Japan. Doctors treating the families of miners at the Kamioke Mine (which would later be used a century later for the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector) diagnosed itai-itai (ouch-ouch) disease, affecting 98% of women. This disease causes bone pain and fragility. In 1946, Noboru Hagino began seriously studying the disease scientifically, and by superimposing the epidemiological and hydrological maps of the area, he discovered the cause in the mine. It was cadmium, which flows downstream in the hydrogeological system, is absorbed by rice plants, and ingested by the inhabitants, where it binds to calcium in their bones. Hagino made his findings public only in 1961. In 1972, the mining company compensated the 178 survivors. Cadmium will remain in the collective imagination of the Japanese for generations, so much so that to destroy Godzilla, the ultimate weapon is cadmium missiles…
