Analysis of Mercury of Fishes and Soils of Agano River

The analysis of mercury was carried out to clear the cause of occurence of poisoned patients caused by organic mercury around the Agano river. The mercury content was estimated photometrically from the mercury dithizonate which was isolated from dithizon extract of oxidative degradation product of samples such as soils, fishes and waters. It was found that the soils obtained near the draining exit of Shyowa Denko and Nippon Gas Kagaku were contained high amount of mercury, whereas the mercury was not detected clearly in any waters. Some fishes were also found to keep the high concentration of the total mercury and organic mercury.