infamous cat number four hundred who
developed symptoms of minimaunta disease after being fed waste from
the acid aldehyde process. But when he brought these results
to the company, the company ordered the results to be

(50:32):
destroyed or hidden and they stopped and they said, no
more experiments. You will not have access to any more
of this acid aldehyde waste.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
But despite Chiso Corporation's best efforts, starting in nineteen fifty nine,
methyl mercury produced as a result of this acid aldehyde
production was finally pinpointed as the cause. Mercury was found
in the waste that they produced. It was found in
the seafood in Minamata. That seafood was found to cause

(51:06):
symptoms and cats and experiments, and it was found in
the people suffering from the disease. The researchers who tested
water or hair for mercury made measurement after measurement. They
were like, there's no way that these numbers can be
right because they're off the charts.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
Yea.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
The amount of mercury near the factory waste outlet was
found to be two thousand over two thousand parts per million.
Oh yeah, that's two kilograms per ton, which is twice
the amount needed for a mercury mine. That were you
specifically mine for mercury.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
And so the thing is because of bioaccumulation. Even very
low levels of mercury in the environment can lead to
very high levels in fish. So having that high of
levels in the environment is tearrifying.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
It is yep. Yeah, And there was so much mercury
that they actually ended up establishing like a subsidiary to
reclaim the mercury in the waist because it was valuable.
Oh uh huh. Hundreds of people are found to have
greater than fifty parts per million in their hair, which
is the level at which like neurological symptoms can develop,

(52:23):
and one woman was found to have nine hundred and
twenty parts per million. Oh dear, yep. And you might think,
or at least hope that given these solid links between
acid aldehyde waste and minimata disease, there would be some
sort of acknowledgment or attempt to write the wrongs by

(52:44):
the Chisou Corporation. But also, if you're a listener of
this podcast, you know that history is full of disappointing,
to say the least, people and corporations, and this is
one of them. It really just feels like these it's
really hard to wrap your brain around because when I

(53:06):
was doing this, I was reminded of well, many of
the things that we've talked about, but I think in
particular the litamide and the knowing, like the solid links
the knowing, and then the refusal, denial, denial, like to
what end?

Speaker 1 (53:25):
To what end? I just I do not comprehend.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
I know, I don't know how you can have a conscience,
a soul and make these decisions.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
Ever again, yeah I don't.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Yeah, yeah. But the Chiesa Corporation took great issue with
these findings and they continued to try to undermine them.
They produced pamphlets to discredit the findings and the university
researchers who had compiled them saying they were like, oh, well,
you know, they're not qualified for their jobs. And the
sad thing is Chiso had a lot of the residents

(54:02):
of Minamata on their side, along with the local and
regional government. The factory had been seen by many as
the town's economic savior, especially in like the years following
World War Two during the economic recovery period, and about
twenty five percent of the jobs in the town were

(54:22):
somehow linked to Chiso or to Chiso in like their
different subsidiaries. And in the face of these like links,
between Minamata disease and the factory waste. The corporation kept
making these subtle threats to like, oh, we're going to
shut down and move somewhere else if people don't drop
their complaints, Like this is proving to be very problematic

(54:45):
for us. But it wasn't just the people affected by
methyl mercury poisoning that had issues with Chiso. It was
also the fishing co ops who had all but lost
their source of income as fish populations declined something like
ninety percent over the nineteen fifties. Yeah, and also the
sale but not the catching of fish from Minamata was banned,

(55:09):
so like you could still catch fish, but like to
what end, because if they well, because what would happen
is that if they banned the actual fishing itself, then
Chiso would have to pay more because it would be
have to show that they took the livelihoods anyway. And
so these fishing co ops also demanded recognition and compensation

(55:30):
from Chiso, but the public kind of turned against them
after there were some riots or some like sit ins
that turned violent, and this had the effect of also
stigmatizing the people with this metal mercury poisoning who were
either ignored or harassed for fighting chiso. Finally, though, at

(55:53):
the end of nineteen fifty nine, the fishing cooperatives and
the people with minamata disease one small vicaries as she so,
finally made some payments. They did not, however, take responsibility
for the poisoning. They just said, oh no, these payments
are like a charitable gift from a caring neighbor. Yeah,

(56:14):
oh gosh, and these gifts showed how much the company
believed a life was worth.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
Oh no.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
They agreed to pay adults one hundred thousand yen, which
was two hundred and seventy eight dollars per year, and
children thirty thousand yen per year eighty three dollars and
twenty thousand yen or fifty six dollars in funeral expenses,
but they required a certification committee to decide who would

(56:45):
be eligible for the money, and the company asked to
include a clause where quote even if in the future
it is determined that the cause of minimata disease is
the factory's waste water, the patients will make absolutely no
further demands for compensation money.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
What m hmm.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
Beyond the pale I mean, I don't. Yeah, And they
also made small payments to these fishing co ops and
they importantly they're like big you know, public image thing
was they built this pollution control center which was supposed
to remove the mercury from the waste that they produced.

