[01/02] A company dumped 20,000lb of mercury into Canadian rivers near an indigenous community. The mercury caused brain damage to the young people born subsequently in the community, which caused a high rate of brain damage and suicide: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/20/canada-mercury-poisoning-first-nations-indigenous-youth-suicides I don't know if it is possible to punish today the company which did this in the 1960s. That may be too long ago.
[02/02] But is there any way to remove the mercury from the environment, to make it safe to live in? If not, what can be done to prevent harm to future generations there?
@rms I doubt the mercury is the primary cause of the high suicide rates (since native communities in Canada tend to have much, much higher suicide rates than the general population due to numerous other factors), but there's no doubt that it's causing countless issues, and that those issues would likely compound with all of the existing factors that normally lead to increased suicide rates to further increase it. And beyond its impact to the people living there, the environmental impact of it is unfathomable. To quote the article, "A single gram of mercury is sufficient to make all fish in a 20-hectare radius unsafe for consumption" - so how much destruction will 20,000lbs cause? That's a level of environmental damage that's likely impossible to actually fix, especially after such a long period of being ignored. The animals and plants living there are likely forever posioned for countless generations to come. Even if the mercury could somehow be removed, the scars of the damage it has already caused to the wildlife and ecosystem will remain for longer than we can imagine.
