Niigata Minamata disease

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (February 2022) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,219 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:第二水俣病]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|ja|第二水俣病}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Niigata Minamata disease (新潟水俣病, Niigata Minamata-byō) is a neurological syndrome caused by severe mercury poisoning. Identical in symptoms to the original outbreak of Minamata disease in Kumamoto Prefecture, the second outbreak in Niigata Prefecture was confirmed with the same name in 1965. The disease was caused by severe mercury poisoning, the source of which was methylmercury released in the wastewater from mercury sulfate-catalysed acetaldehyde production at the Showa Electrical Company's chemical plant in Kanose village. This highly toxic compound was released untreated into the Agano River where it bioaccumulated up the food chain, contaminating fish which when eaten by local people caused symptoms including ataxia, numbness in the hands and feet, general muscle weakness, narrowing of the field of vision and damage to hearing and speech.

A total of 690 people from the Agano River basin have been certified as patients of Niigata Minamata disease.^[1]

Since the Niigata outbreak was the second recorded in Japan and occurred in the Lower Agano River Basin, it is sometimes called Second Minamata disease (第二水俣病, Dai-ni Minamata-byō) or Agano River Organic Mercury Poisoning (阿賀野川有機水銀中毒, Agano-gawa Yūki-suigin Chūdoku). It is one of the Four Big Pollution Diseases of Japan.