Legal Action
A class action court case was brought against Showa Yokkaichi Oil and initially adjudicated in September 1970. The class was ruled to contain 544 individuals, but that number has increased over the ensuing years.
A 2008 study by researchers from the Mie University Graduate School of Medicine and the Hiroshima University Natural Science Center for Basic Research and Development indicated a 10 to 20-fold higher mortality rates as a result of COPD and asthma in the affected populations of Yokkaichi versus the general population of Mie Prefecture.
Initial attempts to alleviate the problem by raising the height of smokestacks to disperse the pollutants over a larger area proved ineffective. Eventually flue-gas desulfurization was implemented on a large scale, leading to an improvement in the health of local populace.
Yokkaichi asthma has been identified in rapidly industrializing areas in the rest of the world, including Mexico City and mainland China.
Read more about this topic: Yokkaichi Asthma
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—Philip K. Howard, U.S. lawyer. The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, pp. 186-87, Random House (1994)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)