Governments, whether in Japan or in Canada, tend to use criteria that make it difficult to get certified as Minamata disease victims.
This article also describes documents that indicate that the government knew that the extent of mercury poisoning in the community was greater than it would acknowledge publicly.
Government mendacity and relative lack of concern for victims characterize the issue in both countries.
===start quote=== The report compared the board’s decisions in several cases with diagnoses made by Japanese experts on Minamata disease, a neurological syndrome caused by mercury poisoning, who examined the community between 1975 and 2004. It found the board recognized only 38 per cent of the cases identified by the experts, noting the discrepancies “are due to different criteria used for evaluations.” “The approach used by the Mercury Disability Board to assess whether or not an applicant has signs or symptoms consistent with mercury poisoning was designed based on the state of science and knowledge of the impact of mercury on human health in the 1980s,” it reads. ===end quote===
