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BHOPAL, India (Reuters) -- It's a night that will torment Rabia Sultan for the rest of her life.
Minutes after she had settled down in bed on the night of December 2, 1984, she and her husband felt a searing sting in their eyes and began vomiting blood and violently frothing at the mouth.
"It felt like somebody was burning chillies in the air," shuddered the 55-year-old woman, as she remembered the night when nearly 40 tonnes of a lethal gas escaped from a vat at a pesticide plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal.
"My stomach was swollen and my eyes began to bulge. We ran out of our home to find the road littered with corpses, both of people and animals," she said, as she pushed gray strands of hair off her lined forehead.
Sultan was lucky to survive. Her husband died some months later.
More than 3,500 died soon after the plant spewed clouds of highly toxic methyl isocyanate into the heart of this city, now home to 1.8 million people, according to government figures.
Authorities also say at least 15,000 people have died since the leak, although activists put the number at some 33,000.
Two decades on, the pain hasn't eased for either Sultan or any of the more than half a million people affected by one of the world's worst industrial disasters at the factory owned by Union Carbide, now a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co., in Bhopal.
'Chemical' Hiroshima
As Bhopal prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of what many describe as the "chemical Hiroshima," tens of thousands of survivors are still struggling.
Thousands exposed to the thick cloud of smoke that night suffer ailments ranging from tuberculosis, cancer and breathlessness to dizzy spells, lack of concentration and near blindness.
The survivors -- mostly poor working class people -- are still crying for justice. They say they've only received about 100,000 rupees ($2,223) so far for the dead and even less for survivors
Bhopal gas leak victims protest against Union Carbide on eve of 20th anniversary of accident.
"I've hardly received 25,000 rupees, but have spent many times that amount on my daughter who has breathing problems and has had three miscarriages," said Sakina Bi, standing outside her shack near the factory as her daughter coughed inside.
Two decades after the gas drifted into the city, the plant is leaking poisons into the groundwater that people drink, activists say.
Abdul Jabbar, a local environmental activist, says nearly 8,000 tons of toxic effluents are still at the sprawling factory, where children play cricket and cattle graze on scrub not far from a decrepit building filled with sacks of powder.
A painted skull adorns the walls of the abandoned plant along with angry graffiti like "Hang Anderson," "We Want Justice" and "Punish the Killers."
Less than half a dozen guards stand at the main gate of the sprawling facility, barring visitors who cannot enter without government permission. Beyond the low wall is an empty shell of a blackened building, with rusty pipes running amid chimneys and tin sheds surrounded by tall grass.
Tons of toxic waste
India continues to pursue criminal charges against ex-Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson, now in the United States.
"The site continues to poison people. There are tonnes of toxic waste lying on the site that have leaked into the ground," Vinuta Gopal, a toxics campaigner with Greenpeace, told Reuters.
Union Carbide Corp. and its partner, Union Carbide India Ltd., and Dow Chemicals which took over UCC in 2001, have publicly stated they bear no responsibility for the leak, its consequences or the poisons still seeping into the ground.
Dow says all its liabilities were resolved in 1989 when Union Carbide paid $470 million to Bhopal residents.
For many years, only a part of that sum was distributed due to legal and bureaucratic tangles. But last month, authorities began distributing money again following a Supreme Court order in July to pay the remaining 15 billion rupees due to victims.
Passions run high in Bhopal, a city of lakes in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.
Doctors say many survivors -- and some from a generation born after the disaster -- still suffer from deep psychiatric disorders and stunted growth while thousands of women have severe gynecological problems.
Activists say many gas-affected women have even fed their babies poisoned breast milk.
A cloud of pain hangs over a spanking hospital set up for victims, where wards and halls were filled with people with racking coughs, depression and severe skin eruptions.
"Some cannot even take two steps without suffering from massive breathlessness," said hospital director K.K. Maudar.
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Goal for 2008: Half as many penalties.
