Neglecting maintenance has killed hundreds, injured thousands, and deformed fetuses for two generations.. Bhopal industrial disaster in India

The Bhopal disaster - or the Union Carbide disaster - is one of the worst industrial disasters in human history.

It claimed the lives of thousands of residents of the city of Bhopal (central India) and its surrounding areas, when nearly 30 tons of deadly methyl isocyanate gas leaked into the air - on the evening of December 2, 1984 - from a pesticide plant belonging to the "Union Carbide" company ( Union Carbide) of America.

On the morning of the disaster, residents woke up in a state of terror, suffocated and their bodies burned, desperately searching for their relatives, as they tried to escape from the clouds of poisonous vapor spreading over the city of Bhopal and its environs.

Causes of the Bhopal disaster

The city of Bhopal - which has a population of about one million - is located in the Indian region of Madhya Pradesh, located between New Delhi and Bombay.

In the city, there is the poor Jai Prakash Nagar area, where the American Union Carbide pesticide plant is located, which caused the worst industrial disaster in the 20th century, and the region continues to suffer from its health and environmental damage until the 21st century.

The crisis began after the toxic gas tanks that were used by the factory in the manufacture of pesticides, such as methyl isocyanate gas, which is among the dangerous gases, exploded as a result of a malfunction in the safety systems due to poor maintenance and lack of cleaning and renewal, in addition to the poor efficiency and experience of the workers who were employed without training. Or qualification for low wages.

On the evening of the second Sunday of December / December 1984, about 100 workers were working on making the pesticide "Sevin", by mixing "carbon tetrachloride", methyl isocyanate (MIC) and "alpha-napthol".

After about 12 hours of work, a series of blunders led to a humanitarian catastrophe.

Children of the third generation of victims of the Bhopal disaster attend a vigil to commemorate the disaster in 2018 (French)

The beginning of the disaster

The pesticide plant - Union Carbide - had 3 partially buried tanks with a capacity of 15,000 gallons, where methyl isocyanate gas was stored.

These tanks were suffering from the problem of weak safety systems and the absence of maintenance.

To extract methyl isocyanate, high pressure is required on nitrogen gas, but the process was not done properly that day, while methyl isocyanate and nitrogen gas were leaking out of the plant.

And about an hour before midnight, the gauges began to indicate a dangerous level of pressure and temperature that reached 200 degrees Celsius in the tanks, but the workers calculated that a tool was broken, and they did not take any action to contain the matter, thinking that the problem was not very serious. .

After about half an hour, the bodies of the workers who were near the tanks began to be affected by the gases leaking from the tanks, a feeling that was not strange to all workers, because it happened frequently.

Even then, one of the factory supervisors decided to wait until after the tea break to look into the matter.

By that time, the problem had gotten out of control, and the factory ended up exploding at 12:15 after midnight, leaving a state of fear and panic as a result of the disaster caused by this explosion.

After this explosion, firefighters tried to prevent the gas from leaking out of the factory using water, but they failed to do so, and the gas venting device, which works to prevent the spread of toxic gases, was completely broken.

In the chaos, drivers of emergency vehicles fled, rather than ferrying the workers to safety.

Even worse, factory officials did not immediately inform local authorities of what was going on, and later claimed that the phones were out of service.

Children play cricket inside the ruins of the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal on November 18, 2009 (French)

On the morning of December 3, 1984, the residents living next to the factory were close enough to hear the siren and evacuate, but they ignored it, because they had been used to hearing it in the factory before so frequently, and they thought it was just routine. Simple.

As for the cold weather at that time, it made the poisonous methyl isocyanate gas - which was sweeping Bhopal silently - close to the ground.

Children, the elderly and the sick were the most affected by the toxic gases, which immediately caused them to vomit and have difficulty breathing.

The region's hospitals, which were not prepared for this disaster, were filled with large numbers of patients and deaths.

It was impossible - at the beginning - to accurately determine the number of victims of this disaster, given the large numbers that were falling, especially in the first hours of the accident, in addition to those who had permanent disabilities such as blindness, memory loss, nerve damage, limb paralysis, sleep problems and the digestive system.

Human losses due to the Bhopal disaster

In terms of human losses, the Union Carbide Foundation said that 3,800 people died, and thousands were permanently or temporarily disabled due to the toxic gas leak, a number that the Indian government has not challenged.

But several Indian NGOs campaigning for justice on behalf of the victims of the Bhopal disaster say the true death toll is much higher.

