Niigata Minamata Disease
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. Since the Niigata outbreak was the second recorded in Japan and occurred in t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Toxicology
Toxicology is a scientific discipline, overlapping with biology, chemistry, pharmacology, and medicine, that involves the study of the adverse effects of chemical substances on living organisms and the practice of diagnosing and treating exposures to toxins and toxicants. The relationship between dose and its effects on the exposed organism is of high significance in toxicology. Factors that influence chemical toxicity include the dosage, duration of exposure (whether it is acute or chronic), route of exposure, species, age, sex, and environment. Toxicologists are experts on poisons and poisoning. There is a movement for evidence-based toxicology as part of the larger movement towards evidence-based practices. Toxicology is currently contributing to the field of cancer research, since some toxins can be used as drugs for killing tumor cells. One prime example of this is ribosome-inactivating proteins, tested in the treatment of leukemia. The word ''toxicology'' () is a neocla ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kanose, Niigata
was a town located in Higashikanbara District, Niigata Prefecture, Japan. In 2003, the town had an estimated population of 2,753 and a population density of 10.68 per km². The total area was 257.69 km². On April 1, 2005, Kanose, along with the town of Tsugawa, and the villages of Kamikawa and Mikawa (all from Higashikanbara District) were merged to create the town of Aga. In 1964, a chemical factory in the village released methylmercury into the Agano River and caused Niigata Minamata disease 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 dis .... Dissolved municipalities of Niigata Prefecture Aga, Niigata {{Niigata-geo-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hajime Hosokawa
was director of the company hospital attached to the Chisso Corporation's chemical factory in Minamata, Kumamoto prefecture, Japan. He was the first doctor to discover and treat patients of the massive outbreak of mercury poisoning that occurred in the town, which became known as Minamata disease. Timeline * 23 September 1901, born in Mikame village, Nishiuwa-gun, Ehime prefecture. * 1927 Graduates from Tokyo University medical department. * 1936 Joins and is attached to the hospital of the Agochi factory on the Korean peninsular. * 1941 Appointed director of the Minamata factory hospital. * 1941 Assumes a new post as a field surgeon in Burma. * 1947 Demobilizes and returns to work at the Minmata factory hospital. * 1950 The occupying forces order the dissolution of the zaibatsu, including the Japan Nitrogenous Fertilizer Company. A successor company, is founded. * 1 May 1956 Reports the discovery of an "epidemic of an unknown disease of the central nervous system" to the Mina ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kumamoto University
, abbreviated to ''Kumadai'' (熊大), is a Japanese national university located in Kumamoto, Kumamoto Prefecture in the Kyushu region of Japan. It was established on May 31, 1949, at which time the following institutions were subsumed into it; Kumamoto Teachers College (established in 1874), Kumamoto Pharmaceutical College (1885), the Fifth High School (1887), Kumamoto Medical College (1896), and Kumamoto Technical College (1906). Currently, the university has seven faculties and eight graduate schools with a total of around 10,000 Japanese students and 500 international students from Asia, North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Oceania. It is involved in the Top Global University Project, selected by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), which aims to improve education in Japanese universities in order to increase global recognition and compete with the rest of the world. History The university was chartered by the Sho ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Organic Compound
In chemistry, organic compounds are generally any chemical compounds that contain carbon-hydrogen or carbon-carbon bonds. Due to carbon's ability to catenate (form chains with other carbon atoms), millions of organic compounds are known. The study of the properties, reactions, and syntheses of organic compounds comprise the discipline known as organic chemistry. For historical reasons, a few classes of carbon-containing compounds (e.g., carbonate salts and cyanide salts), along with a few other exceptions (e.g., carbon dioxide, hydrogen cyanide), are not classified as organic compounds and are considered inorganic. Other than those just named, little consensus exists among chemists on precisely which carbon-containing compounds are excluded, making any rigorous definition of an organic compound elusive. Although organic compounds make up only a small percentage of Earth's crust, they are of central importance because all known life is based on organic compounds. Living t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Parts Per Million
In science and engineering, the parts-per notation is a set of pseudo-units to describe small values of miscellaneous dimensionless quantities, e.g. mole fraction or mass fraction. Since these fractions are quantity-per-quantity measures, they are pure numbers with no associated units of measurement. Commonly used are parts-per-million (ppm, ), parts-per-billion (ppb, ), parts-per-trillion (ppt, ) and parts-per-quadrillion (ppq, ). This notation is not part of the International System of Units (SI) system and its meaning is ambiguous. Overview Parts-per notation is often used describing dilute solutions in chemistry, for instance, the relative abundance of dissolved minerals or pollutants in water. The quantity "1 ppm" can be used for a mass fraction if a water-borne pollutant is present at one-millionth of a gram per gram of sample solution. When working with aqueous solutions, it is common to assume that the density of water is 1.00 g/mL. Therefore, it is common to equat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Niigata University
