Japan industry fights 'Minamata' costs as mercury trade ban looms
Source: Reuters, Date: , 2014
Japan's government lobbied hard for a global pact that
limits mercury use and to name the resulting treaty after Minamata, the site of
a homegrown industrial disaster from the 1950s when the toxic metal poured into
a river, poisoning thousands. But a year after the Minamata Convention on
Mercury was agreed in southwestern Japan, Japanese industries from smelters to
cement makers are digging in to fight storage costs and emission curbs the
still-pending treaty would impose. The international pact, so far only ratified
by the United States as other nations take time to iron out domestic
regulations, would require countries to ban nearly all exports of the poisonous
material.