What we pollute is not just the environment but also what we eat

Human beings are in the top of the pyramid of food chain. We absorb water and nutrition from many kinds of foods such as vegetables, meats, and fishes. Recently, you can see many foods especially industrialized foods with signs, “organic” and “Genetic modification (GM)- free.” People sometimes prefer them to ones without such signs. It is possible for human beings to get something good for our health from foods but at the same time, it is also possible for us to be polluted by foods because of our position in food chain.

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Minamata disease is known as an example of food chain story. The symptoms of Minamata disease are numbness in hands and feet and damage to hearing and listening. It was discovered in Minamata city, which is in south part of Japan, in 1956. At the beginning, people were afraid of this disease because their causes and mechanisms were not clear. Finally it was found that people ate fish and shellfish poisoned by mercury which was contained by factory effluence.

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　 Food composes our body. We get what we need to live from food and other living creatures. In the case of Minamata disease, people got big and bad effects from food because we are at the top of food chain and poisons were condensed when they ate. This case shows that environmental pollution is a bigger problem than we expect. The pollution of the environment can eventually come back to human beings, those who pollute the environment, as food pollution and our health problem.