#Bhopal gas leak

[indianexpalert]

India Has Not Learnt its Lessons from the Bhopal Gas Tragedy

For reasons I cannot quite explain, there are two things I remember distinctly about 1984 even though I was only in my early teens then. The first is a visit to my grandmother’s in Calcutta (now Kolkata) for our annual Diwali sojourn. The annual, sometimes biannual, train journey across the breadth of the country from home in Poona (now Pune) to the city of a grandmother, many uncles and aunts,…

[abhiray59]

The Railway Men : A Poignantly Tragic Tale

On a fateful night of 2nd Dec, 1984 and the early morning of 3rd Dec, 1984 deadly MIC gas leaked from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. Biting cold weather of December night of Central India, allowed the gas to descend near the ground like an envelop of death. Unsuspecting, unaware and clueless mostly poor citizens that lived in the vicinity of the factory, by the railway tracks and near the…

[darshanan-blog]

The Railway Men, Untold Story of Bhopal 1984 - #Netflix Series Review

The Railway Men, Untold Story of Bhopal 1984 – #Netflix Series Review Released on November 18, 2023 on @Netflix, “The Railway Men: Untold Story of Bhopal 1984” is inspired by real life events of lethal gas leak disaster at Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India in 1984 where nearly 15,000 people are estimated to have died, about 50% of the deaths occurred within days following the tragedy and…

[rlyehtaxidermist]

December 2-3, 1984

It's been forty years since a Union Carbide chemical plant exposed five hundred thousand people to methyl isocyanate in Bhopal, India. Thousands were killed in the initial event, thousands more died from complications months or years later, and at least a hundred thousand were permanently injured.

The cause of the incident was the introduction of water to a methyl isocyanate storage tank. This caused a runaway reaction, overpressurising the tank from 14 to 280 kPa over the course of two hours, at which point the tank cracked - but even with atmospheric escape of the gas, pressure continued to increase to nearly 400 kPa - at which point the gauge could no longer give an accurate reading.

After roughly 30 tonnes of gas escaped, employees triggered the plant's alarm system - which was originally designed to alert both workers in the plant and the people in the surrounding city. Company policy mandated that they not alarm the populace about "inconsequential" leakages, so the two alarms had been decoupled by the time of the release. For nearly an hour and a half, the plant's management continued to tell authorities that everything was fine and they had no idea what had happened. Hospital staff had to guess what gas was causing the symptoms. No shelter in place order was given; the public siren remained silent for an hour and a half.

Union Carbide had identified 61 hazards at the Bhopal plant in a 1982 audit, but never followed up on the inspection. Mere months before the incident, UCC discussed the possibility of a methyl isocyanate reaction similar to what occurred in Bhopal at one of their West Virginia plants - however, the report and its predictions were never forwarded to the Bhopal plant, despite the similar design and process.

The Union Carbide Corporation asserts that the incident was caused by sabotage performed by a disgruntled worker. They claim that workers conspired with the Indian government to hide evidence of sabotage in order to blame the company, claiming that the safety systems were sufficient to prevent the incident without human intervention.

On the night of the incident, the tank's monitoring equipment had been malfunctioning for years, reduced to a single manually operated backup. Management had shut off refrigeration of the tank, keeping it at more than 15 degrees Celsius above the recommended temperature. The emergency flare and gas scrubbers had been out of order for months - and even if they had been active, they had insufficient capacity. Deluge guns - a type of pressurised water cannon intended to dissolve escaping gas - lacked enough pressure to even reach the gas cloud.

No motive for the alleged sabotage was suggested.

Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide, refused to answer homicide charges by the Indian government, with the US government denying repeated requests for extradition. He died in 2014, months before the thirtieth anniversary of the disaster in Bhopal.

Union Carbide have divested their stake in their Indian subsidiary UCIL, and refuse to fund any efforts to clean up the abandoned site, insisting that the fault lied with UCIL management and the alleged saboteur. The company paid $470 million dollars to the Indian government - which worked out to a cost of 43 cents per share of the company. Union Carbide's annual earnings were $4.88 per share after the Bhopal settlement.

