Posted on 05/08/2010 4:32:50 PM PDT by decimon
Japanese researchers said Friday they had found high mercury levels in residents of the dolphin-hunting town of Taiji, featured in the Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove", but no cases of related illness.
The toxic heavy metal is concentrated in the food chain and can be absorbed by humans when they eat predator species such as dolphin, whose meat has been served in shops and, in the past, school lunches in Japan.
A survey of some 1,000 Taiji residents found high mercury levels in the hair of some, but found no-one who had fallen ill as a result, Koji Okamoto, the director of the National Institute for Minamata Disease, told AFP.
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Methyl mercury was behind Japan's worst industrial pollution disaster, in which a factory dumped the toxin into the bay of Minamata in southwestern Japan from the 1950s, poisoning the marine habitat and the local population.
Victims suffered spasms, seizures and loss of sensation and motor control that impaired their ability to walk and speak. Babies were born with nervous system damage and other mental and physical deformities.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Ping.
Shouldn’t reporting include the numerical Hg levels? High? How high?
There’s a big difference between ingesting elemental mercury and ingesting mercury-based organic compounds.
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