50 years later, many victims of Japan's worst eco-disaster still struggle for redress

[bananas]

http://www.pr-inside.com/years-later-many-victims-of-r226000.htm

50 years later, many victims of Japan's worst eco-disaster still struggle for redress

2007-09-28 02:52:22 -

SHIRANUI SEA, Japan (AP) - The dawn is still only a faint glow beyond distant mountains, but fisherman Akinori Mori and his wife, Itsuko, are already hard at work on their boat, reeling in nets of squid, fish and crabs.

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Starting 50 years ago,
whole neighborhoods were poisoned by mercury-contaminated fish from these waters. Thousands of people were crippled, and hundreds died agonizing deaths. Babies were born with horrifying deformities.

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Like the Moris, Japan has never fully recovered. Indeed, the disease played a large role in creating the Japan of today. It gave birth to the Japanese environmentalist movement, and like the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown and the Union Carbide chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, it became an international cause celebre.

It forced the country to face up to the price of the industrial miracle it built out of the wreckage of World War II, encouraged other victims of such negligence to sue for redress, and forced authorities to be much more attentive to protecting the public from the mistakes of Japan Inc.

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[NNadir]

1. The worst environmental disaster in Japan involved mercury?

Does this mean they're going to ban coal?

I heard here - not that I believed it - that the worst environmental disaster in Japan's history was the spilled water at the KK nuclear plant a few months ago in the big earthquake. It wiped out Japan.

I have always thought that the worst environmental disaster in Japan's history was the firebombing of Tokyo with gelled dangerous fossil fuels, but that's just my opinion.