The 2012 Global Intelligence Files leak revealed that Union Carbide's current owner, Dow Chemical, had employed the surveillance firm Stratfor to monitor activists seeking compensation for the Bhopal disaster.

Dow responded to the email leak that they were "required to take appropriate action to protect their people and safeguard their facilities" - an attitude that seems to have been very lacking in 1984.

[apricitystudies]

crimes of the elite: a deep dive

voted on here. (other editions) bold = favourite

corporate harms

behind the smiles at amazon

the long, dark shadow of bhopal (bhopal gas disaster)

how lobbying blocked european safety checks for dangerous medical implants

7-eleven revealed

who controls the world's food supply?

the true cost of tuna: marine observers dying at sea

how a big pharma company stalled a potentially lifesaving vaccine in pursuit of bigger profits

24 years after, some victims not compensated and still can't live normal lives (pfizer's nigeria vaccine trials)

the corporate crime of the century

uber broke laws, duped police and secretly lobbied governments, leak reveals (the uber files)

the baby killer (nestle infant formula scandal)

2 paths of bayer drug in 80's: riskier one steered overseas (hiv-risk contaminated blood product scandal)

global banks defy u.s. crackdowns by serving oligarchs, criminals and terrorists (fincen files)

the ultra-rich

eliminalia: a reputation laundromat for criminals

the fall of the god of cars (international fugitive carlos ghosn)

a u.s. billionaire took over a tropical island pension fund. then hundreds of millions of dollars allegedly went missing (cyprus confidential)

how the wealthiest avoid income tax (the irs files)

the haves and the have-yachts

madoff and his models (madoff ponzi scheme)

the imposter (blockchain terminal fraud)

the ultra-rich: (allegedly) stolen antiquities

crime of the centuries

stolen treasure traders

a hunt for cambodia's looted heritage leads to top museums (pandora papers)

an art crime for the ages

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from The Revelator:

The world’s deadliest environmental disaster got its start in 1958. Its effects are still being felt today, more than six decades later.

It wasn’t an oil spill, like the Exxon Valdez or Deepwater Horizon. It wasn’t a chemical disaster, like Union Carbide’s gas leak in Bhopal. And it didn’t have anything to do with nuclear power, like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.

It happened in the People’s Republic of China in the years after Mao Zedong came to power, causing mass starvation, murder, and even cannibalism.

And it started with a bird.

In 1958, nine years after the Communist Party of China seized power, Chairman Mao launched what he called the Great Leap Forward, a multipronged effort to transform China into an industrialized nation.

The many changes initiated during this period included banning privately owned farms in favor of collective, state-sponsored agriculture.

Around the same time, Zedong launched the Four Pests Campaign, an effort to eliminate flies, mosquitoes, rats, and sparrows to improve human hygiene and increase agricultural output. The campaign, accompanied by rampant propaganda, had a powerful slogan: ren ding sheng tian, or “Man must conquer nature.”

Three of those “pests” made relative sense: Flies, mosquitoes and rats can carry disease, and humans still try to control them today. But why were sparrows lumped in with the other three? Mao, it turns out, wanted to prevent the abundant birds from eating grain seeds — a perceived threat to farm production.

To stop sparrows from doing what comes naturally, China directed its citizens to persecute the birds at a level of carnage that may remain unmatched in human history. During the Great Sparrow Campaign people smashed nests and eggs and chased sparrows while shouting, banging pots and spoons, lighting firecrackers, and making other loud noises. Many of the birds spent so much time and energy fleeing the cruel cacophony that they exhausted their reserves and found themselves too tired to escape a well-aimed whack from a shovel. Others “simply dropped from the sky” and expired, as Frank Dikötter wrote in his 2010 book Mao’s Great Famine.

It’s impossible to say exactly how many sparrows died, but many accounts place the toll in the hundreds of millions.

And it wasn’t just sparrows: Birds of adjacent nearby species also fell victim to the noise pollution and violence.

Two years later the absence of sparrows spawned a crisis of epic proportions. Insects such as locusts, previously kept in balance by the sparrows and other birds, swarmed out of control in 1960, a year that — in a grim coincidence — also saw a massive drought. Crops vanished as the voracious insects spread across the country.

As a result of this imbalance in nature, millions of people starved to death over the next two years.

How many? No one knows for sure. The Chinese government officially counts 15 million dead. Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng, writing in his book Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, put the death toll at 36 million. Some academics suggest even doubling that to 75-78 million.

And they didn’t just die of starvation. People killed each other for food — and committed other unspeakable acts. “Documents report several thousand cases where people ate other people,” Yang told NPR in 2012. “Parents ate their own kids. Kids ate their own parents.”

The ultimate irony: China’s oppressive government had enough grain stored before the disaster to feed everyone in the country. However, they refused to release it and covered up the problem (in part by arresting and beating anyone who questioned the official narrative).

[talenlee]

Union Carbide's Value

The images of this article are ads. They’re ads for a company called Union Carbide, which proudly promoted themselves through the 50s and 60s for the way their chemical plants and development projects were capable of transforming the world. They could bring pesticides to your community, kill the bugs and help you be self-sustaining as a culture, a promise they started in South America, and then made a big, active push to start doing in India.

These ads are now, absolutely unhinged to look at, not just in the 1960s put-your-whole-butt-into-the-project industrial futurism represented by the hands of a vast white man reshaping the world to his wants, but they become even more messed up when you understand what this company wound up doing, and who it wound up hurting, because of its choices.

Content Warning: I’m going to talk about the Union Carbide gas leak disaster in Bhopal, India. It is an incident in which a lot of people were exposed to a dangerous chemical that killed and injured a lot of them (a lot). I’m not going to go into grisly detail and I don’t intend to go in-depth on the process of the accident.

Spoiler Warning: The bad guy is capitalism, again.

In 1984, a pesticide plant built and maintained by a company called Union Carbide India Limited, which was, coincidentally, 50.9% owned by the American company Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation, suffered a catastrophic gas leak that released a chemical agent known as methyl isocyanate (MIC) over the towns around the plant.

This chemical is colourless but has a sharp, pungent odour, which is useful for detecting it as it creeps into your system. One of the things this chemical does that I didn’t know there was a term for was that it’s a lachrymatory agent, which if you recognise that word, you know it because it’s a thing cops throw at you. MIC is not the agent in tear gas, but it’s the same kind of thing that aggravates the eyes and tear ducts. This stuff is safe only up to a volume of .004 ppm, or ‘parts per million’ – a very small amount. You can’t smell it until it hits 5 ppm, at which point it’s gotten real dangerous in how it messes with your body, particularly your nerves.

Notably, MIC is heavier than air, meaning that it crept along the ground as it leaked from the plant, which just so happens to have made it really dangerous to anyone who was low down to the ground compared to standing up, such as children or people sleeping on or near the ground.

Union Carbide’s leak happened at night.

Bonus: It’s flammable.

Arranged around the Bhopal plant were a variety of towns that were made up of people who were there to work for the plant or serve the people who were working for the plant, and of course, their families, which included elders and children. The population around Bhopal was hard to precisely quantify (the central government not being one with a ton of perfect information), but the estimates put it at around 500,000 people living in these spaces who were exposed to the MIC.

Note: That’s not ‘how many people, total, were there.’ That’s how many people the estimates are confident were exposed.

This is one of the reasons why the Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal is regarded as the worst industrial accident in history.

This is one of those stories that I feel are well-known if you know anything about it at all; you’re either a very normal person whose experience of massive national industrial disasters is about the things you’ve seen in the news or mentioned in other media, or you’re like me and you pay attention to podcasts or Youtube channels or books about how some things went catastrophically wrong somewhere or other, in a sequence of texts that seems to present the idea that maybe capitalism is just bad at taking care of people, weird, I’m sure there’s no particular reason for that.

