[An appraisal on the judgements of the Kumamoto Minamata Disease Certification Commission]

Medical records of 3,870 applicants living near the Shiranui sea coast who had been examined from August 1975 to April 1981 by the Committee on Certification of Minamata Disease were analyzed from the statistical point of view. The author analyzed the pattern of signs and reevaluated the applicants' records. Three hundred forty applicants (8.8%) were certified to have Minamata disease by the Committee on Certification of Minamata Disease. By application of the present criteria presented by the Japanese Environmental Agency in 1977 to the records, 947 inhabitants (27.9%) were judged likely to have Minamata disease. The author concluded that the certification of the patients of Minamata disease by the Committee was inconsistent with the results of applying the present criteria to the data and that the number of patients certified by the Committee to have Minamata disease was too low.