Mercury poisoning has occurred in a number of places around the world. Sometimes as a result of mining and sometimes as a result of industrial pollution and sometimes because it is present in the local environment. Some examples of places where methyl-mercury poisoning has occurred are: Minamata Bay in Japan in 1956 where people got sick from eating contaminated fish and shellfish from the bay area (contaminated by methyl-mercury). This was due to the dumping of industrial waste into the bay. Iraq in 1971 where wheat was treated with fungicide containing methyl-mercury and the wheat was used to make bread. Hundreds died as a result of the mercury poisoning.
The Amazon basin in Brazil where there was widespread mercury contamination during the 1980s to the present, of a number of communities not directly connected to mining. The mercury in the Amazon River and its tributaries in Brazil are believed to have come partly from the burning of the huge rain forest areas