(57:30):
It did not like not at all. It was just
for show.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
What Yeah, what's the point, Aaron.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
This was the cost of progress in their eyes. I think,
I don't know at this point in time. So nineteen
fifty nine, the number of people with confirmed minimata disease
was in the dozens, but the next ten years would
show just how tiny the tip of the iceberg that was.
After the so called sympathy payments in nineteen fifty nine,

(58:04):
I think that the Chiesa corporation thought, or at least hoped,
that the people affected by the mercury poisoning would just
shut up, take that tiny bit of money, and just go.
But they didn't. This decade from nineteen fifty nine to
nineteen sixty eight is sometimes called the decade of silence
or the decade of isolation in the history of Minamata disease,

(58:25):
but that's kind of a mischaracterization. If there was silence
It wasn't from the people who were suffering from the disease.
It was from the government or the Chiesa corporation, and
also from many of the non affected citizens willfully ignoring
this massive environmental disaster. But no matter how much they

(58:48):
closed their eyes or plug their ears, the problem wouldn't
just go away. Even though the payments had been made
and the ridiculous waste cleanup program had been constructed and
no one was eating fish anymore, the disease itself didn't
go away. It appeared to be spreading, and part of
this was when doctors began to recognize congenital cases of

(59:12):
minimata disease in the early nineteen sixties. Since the early
nineteen fifties and into the nineteen sixties, rates of miscarriages,
of stillbirths, diagnoses of cerebral palsy, and other congenital defects
had soared through the roof. For example, the normal background
rate of cerebral palsy was estimated to be about zero

(59:34):
point two two point six percent, but in affected areas
that had gone up to seven point four to six percent.
What uh huh uh huh. Yeah. Doctors began to suspect
that these children had been poisoned by mercury in utero

(59:54):
and hair samples, breast milk samples, and umbilical cord samples
all supported. Another fight then happened to get these congenital
cases of Minamata disease to be recognized, and eventually they were,
but again only for those tiny payments. But throughout the
nineteen sixties, other things were happening on a national scale

(01:00:17):
that would help turn the tide for the people with
Minamata disease. So, like I said in the nineteen fifties,
especially once she'sa the corporation's role in the poisoning was
made clear. The victims of the mercury poisoning didn't receive
a whole lot of public sympathy. But in the nineteen sixties,
three other major pollution cases had come to light. Air

(01:00:41):
pollution in Yokaichi City leading to a lot of asthma
cadmium poisoning in Toyama Prefecture, and the second Minimata disease
in Nigata Prefecture north of Tokyo. So it was like
basically Minamata take two from another factory, also leading to
metal mercury poisoning. These three, along with the brickery poisoning

(01:01:05):
in Minamata are called the Big four pollution cases, and
several lawsuits had already begun for the other three through
in the nineteen sixties, which then gave hope to the
people affected by Minimata disease that maybe they could finally
get some small piece of justice. And in nineteen sixty eight,
the government announced their official findings that the Chiso Corporation

(01:01:29):
was responsible for producing the waste that led to widespread
metal mercury poisoning in and around Minamata. And it was
only in this same year, in nineteen sixty eight, twelve
years after the disease was first recognized, that the Chiso
Corporation finally stopped dumping mercury into the sea outside Minamata.

(01:01:56):
They did it for twelve years.

Speaker 3 (01:02:00):
They continued to pay people right, but said, oh, we
put this pollution cleaner upper and so, if and so,
there could not possibly be a case after nineteen sixty
once we built this thing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
Aaron. Uh huh. As twelve years of knowingly poisoning human
beings like that was the price of progress. I it's
very hard.

Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
These sympathy payments were not seen as like accountability or responsibility.
They were just damage control, like how much money do
we need to throw at this? What's the least amount
of money we can throw at this to make the
problem go away?

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Right? That's I feel like what it always is.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
And the people impacted by the disease were not going
to accept that anymore. With these other pollution events and
the incredible grassroots work done by people such as Ishimurdre Michiko,
who's the person who wrote the book Paradise in the
Say of Sorrow, which is, by the way, one of
the best books I've ever read. I think like it

(01:03:19):
was absolutely her writings are so beautiful and so impactful,
and it is I just want everyone to read it.
It is unbelievable. And also the work of several photographers
like Kuwabara, Sheisei, Shiota Takeshi, Miyamoto Shigemi, and also Eugene

(01:03:41):
and Eileen Smith who helped to bring Minamata disease to
wider attention and the struggle for recognition by the company
as to what they did. And I also want to
especially shout out to learn this in the research for
this episode, that Eugene and Eileen Smith so who brought
this international recognition to Minimata disease. There's actually a new

(01:04:04):
movie called Minamata that came out in twenty twenty, but
I couldn't find it streaming anywhere yet. About Eugene Smith,
who was a photographer for Life who basically invented the
editorial photo essay, and his an alien's book is titled
Minamata is beautiful and incredible and it's like groundbreaking.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
Anyway, all this is to say is that by the
time that one hundred and twelve patients and family members
had filed a suit against the company in nineteen sixty nine,
they had a lot more public support than they previously had.
And it took a few years, but eventually they did
see success in court. It wasn't perfect, but it did

(01:04:52):
force the Chiso Corporation to pay more, and it also
held them responsible legally for the poisoning. It legally said
that they had shown negligence in dumping between two hundred
and twenty four to six hundred tons of mercury estimated.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
That is not only massive amounts, but a massive range
that is terrifying.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Right, So two hundred and twenty four is definitely like
those are not the Chiesa Corporation's estimations, by the way,
but it is thought to be at at least two
hundred and twenty four. That's And so when you said
that thing about the one drop of mercury from or
like that little bit of mercury from a thermometer matter, Yeah, yeah,

(01:05:40):
but there would still be a certification committee. And this
committee excluded a lot of people who had less severe symptoms,
like who didn't display the classic methal mercury poisoning symptoms.
But still it was a big step forward. It gave
the people who had minimata disease and their families some

(01:06:02):
relief and a sense of dignity. It allowed them to
not fight constantly to get the Chisee Corporation to acknowledge
that what they did was wrong, but to actually then
have the power to say, Okay, yes, what you did
was wrong. Now what can we do? What can you
do to make it at least a little bit better?

(01:06:23):
You'll never make it right, but to make it a
little bit better. And I'm going to wind down the
history here, maybe rather abruptly, but I do want to
be clear that the story of minimata disease is not over.
The Minimata Bay was declared cleaned of mercury by I

(01:06:44):
think nineteen ninety four, But today many of those with
congenital Minimata disease are at an age where they need
increasing amounts of support and care, and their parents, who
have typically provided that care, are also aging and less
physically able to do that. Many people are still unregistered.

(01:07:07):
They haven't been able to get certified by these committees
and so they don't have any payments from the Chiso
Corporation to help them with their medical issues. And also
many people are still unsatisfied with the inaction and lack
of accountability from the government and have continued to fight
for recognition. In total, two two hundred and sixty five

(01:07:31):
people have been officially certified, of whom one thousand, seven
hundred and eighty four have died and ten thousand have
received financial compensation from CHISO. More recently, it has been
suggested that calling Minimata disease a disease rather than a

(01:07:51):
criminal poisoning hides the truth. It doesn't place the responsibility
at the feet necessarily at the Chiso Corporation. The history
of this criminal mercury poisoning by the chase of corporation
in and around Minamata has led to the creation of
an entire field of study. It has inspired plays, poems,

(01:08:14):
and songs. It was impactful in the democratization of Japan.
It helped turn the tide for corporate accountability, and it
revealed this power of grassroots movements. And we cannot afford
to ignore or forget what happened in Minamata because it's
going to keep happening. Maybe it won't be methyl mercury poisoning,

(01:08:39):
although it probably will also be that, and there definitely
have been instances of mercury pollution since Minamata, but there's
also a good chance it could be something similar, Like
what about climate change and the large scale destruction of
our planet? What is the true cost of progress? There's

(01:09:00):
a great quote from the book Minamata by Eugene and
Eileen Smith. The morality that pollution is criminal only after
legal conviction is the morality that causes pollution. This is
as relevant today as when it was first published back
in nineteen seventy five. Like it's I can't emphasize enough

(01:09:25):
how so many corporations just are not being held accountable
for what they're doing. To the planet, and so I
really really encourage everyone to learn more about this, about Minamata.
Read Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow by Isshi Murde Michiko,

(01:09:46):
or Minamata by Timothy George, or the photo essay book
by Eugene and Eileen Smith, or watch the documentary Minimata
the Victims in Their World, because there is so so
much more to the story than what I've gone through here.
But anyway, I think Aaron that I'm ready for you
to tell me what's going on with mercury and mercury

(01:10:08):
poisoning today.

Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
I would love to after the break. So I try

(01:10:40):
always in these sections to talk about numbers, right, like
in this case, it would be do people still get
mercury poisoning? How many? I couldn't find numbers on this
errand I mean the only number I could find I
found a couple. We'll still talk numbers. Don't worry. The

(01:11:00):
World Health Organization estimates that in subsistence fishing communities between
one and a half to seventeen, which is a huge
range of every one thousand children have some kind of
cognitive impact because of the consumption of mercury contaminated fish.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Yeah, I don't know that number is from the World
Health Organization like Mercury fact Sheet website. I don't know
exactly where that number came from, but that's the number
that they cite. If we look at the potential for
occupational exposure, which we know is great in certain industries,

(01:11:44):
especially in artisanal and small scale gold mining. I found
a paper from Environmental Health Perspectives from twenty fourteen that
was a review on the health effects of mercury in
in these artisanal and small scale gold mining communities. They
cited that globally, fifteen million people participate in this type

(01:12:10):
of gold mining across seventy different countries, which is a
way bigger industry than I realized. And they didn't have
numbers like what percentage of people have signs of mercury
poisoning or anything like that, but they did say that
in this paper was kind of a review of papers

(01:12:31):
that have looked into it, and mercury exposure at very
high levels is found and causing potential health problems. So
it's still not numbers, but at least you get a
sense of the potential scale. But the thing is that
it's not just occupational exposure right, And it's not just

(01:12:52):
subsistence farming communities. Everyone is exposed to mercury. If you've
ever eaten a fish or a shellfish, if you've ever
eaten grain, you've probably been exposed. It's everywhere. So what
I want to focus on instead is how much mercury
are we talking about in the environment and where is
this mercury coming from. So I mentioned at the very

(01:13:16):
very top, like three hours ago in this episode that
mercury is found naturally in the Earth's crust, and there
is a natural mercury cycle where mercury is released from
things like geothermal vents, from volcanic activity, from biomass that's
burned during fires. This happens normally, and then this mercury

(01:13:39):
is released into the atmosphere. It's deposited in the soils
or the oceans or the waterways, where it of course
can become methylated and it can become part of the
biomass or become part of the soil deposits and eventual
fossil fuels, et cetera. Right, that's a natural cycle, like
the water cycle, the carbon dioxide cycle cycles. But just

(01:14:02):
like the carbon dioxide cycle, the amounts of mercury currently
in our atmosphere and being released into our atmosphere to
become a part of this active cycle rather than trapped
beneath the Earth's crust, are vastly higher than they have
been ever because of humans. Unsurprisingly, the sources of increased

(01:14:30):
mercury concentrations in the atmosphere are anthropogenic. So let's put
some numbers on it. If you check out the EPA website,
which reports data from the US and all of the
industries that report mercury emissions and all other emissions to
the US, the EPA has reported a seventy three percent
decrease in airborne emissions of mercury from two thousand and

(01:14:52):
seven to twenty nineteen, which, if you look at that
on a national level, you're like, that's awesome, that's a
huge decrease. But the thing about something like mercury or
carbon dioxide is that we can't look at things like
environmental pollution on a country or a national level. This
is a global phenomenon with global consequences because mercury released

(01:15:16):
into the atmosphere can travel thousands of miles before being
deposited via rainfall into our soils and waters, where it
can continue to travel throughout the water cycle across the globe,
be methylated by bacteria uptaken by plants enter our food chain.
Those fish can then travel across the globe, and then
once a fish is caught for consumption, it can be

(01:15:38):
shipped anywhere around the world.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
So this is a global issue. So how are we
doing globally? A UN report from twenty eighteen estimated about
twenty two hundred tons that's two two hundred tons of
global emissions of mercury in twenty fifteen. This is an

(01:16:03):
increase of twenty percent from twenty ten.

Speaker 2 (01:16:08):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
Okay, when we look at what the contributors are, coal
burning and other fossil fuel burning accounts for about twenty
four percent of all of the total global emissions. The
largest overall percentage, thirty seven point seven percent, is contributed

(01:16:29):
by artisanal and small scale gold mining. So this presents
issues not only for the people who are being exposed
to this mercury vapor during that small scale gold mining,
but also on a large scale as well. And overall,
human activities have increased the total atmospheric mercury concentrations by

(01:16:50):
four hundred and fifty percent from pre industrial levels.

