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Why did it happen? The Chisso factory did not cooperate with the investigation team from Kumamoto University because it knew that the source of the contamination that caused the disease was its waste water. So from September 1958, The Chisso factory dumped its waste into the Minamata River instead of dumping it into the Hyakken Harbour because of the investigators’ suspicions. The Chisso factory’s director conducted his own experiment on the factory’s wastewater by feeding it to a healthy cat in its cat food. 78 days later, the cat exhibited 400 symptoms of the Minamata disease and confirmed that it was organic mercury poisoning. The company did not reveal what it had found but instead ordered the director to stop investigating. On the 4th of July 1970, before dieing of cancer, Hajime Hosokawa (the Chisso factory’s director who tested the waste water on the cat) decided to confess about all the doings of the Chisso factory that led to the worsening of the Minamata disease. The factory’s manager, Eiichi Nishida then finally admitted that the company put profit ahead of safety.

 But the company wasn’t the only one who worsened the situation of the Minamata disease. After a survey in 1960 that revealed the Minamata disease had spread and gotten worse, the government did nothing in response to it and left the community thinking that the Minamata disease had been resolved. The government and the company did little to prevent the pollution while cat, dog, pig and human deaths continued over more than 30 years.

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