This Friday will mark the 20th anniversary of the worst industrial accident in history. Shortly after midnight Dec. 3, 1984, 40 tons of toxic methyl isocyanate gas escaped from the Union Carbide plant in the middle of the city of Bhopal, India. The cyanide gas washed over thousands of families, burning their lungs, eyes and skin.
According to Amnesty International, more than 7,000 people died outright. More than 100,000 were injured, some 15,000 of who would later die from their injuries. Counting post-disaster births, the Indian Supreme Court put the total number of injured survivors at 572,000. Union Carbide has never properly cleaned up after the disaster, and lax safety precautions remain the rule in many plants. The anniversary of this tragedy should sound a clarion call for tougher standards of industrial safety and justice for the people of Bhopal.
The Bhopal disaster happened due to unconscionable lapses in safety procedure. Numerous fail-safes were bypassed, and subsequent investigations have revealed that Union Carbide held its Indian plant to lower standards than its domestic operations, often exporting untested technologies to Bhopal.
Victims have alleged that safety was intentionally neglected to cut costs and boost profits. When the gas escaped, chemical \scrubbers"" should have helped clean it out of the air, but they were offline. No other contingency plans were in place to catch the 40 tons of poison. Nor were the employees prepared for such a catastrophe. As a result, thousands of people died due to nothing more than greed and colossal negligence.
To make matters worse, very little of the money from the legal settlement went to the people of Bhopal. Victims blame both the company and the Indian government, which negotiated the settlement. Warren Anderson, then Union Carbide's chief executive officer, has never appeared before any court to answer the homicide charges made out against him by the Indian government.
Since the tragedy, Union Carbide has sold its Indian subsidiary and subsequently been acquired by Dow Chemical. Dow has publicly stated that the payments already made absolve them of further responsibility.
Unfortunately, that absolution hasn't translated into actually cleaning up the environment in Bhopal. Last month, a BBC investigation found that ""thousands of tons of toxic waste are still stored inadequately nearby, poisoning the town's water supply."" A sample of the drinking water from a nearby well revealed contamination 500 times greater than the maximum limits recommended by the World Health Organization.
The investigators found pools of mercury on the ground and open containers of highly dangerous chemical waste scattered about. Seasonal rains wash these chemicals into nearby streams, contaminating the drinking water. Many drink from these wells because they lack any other water source. These unfortunates suffer an array of symptoms including stomach pain, headaches, anemia and gynecological problems.
Most tragically, the specter of another Bhopal still looms over the chemical industry. After the tragedy, Congress created the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. Carolyn Merritt, the Board's chair, said in a recent Associated Press interview that a similar lack of backup procedures and disaster preparedness still exist. ""Bhopal was not a technical unknown. It was because of failures to maintain systems and employees not knowing what to do, and not having backup and systems that actually worked to prevent this. We have that same thing here. We investigate it every single day,"" she said.
United States businesses have taken many steps toward safety preparedness since the tragedy, but they have not gone far enough. One study found that uncontrolled chemical reactions have caused 167 accidents in the U.S. from 1980 through 2001, killing a total of 100 people.
Merrit said ""Over and over again, we see companies ... committing the same kind of management errors, mechanical errors and process errors that set up the facility at Bhopal for the accident that occurred.""
That is simply unacceptable. Twenty years after the worst industrial accident in human history, we should be in a place where similar disasters are not just unlikely, but inconceivable. Union Carbide should have cleaned up the mess in Bhopal itself. The government should have adopted strict rules protecting workers, communities and the environment from similar catastrophes, and then enforced them harshly. Finally, our elected leaders should use this anniversary to generate real momentum for reform. Otherwise, our next call to action may come in the form of another enormous cloud of poisonous gas.
Josh Gildea is a third-year law student who can be reached at opinion@dailycardinal.com. His column runs every Wednesday inThe Daily Cardinal.
