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”Minamata disease" in the people of Minamata Bay in Japan proved to bemercury
poisoning from eating fish caught from waters contaminated by a plastics plant
which used (: mercury compound in its processing. Fifty |ndu5tndl plants
un
_Jopar}
had been designated as in need of supervision “against possuble contammahon o
river or sea water with methyl mercury,” according to the Japan Times, December
_
19, 1968. The Water Quality Council, an advisory council to Wataro
tor General of the Economic Planning Agency, selected the plants and specuca
y
recommended that “the methyl mercury concentration in river or sea water into
.
which plant wastes are discharged should not exceed 0.01 ppm. . . . The move .IS
aimed at preventing a recurrence of Minamata disease outbreaks Wh|Ch occurred ln
Kumamoto and Niigata prefectures."
.
.
_
.
—
if
they may produce eggs Which contain methyl me1 cu1 y. It 15 not yet known
this type of conversion takes place in the human intestine [54].
d
The classic description of the importance of water to the evolut10n an
maintenance of life is that of Lawrence ]. Henderson in The Fitness of the En—
{‘
uimnment, rst published in 1913. “If douth remam,” said Henderson, let a
search be made for any Other substance which, however slightly, can cla1mtO
rival water as the milieu of simple organisms, as the milieu interieur of all hv—
62
An Uncommon Friend