Speaker 2 (01:16:57):
It's very difficult to wrap your brain around.

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
Really is because just like with climate change and carbon dioxide,
the amount of mercury that we've already put into the environment,
the atmosphere, the soils, the waters, it hasn't made it
all into the food chain yet, so decreasing our emissions
now will still take years to actually show like a
beneficial effect or a decrease in total mercury. Yeah, so

(01:17:22):
it's it's a lot. It's such a bigger issue than
I realized. Erin, I had no idea that there was
so much mercury being released by things. I didn't I
didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
I mean I didn't either, And I like, you could
do an entire podcast, multiple seasons on mercury, ye for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
Speaking of too much to cover a whole topic I
didn't even get into, which I'll just very briefly mention
is something we actually touched on what feels like a
million years ago in our Vaccines episode in season two,
and that's thymerisol. So thy ma is a mercury compound

(01:18:03):
that is an additive that's been used in various multidose
vaccine viols as a preservative. Mercury has been used as
so many things antiseptic, antimicrobial, and so thimerisol is used
as a preservative to prevent contamination when somebody has to
introduce multiple needles into viols multiple times to draw up

(01:18:25):
vaccine doses. So thymerisol is ethyl mercury, or at least
it's broken down into ethyl mercury in our bodies, so
it's an organic mercury compound, but it is not methyl mercury,
which is what we find in fish. For example, methyl

(01:18:45):
mercury is one carbon atom and three hydrogens bound to mercury.
Ethyl mercury is two carbon atoms five hydrogens. So back
in like nineteen ninety nine, the American Account of Pediatrics
recommended in the US reducing or eliminating the use of
thymerisol in vaccines in kids because of data about the

(01:19:09):
accumulation of methyl mercury in tissues and they thought that
for some kids of certain sizes, the dosages would exceed
methyl mercury like recommended safe dosages. So in the US,
the UK, the EU, in a lot of places, thymerisol

(01:19:31):
isn't really used in childhood vaccines at all. It's been
eliminated since about two thousand and four, but it is
still an important preservative in vaccines and other parts of
the world. It's still used in some vaccines in the US.
But this data, importantly was not from ethyl mercury. It
was from methyl mercury. And it turns out that ethyl mercury,

(01:19:52):
once we studied it, is eliminated from the body a
lot more readily than methyl mercury is, so it doesn't
actually accumulate late the same way. And so since then,
because of all this controversy surrounding thymerisol, there have been
a lot of large scale epidymiological studies, none of which
have shown major or long term neurodevelopmental effects of thymraisol

(01:20:16):
in vaccines. There's a lot more to that story, but
that's all. I wanted to just mention that it exists,
and it's a different form of mercury than what we
find in fish, and that than what causes minimata disease,
for example.

Speaker 2 (01:20:32):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
So that's mercury, or at least some small slices of it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
I was gonna say, we covered I mean, I feel
like we covered a lot of ground, but there's still
a lot out there.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
There's a we we broke the thermometer and just spilled
a few drops out and there's a lot left in there.

Speaker 2 (01:20:50):
There we go, Okay, anyways, clean that, Clean that up though,
clean it up and.

Speaker 1 (01:20:54):
Don't vacuum it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:55):
Sources sources I pretty much have already mentioned mine, but
I will briefly just go through again the titles, so
Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow, Minamata, Pollution and the
Struggle for Democracy and post war Japan, Toxic Archipelago, A

(01:21:15):
History of Industrial Disease in Japan, and then Minimata and
then again that Mercury History of Quicksilver book.

Speaker 1 (01:21:23):
I had a number of different sources, a lot of
which go into way more detail than I did on
the specific mechanisms of the toxicity of mercury. So if
you'd like to read a lot more, we'll list all
of our sources on our website, this podcast with kill
you dot Com under the episodes tap we Sure Will.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
I wanted to give a huge thank you and shout
out to Emily who helped me with these sources for
Minamata Disease. They were like so helpful, so I appreciate
it so much. It was so great to email back
in Worth with you.

Speaker 1 (01:22:01):
Thank you also to Bloodmobile for providing the music for
this episode and all of our episodes.

Speaker 2 (01:22:06):
And thank you to the Exactly Right Network, of whom
we are a proud member.

Speaker 1 (01:22:10):
And thank you to you listeners. We hope that you
found this very long episode enjoyable.

Speaker 2 (01:22:17):
Yeah, and also a shout out to our patrons. Yeah,
really really appreciate you.

Speaker 1 (01:22:23):
We love amazing so much.

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
Yeah. Okay, Well, until next time, wash your hands you
feel the animals