When it comes to large-scale disasters, especially given its potential environmental impact and recent TV series bringing it back into focus, the general vibe is that Chernobyl was ‘one of the worst disasters in history.’ Which, make no mistake, Chernobyl is and remains one of the worst disasters in history, but it’s in a way we have a hard time measuring, because we tend to look at disasters in terms of their immediate deadly outcomes.

Wikipedia picks a range between 95 deaths and 4,000 deaths for Chernobyl, which is again, a simplification of its values. But in raw dead, we can point to Chernobyl killing about 4,000 people based on whatever pixies Wikipedia gets its information from. To contrast with that, the estimated dead from the Union Carbide leak in Bhopal starts at 3,787 dead, near the height of estimates for Chernobyl. When you look at the people individually impacted, Pripyat, the city by Chernobyl had a population of 49,000 people exposed to the potential harm of the reactor. The Bhopal gas leak impacted again, half a million people.

One really easy thing to point to is that Chernobyl happened in a Soviet state and the victims were white, while Bhopal is a very clear example of an American, capitalist company that messed up in a way that killed a lot of brown people. Make no mistake, the racism is part of it, and the normalcy of it too – after all, companies have accidents sometimes, oops, guess that’s just part of it.

When I wrote about Chernobyl I talked about how hard it was to properly consider the scale of the disaster because of the way actual immediate deaths were rare while an enormous number of people were heavily impacted by the disaster in ways that shortened their lives. Bhopal is kind of so much worse because also, yeah, a lot of people died, and also the land around the place was really permanently damaged, and the harm was so vast there was no way to really address it, and also because the harm was so vast, well what are you going to do about it, not like Union Carbide could fix the problem they caused with their negligence.

The system of systems in which we live is one where half a million people injured is an acceptable problem because once it’s happened, it can’t be addressed. Causing problems on such a vast scale is acceptable, because you can’t do the one thing that makes it right (which is give them money). It’s a vision of justice that is purchased, that all things in life can be measured and weighted in terms of their relationship to money. If they hurt enough people enough, then there’s no way they can reasonably make good on that, they can’t afford to pay it back, and so…

That’s just gotta be okay.

Maybe the government will help you.

This kind of externality is pretty normal under capitalism. In 1952, a weather event meant that the pollution that the city of London was generating settled down on the city for a few days, creating a severe weather event that killed somewhere between 10,000 to 12,000 people. Turns out that was just enough people dying that the government could make a good case for starting a set of laws to address that and make it so the air in London was livable, and it only took four more years to get that done.

Union Carbide is still around, you know. The company was acquired by Dow, because its stock price was hurt a lot by the disaster they caused in Bhopal (and the disaster they caused in West Virginia, and disaster they caused here in Australia over land damage). After the Union Carbide Gas Leak Disaster in Bhopal, they sold off brands they had to try and generate money, which includes Glad trash bags (which we use) and Eveready Batteries (which I’m sure I have some of in the house). They were bought out by Dow, for stock.

They were worth 11 billion dollars when they were bought, and now they exist as just a part of Dow. They made about 4 billion dollars in 2019, which is down overall. Turns out you just can’t make the same kind of profits as you could when you were able to cut enough corners that half a million people were exposed to your flammable tear gas leaks.

It’s enough to make you wonder how these systems can be captured, can be punished, can be made to address the violence they do. Is it right to murder a company? Is it right for the state to execute them? If the company isn’t responsible, what about the person in that company who made the choice? If they did so, knowingly, how many people is the threshold for your personal willingness to kill in the name of maximising profits?

About 5 million people a year die thanks to abnormal temperatures.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[maysshortmoviereviews]

The Railway Men: The Untold Story of Bhopal 1984 (2023)

🎬After a deadly gas leaks from a factory in Bhopal, brave railway workers risk their lives to save others in the face of an unspeakable disaster.

📝An excellent series about the brave Indian railway workers who saved lives and a thought provoking story about the Bhopal Chemical Disaster of 1984. If you were impressed with series like ‘Chernobyl’ then you will enjoy this too. It is about every day people who did the right thing, it is about negligence, corruption and just extremely moving. . A very very good series and I highly recommend it. Your time will be well spent.

