Thursday, November 10, 2005

Oiishi mizu baby, oiishi mizu...

An update for Sharon:

"From 1950s to 1960, Japan enjoyed technological revolution, modernization and rapid economic growth. At the same time pollutants discharged by large industries caused many disabling conditions among citizens and this became major social issue.

In 1955, arsenic milk poisoning in Morinaga milk, and in 1956 in Minamata disease due to mercury poisoning drew public attention. This was followed by “Itai-Itai” disease in Toyama prefecture caused by discharged water by mining companies and asthma due to air pollution from Yokkaichi oil refining industries and so forth which caused disabling conditions among many citizens."

From Disability Movement, Trends in Major Disability Specific Organizations. http://www.dinf.ne.jp/doc/english/resource/z00009/z0000903.htm

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Comforting. Thanks. Perhaps we should all just give up on water and drink only alcohol.

You killed the little man the Geoff sama!

6:40 AM  
Blogger Geoff said...

nooooooooooooo!

4:53 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maybe the most interesting thing about the milk being poisoned was the fact that there existed a coinciding campaign to discourage breastfeeding. In Japan at that time, breastfeeding was shown as being unhealthy for babies; the campaign then encouraged people to feed their babies cow-milk, which as you may guess, had disasterous consequences.

7:33 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home