"At least 7,000 people were killed in the first 72 hours of the leak," said Greenpeace rights activist Karuna Raina.

She added that more than 25,000 people have died since then from diseases linked to exposure to the toxic methyl isocyanate gas.

Soil and water pollution has also led to an increase in the number of children born with congenital deformities in the region.

Bhopal Medical Call, a UK-based charity that supports some clinics in Bhopal that treat disaster victims, says more than 120,000 people are still suffering from illnesses caused by the accident and the pollution generated at the factory site.

The impact of the Bhopal disaster affects the second and third generations of the region's population, causing deformities in the fetuses (French)

After the Bhopal disaster

The lingering impact of the Bhopal disaster continues to haunt the second and third generations of Bhopal residents, and even those who have yet to be born. They suffer from cerebral palsy, muscular atrophy, autism, intellectual disabilities, and severe learning difficulties.

"This is the terrible legacy of Bhopal. All these children were born to parents, or even grandparents, who were in contact with the gas that night. The situation is getting worse, we are seeing more and more," the director of the center said - in a press statement to the British newspaper "The Guardian". "Some of the second and third generation children are born with these disabilities and come here. The tragedy of Bhopal has not stopped."

Investigative research conducted by the "Bhopal Campaign Groups" showed that the toxic waste that was dumped by the factory even before its explosion contained - according to tests and analyzes conducted on it - 6 organic pollutants banned by the United Nations, due to their highly toxic effects on the environment and human health. It has spread to 42 districts in Bhopal.

In addition, the large pond that the Union Carbide factory used to dump the chemicals it used still exists and contains polluted and stagnant water, and no cleaning process has been carried out from this chemical waste in it.

In 1999, local tests of groundwater and well water near the accident site revealed the presence of mercury at high levels, ranging between 20,000 and 6 million times more than expected levels.

Carcinogens in the water and those causing brain damage, as well as chemicals causing birth defects, as well as trichloroethene, a chemical that impairs fetal development, were also found at levels 50 times higher than normal.

Exhibition organized in Rome on December 4, 2014 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster (French)

In 2002, further tests revealed the presence of toxins such as trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, and lead, as well as mercury, in the milk of nursing mothers.

A year before that, that is, in 2001, the Dow Chemical company - which is also American and based in Michigan - had bought Union Carbide, and thus acquired its assets and liabilities, and categorically refused to clean up the disaster site and provide safe drinking water. to the population, compensating the victims and even revealing the make-up of the leaked gas, information that doctors need to use to properly treat the victims.

Proceedings in the Bhopal disaster

Actual justice and reparation for the victims of the Bhopal disaster remained elusive, and the first compensation was granted to them in 1989, when Union Carbide agreed to a partial settlement with the Indian government, and paid about $ 470 million in compensation to the residents of the stricken region.

The human rights organizations that were charged with defending the victims of the disaster saw this compensation as "shameful", and it was widely criticized as insufficient and not equal to the level of harm caused to the residents of Bhopal, as most of them received only 25,000 rupees (equivalent to 300 US dollars). , while others received nothing.

The majority of survivors still live near the toxic disaster site.

In 1991, the local government in Bhopal charged American Warren Anderson - who was CEO of Union Carbide at the time of the disaster - with manslaughter, for failing to fix the plant's safety systems.

However, Anderson was not brought to trial, and India's request at the time - to hand over the Americans involved in the accident, headed by Anderson - faltered for a long time without any response from US officials until Warren Anderson died in September 2014, a few months before the 30th anniversary of the disaster.

Thus, the victims were left in Bhopal alone to claim their rights and the rights of their families, and they were asked to defend themselves because the direct managers of Union Carbide, especially the Americans, were evading justice, and even the Dow Chemical Company, which acquired Union Carbide's assets, evaded fulfilling its legal and moral obligations in Bhopal.

None of the eight Indian officials who were convicted of negligence in 2010 have served their sentences in prison (French)

In the year 2010, that is, after nearly a quarter of a century had passed, a court in India issued judicial rulings against 8 Indian people for causing the Bhopal disaster, and the court charged “negligence homicide” to the eight defendants, who were all former workers in the factory, a charge that does not exceed the term of its sentence. two years imprisonment;

Which human rights activists saw as "a lenient and very late sentence."

The verdict is the first actual conviction of its kind since that disaster, and worst of all, none of the eight Indian officials convicted in 2010 have served their sentences in prison, and representatives of the Union Carbide plant have never appeared in court.