In 1950s, inhabitants of the seaside town of Minamata, on Kyushu island in Japan, noticed strange behavior in animals. Cats would exhibit nervous tremors, dance and scream. Within a few years this was observed in other animals; birds would drop out of the sky. Symptoms were also observed in fish, an important component of diet, especially for the poor. When human symptoms started to be noticed around 1956 an investigation began. Fishing was officially banned in 1957. It was found that the Chisso Corporation, a petrochemical company and maker of plastics such as vinyl chloride, had been discharging heavy metal waste into the sea. They used mercury compounds as catalysts in their syntheses. It is believed that about 5,000 people were killed and perhaps 50,000 have been to some extent poisoned by mercury. Mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan, is now known as Minamata disease.
A book by Jane Hightower, Diagnosis Mercury: Money, Politics and Poison, published in 2008, is largely about humans exposed to mercury through eating large predatory fish such as swordfish, shark, king mackerel, large tuna, etc.[13][14][15]