Truly a tragedy. Definately shows the risks underdeveloped countries take bringing in these type of business without having environmental regulations to protect their citizens. China is definately one of those other countries at risk.
Truly a tragedy. Definately shows the risks underdeveloped countries take bringing in these type of business without having environmental regulations to protect their citizens. China is definately one of those other countries at risk.
Definately. But remember, environmental regulation is bad - corporations are always responsible and would never allow anything like this to happen.....
Definately. But remember, environmental regulation is bad - corporations are always responsible and would never allow anything like this to happen.....
Clearly government need to protect the rights and lives of their citizens.
These types of thing typically stem from proverty which can only be solved by more free enterprise instead of less.
It is clear around the world the more affulent and developed a country is the more they care about environmental concerns and the more they have the means to do something about it. There is always a growing period but hopefully with experience and technology the risks during early economic development are being reduced.
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“votes are collared under democracy, not by talking sense but by talking nonsense.” ~H. L. Mencken
Chaz, that was a US company that did this to them you know ?
Yes I know.
I am not sure what difference that makes.
But didn't the people and the government of India have to allow them to build there? I am sure there was some negotiation involved. When you build in India you go by Indian rules right?
I am sure India was more open with regulations because they needed the jobs and income right?
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“votes are collared under democracy, not by talking sense but by talking nonsense.” ~H. L. Mencken
Kinda shoots holes in the theroy that good ole Amercian comoaniues will behave if we just keep evil government regulators off their back.
They went there because it was cheap, even cheaper because the didn't need to deal with US regulations.
This suggest they would only follw the regulations they had too. If you losen them up then they would stat polluting etc again. They obviously had little ethical difficulty in taking advantage of lossre regs in India and would do the same here if allowed.
Kinda shoots holes in the theroy that good ole Amercian comoaniues will behave if we just keep evil government regulators off their back.
They went there because it was cheap, even cheaper because the didn't need to deal with US regulations.
This suggest they would only follw the regulations they had too. If you losen them up then they would stat polluting etc again. They obviously had little ethical difficulty in taking advantage of lossre regs in India and would do the same here if allowed.
Methinks the term yer trying to use is environmental racism - something that is plentiful in this day an age among these types of companies all over the world.
Not sure if I remember this exactly, but I thought human error was responsible for that gas leak. That's the one thing a company can't compensate for no matter how good their safety program is.
Not sure if I remember this exactly, but I thought human error was responsible for that gas leak. That's the one thing a company can't compensate for no matter how good their safety program is.
Or how bad either. Union Carbide has had a terrible history. But lack of regulations and the governments poor oversight really has shown what can happen when the two don't work together with the industry.
ECONOMY: Bhopal — when Foreign Direct Investment goes wrong —Miguel Loureiro
Bhopal has areas today where groundwater contamination levels are 500 times above the maximum limits recommended by the World Health Organisation, 500,000 disabled citizens (who have been dying at a rate of 10 a month), abortion rates five times above the normal, tonnes of toxic waste, and the unfortunate distinction of being the Hiroshima of Foreign Direct Investment
In the ‘60s, the Indian government decided to start tapping into Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). This created a tug-of-war between states to see which could get more FDI. In 1969, Union Carbide started its operations in Bhopal with a pesticide plant. In 1979, it decided to expand, both in terms of production and space. The committee for urban planning in Bhopal told Union Carbide that this was not such a good idea, as the factory would encroach on residential areas. In 1981, the chief minister allowed for this encroachment. Meanwhile, Union Carbide started producing chemical components, never revealing neither formulas nor processes. The Indian government didn’t know therefore what questions to ask. Besides they were happy with all this FDI coming into the country.
Union Carbide, it is worth mentioning, is also famous for the deaths of nearly 2,000 workers due to silicosis while building a tunnel in West Virginia in 1930, was involved in the Manhattan Project (remember Hiroshima?) in the ‘40s and made napalm for the US forces to use in Vietnam in the ‘60s. More than half of its workers suffered mercury poisoning in its Cimanggis plant in Indonesia in the ‘70s...
