First the mink and the otter began to disappear. Then the local people started noticing something odd about the way the eagles and turkey vultures were flying overhead. One man watched his kitten walking in circles, salivating and convulsing. These were the early warning signs around 1970 that something sinister was happening at Grassy Narrows along the Wabigoon River in northwestern Ontario. The mink, the otter, the eagles and the vultures had mercury poisoning from eating contaminated fish. The cat’s brain, later analyzed, revealed full-blown Minamata disease, the twitching tremors and stumbling gait associated with extreme exposure to the heavy metal. Those details are preserved in the research papers of Dr. Masazumi Harada, a Japanese scientist who never stopped tracking the effects of mercury contamination on the people at Grassy Narrows, long after Canadian researchers closed their files.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 04:32:44 +0000
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