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If you were looking for the perfect place to live in the 1950s,
如果在1950年代，你想要找个适宜居住的好地方，
you couldn't do much better than Minamata in southern Japan.
日本南部的水俣就再好不过了。
It's surrounded by mountains, right next to the ocean,
水俣四面环山，正卧于海洋旁，
and there are hot springs just up the road. It was basically a paradise.
路上温泉随处可见。基本上就是一座乐园了。
Plus, if you were looking for work, and fishing wasn't your thing,
还有，如果你在找工作，却又不喜欢渔业，
there was a giant chemical manufacturing plant: the Chisso Corporation.
这里还有一所巨大的化工厂：智索株式会社。
So you had employment, idyllic scenery, and endless amounts of seafood.
所以这里有工作、田园风光以及各种海鲜。
Minamata was perfect. Except for the cats.
水俣简直完美，除了这里的猫。
One day, locals started noticing the cats were acting weird.
某天，当地人注意到这里的猫表现反常。
And it turns out, in the least shocking plot twist ever,
最令人震惊的情节转折是，事实证明，
that the chemical manufacturing company was responsible.
责任在这家化工厂。
About 30 years earlier, the Chisso Corporation had started making a chemical called acetaldehyde,
约30年前，智索株式会社开始制造一种化学品——乙醛，
a super important precursor to things like acetic acid and some plastics.
乙醛是乙酸和一些塑胶制品非常重要的前体。
The most efficient way of making acetaldehyde at the time used a particular catalyst,
那时制造乙醛最有效的方法是使用某种催化剂，
a thing to kick start the reactions.
这种催化剂可以触发化学反应。
And unfortunately for the unsuspecting residents of Minamata,
对于水俣的无辜居民来说是不幸的，
the Chisso Corporation decided to use mercury and then dump the leftovers from the reaction into the bay.
智索株式会社决定使用汞并将化学反应后的剩余残料排入海湾中。
We've known for a long time that mercury is one of the nastier elements on the periodic table,
我们一直知道汞是周期表中最难以对付的元素之一，
which is why we don't use it so much anymore, although you can still find it in old thermometers or batteries.
这也是我们不再经常使用这种元素的原因，虽然你仍可以在老式温度计和电池中发现它。
Eating plain mercury doesn't actually cause too many problems.
食用微量的汞不会真的导致过多问题。
Like, it's not great, so don't just do it, but your gut doesn't absorb too much of the metal.
吃汞还是不好的，所以不要这么做，你的内脏吸收不了过多的金属。
The Chisso Corporation wasn't dumping elemental mercury, though.
虽然智索株式会社没有倾倒单质汞。
It wasn't pure, metallic mercury.
单质汞不是纯粹的金属汞。
Heavy metals, which are elements that are mostly in the middle section of the periodic table,
重金属元素大部分排在周期表的中间部分，
can lose electrons to form positively-charged ions.
重金属可以脱掉电子形成带正电荷的离子。
When mercury does this, it forms what chemists call inorganic mercury.
当汞进行这种过程时，它会形成一种被化学家称为无机汞的物质。
And it's the ions with a positive charge of 1 or 2 that really cause problems.
正是这种带1或2正电荷的离子引发了各种问题。
Hat makers in the 1800s, for example, used a compound called mercuric nitrate to make felt for their hats.
例如1800年代，帽子制造商使用一种被称为硝酸汞的化合物为他们的帽子擀毡。
Workers would spend hours every day inhaling mercury fumes and the effects were not super awesome.
工人们每天数小时都在吸入汞气体，其影响并没有非常可怕。
Most would have severe personality changes, hallucinations, and uncontrollable shaking.
大多数工人性格大变、出现幻觉以及无法控制的颤抖。
In fact, that is where the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland came from.
事实上，这就是《爱丽丝奇境记》中疯帽子的出处。
And the Chisso Corporation in Minamata was dumping similarly toxic kinds of mercury into the water.
水俣的智索株式会社将与汞相似的有毒物质排入水中。
But the cats weren't just inhaling fumes. It was worse than that. So much worse than that.
但猫并不是仅仅吸入了气体。事实上情况更加糟糕。
And all because of a bunch of anaerobic bacteria living in the Minamata bay.
都是因为水俣湾中生存着一群厌氧细菌。
Instead of using oxygen as their main source of energy, anaerobic bacteria use sulphur.
和那些利用氧气作为它们主要能源的细菌不一样的是，厌氧细菌利用的是硫磺。
And they're not too picky about the quality of the water they're living in or the ions that might be floating around in it.
它们对所生存的水质或是浮游在它们周围的离子并不挑剔。
When the bacteria came into contact with the extra inorganic mercury at Minamata,
当细菌和水俣的额外无机汞相联系时，
they transformed it into the most poisonous form of the metal: methylmercury, which is a carbon attached to a mercury with a single positive charge.
