itai-itai disease

Some died from pneumonia and kidney disease.

They didn't know what was causing it at the time, but they called it the Itai-Itai disease, which basically means the ouch-ouch disease.

It was believed to be a microbial disease that only affected farmers of those villages, and as a result, it was largely ignored.

Around four decades later, a local doctor finally started to research it.

Then in 1979, a longterm project to replace all of the farming soil in the Jinzu basin, costing a total of 40.7 billion yen, was finally completed 33 years later in 2012.

Even though it's been more than a century, the river is still polluted with cadmium.

But better knowledge, nutrition, and treatments have helped lower the cases of Itai-Itai disease.

This is why organizations are created to help regulate and educate people of potential health risks, like the United States CPSC.