[the-second-sage]

spending my sunday night watching "the railway men" and it genuinely makes me so infuriated that a bunch of selfish people who couldn't care less about the average person's wellbeing properly caused one of the world's biggest industrial disasters , a gas leak of MIC which when mixed with water would boil into a an extremely toxic gas, which lead to, to date ; 25,000 total casualties and more than 100,000 people still affected by the gas leak, roughly 200,000 children were exposed to gas. and it's not even like the people that just came into contact with the gas were fine; on average bhopal, the city in which the gas leak took place; has a higher risk of cancer, deformations, miscarriages, and diseases. the area of bhopal is yet to be properly cleaned and it still has effects on the people residing in bhopal today.

one of the worst parts to me is the fact that the man that was supposed to keep the place properly managed, warren anderson; was briefly jailed before being bailed out and escorted back to the united states with what was essentially vip treatment. the indian government charged anderson with manslaughter charges along with his associates but anderson never showed up to court and was never prosecuted on these charges. that's what makes me so angry, that a guilty man was permitted to walk free and that nobody did anything. during the time of anderson's arrest the us was still spending representatives of its government to settle the situation and there is little to no justice for the victims and family of victims today. generations after the gas leaks still are suffering from the affects of this leak.

not my usual type of post, just wanted to bring some more awareness to the tragedy

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

The Bhopal Tragedy

On the night of December 2nd, 1984, a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, began leaking 27 tonnes of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate. None of the six safety systems designed to contain such a leak were operational, allowing the gas to spread throughout the city of Bhopal. Half a million people were exposed to the gas and 25,000 have died to date as a result of their exposure. More than 120,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident and the subsequent pollution at the plant site. These ailments include blindness, extreme difficulty in breathing and gynaecological disorders. In the Immediate aftermath, the health care system immediately became overloaded. In the severely affected areas, nearly 70% were under-qualified doctors. Medical staff were unprepared for the thousands of casualties. Doctors and hospitals were not aware of proper treatment methods for MIC gas inhalation. There were mass funerals and cremations. Within a few days, trees in the vicinity became barren, and bloated animal carcasses had to be disposed of. 170,000 people were treated at hospitals and temporary dispensaries, and 2,000 buffalo, goats, and other animals were collected and buried. Supplies, including food, became scarce owing to suppliers' safety fears. Fishing was prohibited, causing further supply shortages. Formal statements after a few weeks were issued that air, water, vegetation, and foodstuffs were safe, but people were warned not to consume fish. The number of children exposed to the gases was at least 200,000. Within weeks, the State Government established a number of hospitals, clinics, and mobile units in the gas-affected area to treat the victims.  A cohort of 80,021 exposed people was registered, along with a control group, a cohort of 15,931 people from areas not exposed to MIC. Nearly every year since 1986, they have answered the same questionnaire. It shows excess mortality and morbidity in the exposed group. Bias and confounding factors cannot be excluded from the study. Because of migration and other factors, 75% of the cohort is lost, as the ones who move out are not followed. A number of clinical studies are performed. The quality varies, but the different reports support each other. Studied and reported long-term health effects are: Eyes: Chronic conjunctivitis, scars on cornea, corneal opacities, early cataracts Respiratory tracts: Obstructive and/or restrictive disease, pulmonary fibrosis, aggravation of tuberculosis and chronic bronchitis Neurological system: Impairment of memory, finer motor skills, numbness, etc. Psychological problems: Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Children's health: Peri- and neonatal death rates increased. Failure to grow, intellectual impairment, etc. Missing or insufficient fields for research are female reproduction, chromosomal aberrations, cancer, immune deficiency, neurological sequelae, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and children born after the disaster. Late cases that might never be highlighted are respiratory insufficiency, cardiac insufficiency (cor pulmonale), cancer and tuberculosis. Bhopal now has high rates of birth defects and records a miscarriage rate 7x higher than the national average. The site has never been properly cleaned up and it continues to poison the residents of Bhopal.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries-movedd]

The Bhopal Tragedy

On the night of December 2nd, 1984, a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, began leaking 27 tonnes of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate. None of the six safety systems designed to contain such a leak were operational, allowing the gas to spread throughout the city of Bhopal. Half a million people were exposed to the gas and 25,000 have died to date as a result of their exposure. More than 120,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident and the subsequent pollution at the plant site. These ailments include blindness, extreme difficulty in breathing and gynaecological disorders. In the Immediate aftermath, the health care system immediately became overloaded. In the severely affected areas, nearly 70% were under-qualified doctors. Medical staff were unprepared for the thousands of casualties. Doctors and hospitals were not aware of proper treatment methods for MIC gas inhalation. There were mass funerals and cremations. Within a few days, trees in the vicinity became barren, and bloated animal carcasses had to be disposed of. 170,000 people were treated at hospitals and temporary dispensaries, and 2,000 buffalo, goats, and other animals were collected and buried. Supplies, including food, became scarce owing to suppliers' safety fears. Fishing was prohibited, causing further supply shortages. Formal statements after a few weeks were issued that air, water, vegetation, and foodstuffs were safe, but people were warned not to consume fish. The number of children exposed to the gases was at least 200,000. Within weeks, the State Government established a number of hospitals, clinics, and mobile units in the gas-affected area to treat the victims.  A cohort of 80,021 exposed people was registered, along with a control group, a cohort of 15,931 people from areas not exposed to MIC. Nearly every year since 1986, they have answered the same questionnaire. It shows excess mortality and morbidity in the exposed group. Bias and confounding factors cannot be excluded from the study. Because of migration and other factors, 75% of the cohort is lost, as the ones who move out are not followed. A number of clinical studies are performed. The quality varies, but the different reports support each other. Studied and reported long-term health effects are: Eyes: Chronic conjunctivitis, scars on cornea, corneal opacities, early cataracts Respiratory tracts: Obstructive and/or restrictive disease, pulmonary fibrosis, aggravation of tuberculosis and chronic bronchitis Neurological system: Impairment of memory, finer motor skills, numbness, etc. Psychological problems: Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Children's health: Peri- and neonatal death rates increased. Failure to grow, intellectual impairment, etc. Missing or insufficient fields for research are female reproduction, chromosomal aberrations, cancer, immune deficiency, neurological sequelae, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and children born after the disaster. Late cases that might never be highlighted are respiratory insufficiency, cardiac insufficiency (cor pulmonale), cancer and tuberculosis. Bhopal now has high rates of birth defects and records a miscarriage rate 7x higher than the national average. The site has never been properly cleaned up and it continues to poison the residents of Bhopal.

[gay-jesus-probably]

I mean as a first aid/CPR instructor it would definitely mean I’m really close to someone for me to perform CPR on them without a barrier device because that means I’m getting their vomit and blood in my mouth. Definitely wouldn’t do it for just anyone.

(Also that’s one of the main reasons we don’t recommend rescue breaths anymore. The average person doesn’t carry around a pocket mask/other barrier and you don’t know what diseases someone may have)

Oh yeah, I've heard that the mouth barrier things can be REALLY important. I mean, usually you're probably fine it's just gross, but like the one time you need them, you really fucking need them. Most disturbing CPR story I've heard was from the Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal (chemical company had dogshit safety standards, causing them to accidentally gas 500 000 people, killing at least 16 000), where a lot of doctors, nurses and paramedics were also poisoned or killed just from giving victims CPR - the victims were all covered in MIC, an extremely deadly poison, so anyone who gave CPR was contaminating themselves in the process.

(Also the Bhopal Disaster was fucking horrifying, and fun fact, DOW Chemicals bought Union Carbide in the aftermath, and to this day they have yet to so much as apologize to the victims on behalf of Union Carbide, let alone provide compensation. Also the plant responsible for the leak was abandoned to rot and is still poisoning the groundwater in Bhopal to this day, because it was built so badly they can't even sell it for scrap and cleaning it up is 'not worth it'. And the US refused to extradite the CEO of Union Carbide to stand trial in India, and he died peacefully in his own bed back in 2014. The gas leak was almost 40 years ago. The victims have yet to receive any meaningful compensation or acknowledgement from the government. This isn't really related to the CPR thing, it's just something more people need to know. Can you tell I'm angry about the Bhopal disaster because I'm really fucking angry.)

