A factory's wastewater poisoned a bay, a food chain, and a generation of children
From the 1930s to the 1960s, a chemical plant in Minamata, Japan, dumped mercury-laced wastewater into the bay. The mercury concentrated up the food chain into local fish, and thousands who ate them developed severe neurological damage, with the heaviest harm falling on infants exposed in the womb whose mothers showed no symptoms themselves. The outcry helped drive Japan's first modern environmental protection laws.