and now the world is becoming Minamata. poisoned by mercury

  Eugene Smith was one of  the few photographers I actually admired. His photographs from Minamata left me stunned.  They were haunting   images of mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan.  You can see them here.   They came back to my mind as I read  about how mercury poisoning has  now  spread out, throughout the world. Minamata disease, named after a small Japanese settlement, now promises to be go global. Create a mercury poisoned  world.

The paradigm has shifted anew in a far more dramatic way. The institute and IPEN, the global anti-toxics network, released a first-of-its-kind report Wednesday that found mercury levels in fish and human hair samples from around the world exceed guidelines set by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The report is titled “Global Mercury Hotspots.” In reality, the whole world is a hotspot.

“It was in more fish and people than I would have projected,” Evers said Monday in an interview. “The more you look into mercury, the more you find.”Global mercury hotspots. (Dastoor, AP; Larocque, Y: “Global circulation of atmospheric mercury: a modelling study”)

But mercury emissions continue to be spewed into the air from coal-fired power and plastic production in Asia, chemical plants in Europe, waste incinerators in developing countries, and artisanal small-scale gold mining in Africa, Asia, and South America. In a report this week in the online journal Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health researcher Elsie Sunderland said seawater mercury concentrations could increase 50 percent by 2050 in the major fishing waters of the North Pacific Ocean.

The level of current mercury concentration is already so high that Evers’ team found that 43 percent of Alaskan halibut samples exceeded safety standards, even if there’s only one serving a month. The percentages were 80 percent and above for swordfish from Uruguay, Pacific bluefin tuna from Japan, and albacore tuna from the Mediterranean Sea.

The vast majority of hair samples taken from people in Tanzania, Russia, Mexico, Cameroon, Cook Islands, Japan, Indonesia, and Thailand contained mercury concentrations above EPA recommendations. Another hair sample study focusing on Europeans was published this week in Environmental Health. That study suggests that a third of the 5.4 million babies born each year in the European Union come into the world with unhealthy exposures to mercury, which can cause learning disabilities that result in billions of dollars in lost economic benefit.

First, the birds tried to warn us how mercury is embedded in the ecosystem, from marsh to forest. Then the fish tried to warn us, from river to sea. Now, our very own hair is telling us how this very old toxin presents very new problems. 

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/09-4

And here is the story of the iconic photograph from Minamata.   An extraordinary story of photographic  guts and  ethics.

In 1997 a French television production company contacted the Uemura family, asking permission to use Smith's famous photograph in a documentary about the most important photographs of the 20th century, and to interview the family once again about Minamata disease and the photograph. However by this stage, 20 years after his daughter's death, Yoshio Uemura had changed his mind. He refused any interviews and disliked the idea of Tomoko's image being further exploited: "I wanted Tomoko to be laid to rest and this feeling was growing steadily", he said.

After W. Eugene Smith's death in 1978 the copyright of his Minamata photographs passed to his ex-wife Aileen Smith. Upon hearing the reaction of the Uemura family to the request of the TV company, she travelled to Minamata and met with them. She decided to return the copyright of the photograph to the family, so that they might have the right of decision regarding its use. Aileen Smith said, "This photograph would mean nothing if it did not honor Tomoko. This photograph would be a profanity if it continued to be issued against the will of Tomoko and her family. Because this was a statement about Tomoko's life, it must honor that life and by it her death."^[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomoko_Uemura_in_Her_Bath