In poor nations, industries tend to use outdated (and therefore cheaper) plants, equipment and processes, which are banned in richer countries due to their health and environmental risks. Despite the absence of infrastructure to protect health and environment, international financial institutions (e.g. World Bank, ADB, IMF) tend to back governments to launch programmes to attract FDI in the chemical sector.
An example: the maximum allowed storage for methylisocyanate (MIC) in Europe is half a tonne — in Bhopal on December 2, 1984, 67 tonnes of MIC were stored in two tanks. These tanks have to be at a constant temperature of 5°C; if the temperature increases, a water sprinkler is activated; if the sprinkler doesn’t work, a chemical “scrubber” cleans the MIC; and if all else fails, a flare ignites. On December 2, 1984, at about 11pm nothing worked.
Why? First of all, as cost-cutting measures, the management had switched off the refrigeration unit to save about $50 a day, reduced the workforce by half from 1980 to 1984, and reduced the period of safety training from 6 months to 15 days. Second, while experts recommended fortnightly inspections and replacements every 6 months, inspections were rare and replacements were not made for up to 2 years. At this time, Union Carbide was the third largest chemicals company in the US and the seventh largest in the world.
So what happened that night? Gases started leaking from the factory into the nearby settlements covering an area of 40 square kilometres. Within 15 minutes 4,000 died. It is estimated that until today more than 10,000 people have died and 500,000 have been suffering due to exposure-related diseases. Union Carbide never said what the antidote was. In fact, when hospitals started phoning the plant, they replied “Just wash with water”.
In the immediate aftermath, Warren Anderson, the CEO for Union Carbide in India, was arrested on charges of culpable homicide, criminal conspiracy and other serious offences. On the same day, with an annual salary of Rs 10 million, he was released on a bail of Rs 20,000. In March 1992 the chief judicial magistrate issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against him. He continues to escape criminal justice.
Initially the victims filed a suit claiming damages up to $15 billion. In 1986, the Indian government (without consultation) filed a suit for $3 billion, stating that it represented all the victims. In 1989 (and again without consulting the victims) the government settled for a sum of $470 million, and used part of the money to start cleaning the area. Recently, ruling on a dispute between the BJP, the Madhya Pradesh government, and the Union Carbide Memorial Hospital Trust over sharing this money, the Indian Supreme Court said that the unpaid $343 million belong to the survivors only.
In 2001, Dow Chemicals bought Union Carbide (knowing the whole story) and has since then continued to ignore pleas to a) clean the location (there are still tonnes of MIC and other chemicals in the area); b) acknowledge Union Carbide’s responsibility and; c) pay proper compensation (a press release for Dow said that $500 “is plenty good for an Indian”).
So who has won what?
Well, Union Carbide managed to pay $70 million for the worst industrial disaster in humankind (taking into consideration that $200 million were paid by their insurance company, and $200 million had already been put aside). Not bad for a corporation that has an annual revenue of $8 billion.
Warren Anderson is living in Florida (and believe me, not under a bridge).
The Indian government has now an Environmental Protection Act, a Pollution Act, and industrial secrecy is gone, but then again the implementation of these laws is another kettle of fish.
Bhopal has areas today where groundwater contamination levels are 500 times above the maximum limits recommended by the World Health Organisation, 500,000 disabled citizens (who have been dying at a rate of 10 a month), abortion rates five times above the normal, tonnes of toxic waste, and the unfortunate distinction of being the Hiroshima of Foreign Direct Investment.
What can you do? First of all, you can sign a petition for justice to be done (http://www.petitiononline.com/bhopal/). Second, you can stop buying Union Carbide and Dow Chemical products. Third, you can make sure this does not happen in your neighbourhood. And on Friday at midnight, remember Bhopal...
Here's another link. Like chaz indicated regarding the stuff about how "more affulent and developed a country" it is very sad that these folks seem to have less rights than the people in europe had when exposed to the chernobyl radiation.
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