The town of Minamata, near the southern tip of Japan's Kyushu Island, gave its name to one of the most notorious examples of environmental contamination known. Minamata disease is really alkylmercury poisoning, caused by eating food such as fish or grain contaminated with mercury or its derivatives. At Minamata people were poisoned when they ate large quantities of methylmercury-contaminated fish. Often the victims were the poorest members of society, who could not afford to stop eating the cheap fish known to be affected by effluent discharged from the local chemical company. The first victims were reported in 1956; before that, cats were seen moving strangely, sometimes flinging themselves into the sea, and birds were observed flying awkwardly or even falling out of the sky.

The Chisso Company, a leading chemical manufacturer, produced acetaldehyde by passing acetylene gas across an inorganic mercury catalyst, leaving methylmercury as a by-product...