它们将其转化为金属中最有害的形式：甲基水银，这是一种碳，它吸附在带单个正电荷的汞上。
Inorganic and organic compounds don't tend to want to mix; they're sort of like oil and water.
无机和有机化合物并不易于混合，它们就有点像油和水。
So when the original mercury ions were floating around all by themselves,
所以当原始汞离子单独漂浮在周围时，
the plants on the floor of the bay basically ignored them.
海湾面上的植物基本不理会它们。
But the methylmercury produced by the bacteria was bioavailable, meaning that the plants were able to absorb it.
但是由细菌产出的甲基水银是生物可利用性的，这意味着它们可被植物吸收。
And methylmercury is especially poisonous for humans and other animals because unlike elemental mercury,
由于和单质汞不同，甲基水银对人类和其他动物尤为有害，
it is almost entirely absorbed in the gut.
基本可以被内脏完全吸收。
Here's where it gets bad.
事情就从这里开始变得糟糕了。
Once methylmercury is in, it doesn't leave.
一旦甲基水银被吸入，它就不会离开。
And these mercury-laced plants were being eaten by fish.
这些吸入汞的植物被鱼吃掉。
The more the fish ate, the more methylmercury they accumulated in their cells.
鱼吃得越多，它们细胞中所聚集的甲基水银就越多。
So the larger they grew, the more deadly they became.
因此这些鱼越长大，就越致命。
And, of course, the biggest source of food for the cats of Minamata was fish.
当然，水俣的猫，它们的最大食物源就是鱼。
In the early 1950s, locals started seeing what looked like the cats dancing,
1950年代早期，当地人开始看到那些猫好像在跳舞一样，
which sounds kind of funny but was actually horrible.
这听起来很有趣，事实上却非常恐怖。
They would jerk around uncontrollably, making terrifying noises.
它们会不受控制的抽搐，发出恐怖的声音。
And then they would die.
之后便会死掉。
Around 1956, the human residents of Minamata started experiencing the same symptoms.
1956年左右，水俣的人类居民开始出现相同的症状。
They started flooding hospitals with numbness in their hands and feet,
患者挤满医院，他们手脚麻木、
high fever, uncontrollable flailing, and loss of sight and hearing.
发高烧、不受控制的胡乱挥舞并失明失聪。
A lot of them ended up losing consciousness and dying.
最终他们中的许多人都失去意识死亡。
Doctors and researchers launched an investigation into what they started calling Minamata Disease,
医生和研究员们开始将这种病称为水俣病并开始对这种病进行调查研究，
and by 1959, they had found the cause: methylmercury poisoning from fish.
到1959年，他们才发现病因：来自鱼体内的甲基水银中毒。
But they couldn't figure out why it was causing severe birth defects.
但是他们未查出为什么中毒会导致严重的先天缺陷。
There's a membrane called the placental barrier
有一种被称为胎盘屏障的膜
that's supposed to stop really terrible things like mercury from getting through to the fetus.
本应该将汞等可怕的物质和胎儿隔离开来。
We now know that methylmercury gets through by disguising itself as a super important component of proteins — the essential amino acid methionine.
我们现在知道了甲基水银通过将自己伪装成蛋白质的重要成分——必需的氨基酸穿过了这层保护膜。
When it gets inside the body, methylmercury binds to a different amino acid, called cysteine.
当它进入体内，甲基水银会和不同的氨基酸——半胱氨酸捆绑在一起。
And to your cells, the cysteine-methylmercury combo looks pretty much exactly like methionine.
对细胞而言，半胱氨酸-甲基水银组合就和蛋氨酸长得一样。
The thing about methionine is that it's really easily absorbed across the almost-impenetrable placental barrier,
关键是，当蛋氨酸穿过几乎无法逾越的胎盘屏障
as well as the similar barrier that's supposed to protect the brain.
以及类似本应保护大脑的屏障时，很容易被吸收。
By 1962, researchers had proved that the chemical processes used by the Chisso factory could cause the methylmercury poisoning.
1962年，研究院们证实智索株式会社所采用的化工过程可能导致甲基水银中毒。
But it wasn't until 1968, 12 years after the first victims died,
但是直到1968年，第一名受害人死去12年后，
that the Chisso Corporation stopped dumping the factory's waste water into the bay.
智索株式会社才停止将工厂的废水倾入海湾中。
The government started cleaning up the bay in 1977, and by 1997 the water was considered safe.
政府于1977年开始清理海湾，直到1997年才确认海湾水质安全。
But it'll be a long time before people start thinking of Minamata as a perfect paradise again.
但是有很长一段时间，水俣都无法再次成为人们心中的完美乐园了。
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow.
感谢收看本期科学秀。
For more on some of the worst environmental disasters ever, you can check out our video on seven of the most toxic sites in the US.
想了解更多有关最糟糕生态灾害的事件，请点击观看美国最有害地区之七的视频。