[afabstract]

The Railway Men Review - Salutes Working-Class Heroes & a Surprise Thug

When wealthy corporate masters begin to play with human lives, it takes working-class heroes to save the day. Read this review of the Netflix series 'The Railway Men,' starring Kay Kay Menon, Babil Khan, Divyendu Sharma, and R. Madhavan.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3.5 out of 5. Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram) “What does someone responsible for taking 15,000 lives get? As punishment, he gets a government-plane, with VIP service. A royal ride back home with champagne & caviar.” The 2023 Netflix series “The Railway Men” starts with a journalist lamenting how those accountable for the 1984 Bhopal gas leak tragedy, the world’s worst…

[truthoftheday]

Bhopal Gas Tragedy

No one can tell how many people died in the Bhopal Gas tragedy. All that the older generation remembers is a city strewn with corpses on that winter morning of cold December 1984. What they mistook for fog was toxic methyl isocyanate leaking from a pesticide factory in Bhopal. Over 5 lakh people were exposed to that gas. 40 tonnes of toxic gas. It was the world’s worst industrial disaster. Union Carbide India Limited owned by Warren Anderson. But the Bhopal factory, UCIL, was majority owned by Union Carbide Corporation, with Indian Government-controlled banks and the Indian public holding a 49.1 percent stake. In Bhopal probably tens of thousands died. America’s worst ever-industrial disaster was the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel disaster. That was also United Carbide Corporation’s. 1000 labourers died.

The estimated magnitude of disaster varies according to sources. More than 3,500 people died soon after. Authorities also say at least 15,000 people have died since the leak, although activists put the number at some 33,000. The official immediate death toll was 2,259.The government of Madhya Pradesh confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths related to the gas release. A government affidavit in 2006 stated that the leak caused 558,125 injuries, including 38,478 temporary partial injuries and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries. Others estimate that 8,000 died within two weeks, and another 8,000 or more have since died from gas-related diseases.

Five thousand deaths were quoted in the court case which the government itself revised to around 23,000. Over 5 lakh people were permanently disabled. Activists like N D Jayaprakash of the BGPSSS, have faced repression, arrests, denial of information and corruption to campaign against this fraud, where the numbers of affected were fudged and deaths arbitrarily counted. While the government claimed that only 3000 had died, the people’s organizations have proof of more than 20,000 dead and 5.7 lakh seriously injured.

Ten thousand people may have died immediately. Over the years may be 25,000 people would have died.

They never got punished. Civil and criminal cases were filed in the District Court of Bhopal, India. People of Bhopal never got justice. In June 2010, seven former employees, including the former UCIL chairman, were convicted in Bhopal of causing death by negligence and sentenced to two years imprisonment and a fine of about Rs. 1 lakh each.

Warren Anderson, the UCC CEO at the time of the disaster died, unpunished.

Union Carbide Corporation still exists bought over by Dow Chemicals now.

In 1989 Union Carbide paid around 47 crores as compensation to the victims. After that Dow says all its liabilities were resolved.They did not pay the money on their own. It was a Supreme Court ruling. They decided to settle at that money. The court decided to settle only on compensation, not punishment. Anderson had not shown up in Bhopal Court despite several summons through Interpol and is now dead, unpunished.

[radiodark]

Appalshop shared the other day that they have a documentary that touches on the subject from 1991 available on youtube. I haven’t watched the whole thing as of yet but I understand it starts with the Bhopal disaster as context and moves on to the much smaller but still awful gas leak a year later at the only UCC plant in the US that manufactured MIC in Institute, West Virginia, which sent nearly 200 people from the surrounding mostly Black community to seek medical treatment, unpacking the racism at play and the consequences with an Appalachian focus. (Cw: it starts with live footage of the Bhopal disaster aftermath)