Minamata Disease Minamata Disease: When Industrial Pollution Became a Human Tragedy Have you ever heard of Minamata Disease ? It is one of the most important — and heartbreaking — examples of how environmental toxins can profoundly impact human health and entire communities. The Minamata Incident In the 1950s and 1960s, residents of Minamata, a coastal town in Japan, began developing severe neurological symptoms. These included numbness in the limbs, difficulty walking, muscl