A new legally binding treaty, entitled the Minamata Convention, to reduce mercury poisoning on a global scale has been adopted into international law.
Minamata is a region in Japan where many local people were poisoned in the mid-20th century, after eating mercury-contaminated seafood from Minamata Bay.
Mercury poisoning is known to have some serious effects on human health, ranging from problems like impaired thyroid and liver function, to irritability, tremors, impaired vision, memory loss and cardiovascular problems.
Since the issues surrounding Minamata Bay, mercury poisoning has since been known as Minamata disease.
Since the Minamata incident in the 1950s, the region has remodeled itself as an eco-city, which receives international recognition of its wide range of recycling and environmental programs.
However, the Minamata disease still affects many people worldwide as can be seen in Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (AGSM) in Africa.
Studies have shown that the effects of mercury not only affect women, but also their unborn children as mercury passes through the breast milk and/or the placenta.
“Women and children make up 30-50 per cent of the workforce in small scale gold mining in Africa, which due to the current ‘gold rush’ is leading to increased use and pollution with mercury,” said South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Environment and Water Rejoice Mabudafhasi.
In the gold-mining process, mercury is commonly used to extract secondary gold.
Small-scale gold-mining and coal-fired power stations represent the biggest source of mercury pollution worldwide.
Miners inhale mercury during smelting, and mercury run-off into rivers and streams contaminates fish, the food chain and people downstream.
However, due to the Minamata Convention, several countries including Japan and South-Africa and Tanzania have signed the treaty to minimise mercury in their regions.
“With the signing of the Minamata Convention on Mercury we will be going a long way in protecting the world forever from the devastating health consequences from mercury,” says World Health Organisation Director-General Dr Margaret Chan.
Under the provisions of the Minamata Convention, developed under United Nations sponsorship, governments have agreed on a range of mercury-containing products whose production, import and export will be ban
ned by 2020.
The Convention also promotes the clean-up of mercury contaminated areas, involving local civil society organisations.
Other plans from the Convention include banning immediate trade of mercury, protecting women’s health from mercury use in AGSM and promoting an ambitious, universal, sustainable development goal.
Plans will be drawn up by several countries within three years of the treaty entering into force to reduce, and if possible eliminate, mercury.
