Showa Denko

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Showa Denko K.K.

Type	Corporation (TYO: 4004 )
Founded	1 June 1939
Headquarters	Tokyo, Japan
Key people	Kyohei Takahashi, President & CEO
Industry	CAD/CAM Software [1]
Products	Chemicals, Inorganics, Aluminium, Electronics
Employees	15,134 (2005)
Website	www.sdk.co.jp

Showa Denko K. K. (昭和電工株式会社, Shōwa Denkō Kabushiki-gaisha^?) is a Japanese chemical engineering firm.

1 History
2 Controversy
- 2.1 Niigata Minamata disease
- 2.2 Tryptophan contamination
3 External links

[edit] History

Prior to World War II it was a part of the Mori group of companies as Showa Fertilizer (昭和肥料, Shōwa Hiryō^?). It was founded by Saburo Suzuki (鈴木三郎助, Suzuki Saburōsuke^?) in the early 1930s, and opened the first ammonium sulfate factory in Japan in April 1931.

[edit] Controversy

[edit] Niigata Minamata disease

The company is known for causing the second outbreak of Minamata disease (a type of severe mercury poisoning) in Kanose, currently part of Aga-machi, Niigata Prefecture, through the release of organomercury compounds into the Agano River.

[edit] Tryptophan contamination

In the late 1980's Showa Denko K.K. decided to change its production method of tryptophan from fermentation to the genetic engineering of bacteria. Bacteria were engineered to express certain enzymes at much higher levels than normal, and to express other enzymes not normally present in the original bacteria. Because the company had been producing tryptophan for many years via fermentation methods, when production was switched to genetic engineering, no safety testing was deemed necessary. The new tryptophan was placed on the market, and within a few months it caused the deaths of 37 people and caused 1500 more to be permanently disabled. Unfortunately the new tryptophan product was discovered to contain trace amounts of a toxic dimerisation tryptophan product which cause Eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome.^[1]