Minamata disease is a neurological disease caused by severe mercury poisoning. Signs and symptoms include ataxia, numbness in the hands and feet, general muscle weakness, loss of peripheral vision, and damage to hearing and speech. In extreme cases, insanity, paralysis, coma, and death follow within weeks of the onset of symptoms. A congenital form of the disease affects fetuses in the womb, causing microcephaly, extensive cerebral damage, and symptoms similar to those seen in cerebral palsy.
Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) is a British-owned Indian consumer goods company headquartered in Mumbai. It is a subsidiary of the British company Unilever. Its products include foods, beverages, cleaning agents, personal care products, water purifiers and other fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs).
Kodaikanal is a hill station which is located in Dindigul district in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. Its name in the Tamil language means "The Gift of the Forest". Kodaikanal is referred to as the "Princess of Hills" and has a long history as a retreat and tourist destination.
The mining industry in India is a major economic activity which contributes significantly to the economy of India. The gross domestic product (GDP) contribution of the mining industry varies from 2.2% to 2.5% only but going by the GDP of the total industrial sector, it contributes around 10% to 11%. Even mining done on small scale contributes 6% to the entire cost of mineral production. Indian mining industry provides job opportunities to around 700,000 individuals.
Prakash Tandon (1911–2004) was one of India's most influential business leaders in the second half of the 20th century. He attained fame for his classical account of Punjabi life in the autobiographical book "Punjabi Century," the first part of a trilogy of which the next two parts were "Beyond Punjab and "Return to Punjab".
Thodur Madabusi Krishna is an Indian Carnatic vocalist, writer, activist, author and Ramon Magsaysay awardee.
Mayapuri is an industrial locality in the West Delhi district of Delhi, India. It used to be a major hub of heavy metal and small scale industries, but following government sanctions, most of the heavy metal industries moved out. The place is now a combination of light metal factories, scrap markets, and automobile service stations. In 2010, a major radiation accident took place in the scrap yards of Mayapuri.
Kodaikanal Lake, also known as Kodai Lake, is a manmade lake located in the Kodaikanal city in Dindigul district in Tamil Nadu, India. Sir Vere Henry Levinge, the then Collector of Madurai, was instrumental in creating the lake in 1863, amidst the Kodaikanal town which was developed by the British and early missionaries from USA. The lake is said to be Kodaikanal's most popular geographic landmark and tourist attraction.
Water pollution is a major environmental issue in India. The largest source of water pollution in India is untreated sewage. Other sources of pollution include agricultural runoff and unregulated small-scale industry. Most rivers, lakes and surface water in India are polluted due to industries, untreated sewage and solid wastes. Although the average annual precipitation in India is about 4000 billion cubic metres, only about 1122 billion cubic metres of water resources are available for utilization due to lack of infrastructure. Much of this water is unsafe, because pollution degrades water quality. Water pollution severely limits the amount of water available to Indian consumers, its industry and its agriculture.
Leena Nair is a British-Indian business executive who is the Global CEO of Chanel. Nair previously served as the Chief Human Resource Officer of Unilever and member of the Unilever Leadership Executive. Nair was responsible for the human capital of Unilever, which operates across multiple regulatory and labour environments spread over 190 countries. Under her leadership, Unilever has been named the number one FMCG graduate employer of choice in 54 countries. Nair is an advocate for human-centred workplaces and compassionate leadership.
Kodaikanal mercury poisoning is a proven case of mercury contamination at the hill station of Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India by Hindustan Unilever in the process of making mercury thermometers for export around the world. The exposé of the environmental abuse led to the closure of the factory in 2001 and opened up a series of issues in India such as corporate liability, corporate accountability and corporate negligence.
Greenpeace India is the Indian branch of the global environmental group Greenpeace, a non-profit NGO, with a presence in 55 countries across Europe, the America, Asia. Greenpeace India has legally registered society in four locations with Bengaluru as its headquarters and other branches at Delhi, Chennai, Patna.
Sofia Ashraf is an Indian rapper and singer. Her songs address the negligence of corporations that fail to clean up industrial disasters. Her 2008 song Don't Work for Dow criticizes Dow's failure to compensate victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy in India. In 2015, she released Kodaikanal Won't, a music video addressing mercury pollution in Kodaikanal from a thermometer factory owned by Unilever, a multinational consumer goods company.
Glow & Lovely is a skin-lightening cosmetic product of Hindustan Unilever introduced to the market in India in 1975. Glow & Lovely is available in India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Mauritius and other parts of Asia and is also exported to other parts of the world, such as the West, where it is sold in Asian supermarkets.
Nivetha Pethuraj is an Indian actress who appears in Telugu and Tamil films. She made her acting debut with the Tamil film Oru Naal Koothu (2016). She then made her Telugu debut with Mental Madhilo (2017) and received SIIMA Award for Best Female Debut – Telugu nomination.
Sanjiv Mehta is an Indian business executive, and the former chairman and managing director (MD) of Hindustan Unilever Limited, India's largest fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) company and one of the top five most valuable companies in India. Mehta became the CEO and MD of Hindustan Unilever in October 2013, and in June 2018 was appointed chairman. He also heads Unilever's business in South Asia, as cluster president encompassing businesses in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Mehta is a member of the Unilever leadership executive, its global executive board.
Mercury is a 2018 Indian horror thriller film written and directed by Karthik Subbaraj. It stars an ensemble cast including Prabhu Deva, Sananth Reddy, Remya Nambeesan, Indhuja Ravichandran, Deepak Paramesh, Shashank Purushotham, and Anish Padmanabhan, amongst others. Subbaraj presented the film under his own production banner Stone Bench Creations, whilst Jayantilal Gada of Pen India Limited distributed and co-produced the film. It is about the story of five friends who were terrorised by the ghost of a victim, maimed from mercury poisoning.
The Plachimada Coca-Cola struggle was a series of protests to close the Coca-Cola factory in the village of Plachimada, Palakkad District, Kerala in the early 2000s. Villagers noted that soon after the factory opened, their wells started to run dry and the available water turned contaminated and toxic. Soon, waste from the factory was passed off to farmers in the area as fertiliser. The controversy became "one of the most studied corporate controversies" in recent times.
Professor Deepak Malghan is an Indian ecological economist, social activist and author. He advocates for business ethics and transparency at work and against environmental degradation. He is professor in public policy at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. He is an adjunct professor at Ashoka Trust for Ecology & Environment. He started a protest movement against Hindustan Unilever for poor environment protection.
Ameer Shahul is an Indian author and environmentalist who is known for his work against Unilever in Kodaikanal mercury poisoning. His first non-fiction book titled Heavy Metal: How a Global Corporation Poisoned Kodaikanal was published by Pan Macmillan in 2023. He has been involved with green movements in India since 2002 ranging from ship-breaking to industrial pollution and campaigns against pesticides and climate change.