is a national university in Niigata, Niigata Prefecture, Japan. It was established in 1949 and has its major origins in Niigata Medical College (established in 1922) and in Niigata Higher School (established in 1919). It is one of the largest Japanese national universities on the Sea of Japan. The university comprises nine faculties and seven graduate schools (as of April 2010). The student enrollment is about 12,000. History The oldest origin of the university was Kyoritsu Hospital (a temporary hospital) founded in 1870. It was reestablished in 1873 as Private Niigata Hospital, which became a prefectural hospital in 1877. In 1901 five national medical schools were established in Chiba, Sendai, Okayama, Kanazawa and Nagasaki. The municipal and prefectural governments of Niigata demanded a national medical school from the Ministry of Education, but the plan was deferred because of the Russo-Japanese War. Later in 1910 Niigata Medical School was founded, and the former Niigata ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Four Big Pollution Diseases Of Japan
The were a group of man-made diseases all caused by environmental pollution due to improper handling of industrial wastes by Japanese corporations. The first occurred in 1912, and the other three occurred in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the moniker of 'four' becoming the prominent way to refer to the events, Minamata disease and Niigata Minamata disease were the same pollution disease spread by the same poison, just in different locations. Due to lawsuits, publicity, and other actions against the corporations responsible for the pollution, as well as the creation of the Environmental Agency in 1971, increased public awareness, and changes in industrial practices, the incidence of these kinds of diseases declined after the 1970s. These cases also set precedents for private tort law and civil law in issues of compensation for technology-related mass damage which continue to have repercussions in legal cases in Japan today. Itai-itai disease Itai-itai disease first occurre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans Japanese archipelago, an archipelago of List of islands of Japan, 6852 islands covering ; the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa Island, Okinawa. Tokyo is the Capital of Japan, nation's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto. Japan is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eleventh most populous country in the world, as well as one of the List of countries and dependencies by population density, most densely populated and Urbanization by country, urbanized. About three-fourths of Geography of Japan, the c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Field Of Vision
The visual field is the "spatial array of visual sensations available to observation in introspectionist psychological experiments". Or simply, visual field can be defined as the entire area that can be seen when an eye is fixed straight at a point. The equivalent concept for optical instruments and image sensors is the field of view (FOV). In optometry, ophthalmology, and neurology, a visual field test is used to determine whether the visual field is affected by diseases that cause local scotoma or a more extensive loss of vision or a reduction in sensitivity (increase in threshold). Normal limits The normal (monocular) human visual field extends to approximately 60 degrees nasally (toward the nose, or inward) from the vertical meridian in each eye, to 107 degrees temporally (away from the nose, or outwards) from the vertical meridian, and approximately 70 degrees above and 80 below the horizontal meridian. The binocular visual field is the superimposition of the two monocul ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ataxia
Ataxia is a neurological sign consisting of lack of voluntary coordination of muscle movements that can include gait abnormality, speech changes, and abnormalities in eye movements. Ataxia is a clinical manifestation indicating dysfunction of the parts of the nervous system that coordinate movement, such as the cerebellum. Ataxia can be limited to one side of the body, which is referred to as hemiataxia. Several possible causes exist for these patterns of neurological dysfunction. Dystaxia is a mild degree of ataxia. Friedreich's ataxia has gait abnormality as the most commonly presented symptom. The word is from Greek α- negative prefix+ -τάξις rder= "lack of order". Types Cerebellar The term cerebellar ataxia is used to indicate ataxia due to dysfunction of the cerebellum. The cerebellum is responsible for integrating a significant amount of neural information that is used to coordinate smoothly ongoing movements and to participate in motor planning. Although a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mercury In Fish
The presence of mercury in fish is a health concern for people who eat them, especially for women who are or may become pregnant, nursing mothers, and young children. Fish and shellfish concentrate mercury in their bodies, often in the form of methylmercury, a highly toxic organomercury compound. This element is known to bioaccumulate in humans, so bioaccumulation in seafood carries over into human populations, where it can result in mercury poisoning. Mercury is dangerous to both natural ecosystems and humans because it is a metal known to be highly toxic, especially due to its neurotoxic ability to damage the central nervous system. In human-controlled ecosystems of fish, usually done for market production of wanted seafood species, mercury clearly rises through the food chain via fish consuming small plankton, as well as through non-food sources such as underwater sediment. Fish products have been shown to contain varying amounts of heavy metals, particularly mercury and fat- ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |