Kepone Factory

This song is about the general culture of large organisations worldwide who make damaging products, who harm people/animals/environments with these products and then, after years of denying and in many cases continuing to make and release the products, will offer paltry 'compensation' to the victims (A Trans-Am that you'll never drive). When the victims, quite rightly, do not believe this compensates them fully, they are unable to find help through the courts or the governments, as the world is run by the type of large corporation who make these products, and if the governments were to attempt to prosecute the corporations, the corps woould undoubtably move to more 'sympathetic' countries, thus damaging the original country's economy, which damages property prices and the motor industry, which as we all know is far more important than the well-being of its people. The main subject matter of the song is the pestacide Kepone (as described above by Riot), but the town of Minamata is mentioned in the choruses - Minamata is a town in Japan which saw the first outbreaks of Minamata disease (or Dancing Cat Syndrome) caused by the flooding of Minimata's bay with poisonous Methyl Mercury by the Chisso Chemical Corporation. This methyl mercury was a by-product of the substance Acetaldehyde made in their nearby factory. The mercury was absorbed into the sea creatures and fish in the bay, and was then passed on to the people of Minamata through the food they ate (their main source of food was local seafood). This poisoning went on for nearly 40 years, during which time many people died and many others were left mutilated and disabled. When the source of the poisoning was determined as the Chisso factory, Chisso initially denied the allegations, then said that they were now filtering the waste water and that the mercury was no longer being washed into the bay. This was completely untrue - Chisso built a new outlet into the river, downstream from where the amount of mercury was being monitored - the monitors showed no mercury in the water coming from the OLD outlet, but just as much was being pumped into the bay. The government of Japan ignored this for a massive 17 years after the first cases of Minamata disease - 12 years after it was recognised and 37 years after the factory initially started dumping the product, and the government of Kumamoto prefecture took no action even after it had conducted a test on the hair of people living near the sea and found abnormally high levels of mercury. 1800 people have died as a direct result of this disease, 2300 have been identified as victims, along with many more who undoubably were never diagnosed (in the early days of the disease there was a lot of stigma attached to it) and even now people are having a lot of trouble getting meager amounts of 'compensation' for what has ruined their lives and the lives of countlesss generations to come (the disease also has congenital effects). Sorry about the rant...

Turning people into Bonsai trees.....