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The Bhopal Disaster of 1984 is claimed by many as the worst industrial disaster in history. It was caused by the accidental release of 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) from a Union Carbide India, Limited (UCIL, now known as Eveready Industries India, Limited) pesticide plant located in the heart of the city of Bhopal, in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

In the early hours of December 3 1984, a holding tank with stored MIC overheated and released toxic heavier-than-air MIC gas, which rolled along the ground through the surrounding streets killing thousands outright. The transportation system in the city collapsed and many people were trampled trying to escape. The gases also injured anywhere from 150,000 to 600,000 people, at least 15,000 of whom later died.

The majority of deaths and serious injuries were related to pulmonary edema, but the gas caused a wide variety of other ailments. Signs and symptoms of methyl isocyanate normally include cough, dyspnea, chest pain, lacrimation, eyelid edema, and unconsciousness. These effects might progress over the next 24 to 72 hours to include acute lung injury, cardiac arrest, and death. Because of the hypothesized reactions that took place within the storage tank and in the surrounding atmosphere, it is thought that apart from MIC, phosgene, and hydrogen cyanide along with other poisonous gases all played a significant role in this disaster.

Information on the exact chemical mixture was never provided by the company, but blood and viscera of some victims showed cherry-red color characteristic in acute cyanide poisoning. A series of studies made five years later showed that many of the survivors were still suffering from one or several of the following ailments: partial or complete blindness, gastrointestinal disorders, impaired immune systems, post traumatic stress disorders, and menstrual problems in women. A rise in spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and offspring with genetic defects was also noted. In addition, a BBC investigation conducted in November 2004 confirmed that contamination is still present.

Personal accounts of the Bhopal disaster can be found at Bhopal disaster (witness accounts).

Background of the disaster

The Union Carbide plant was established in 1969 and had expanded to produce carbaryl in 1979; MIC is an intermediate in carbaryl manufacture.

The chemical accident was caused by the introduction of water into MIC holding tank E610, due to slip-bind water isolation plates being excluded from an adjacent tank's maintenance procedure. The resulting reaction generated a major increase in the heat of liquid inside the tank (to over 200°C). The MIC then gave off a large volume of toxic gas, forcing the emergency release of pressure. There were many factors that contributed to this accident, all of which were preventable. In chronological order, they were:

• Recent documents, obtained through discovery in the course of a lawsuit against Union Carbide for environmental contamination before a New York Federal District Court revealed that Carbide had exported "untested, unproven technology" to the Indian plant.
• Unlike Union Carbide plants in the USA, its Indian subsidiary plants were not prepared for problems. No action plans had been established to cope with incidents of this magnitude. This included not informing local authorities of the dangers of chemicals used and manufactured at Bhopal.
• Reports issued months before the incident by scientists within the Union Carbide corporation warned of the possibility of an accident almost identical to that which occurred in Bhopal. The reports were ignored outright and never made it to senior staff.
• Due to falling sales, staff had been laid off and safety checks became less and less frequent.
• Slip-bind plates that prevent water from pipes being cleaned leaking into the MIC tanks via faulty valves were not installed. Their installation had not been included on the cleaning checklist.
• At the time of the event, the MIC tank refrigeration unit was disabled to save money, and some of its coolant was being used elsewhere. A simple press of a button in the control room would have activated it to at least use the remaining coolant, but this was overlooked by staff.
• The gas scrubber was placed on standby, and therefore did not attempt to clean escaping gases with sodium hydroxide (caustic soda), which may have brought the concentration down to a safe level.
• The water curtain that may have reduced the concentration of the gas was only set to ~13 m and did not reach the gas; it was not designed to contain a leak of such magnitude.
• Though the audible external alarm was activated to warn the residents of Bhopal, it was quickly silenced to avoid causing panic among the residents. Thus, many continued to sleep, unaware of the unfolding drama, and those that had woken assumed any problem had been sorted.
• The flare tower used to burn off gases before they are allowed to escape into the air was inoperational pending repairs.
• Doctors and hospitals were not informed of proper treatment methods for MIC gas inhalation. They were told to simply give cough medicine and eyedrops to their patients.

Dow's subsidiary, Union Carbide, denies these allegations on its website dedicated to the tragedy. It cites a non-peer-reviewed investigation that concluded that a single employee secretly and deliberately introduced a large amount of water into the MIC tank by removing a meter and connecting a water hose directly to the tank through the metering port. Carbide claims such a large amount of water could not have found its way into the tank by accident, and safety systems were not designed to deal with intentional sabotage. UC says that the rest of the plant staff falsified numerous records to distance themselves from the incident, and that the Indian Government impeded its investigation and declined to prosecute the employee responsible, presumably because that would weaken its allegations of negligence against Union Carbide. Union Carbide has never publicly named or identified the employee it claims sabotaged its Bhopal plant or attempted to prosecute.

Investigation and legal action against Union Carbide

In an out-of-court settlement reached in 1989, Union Carbide agreed to pay US$470 million for damages caused in the Bhopal disaster. (The original lawsuit was for $3 billion.) Upon announcing this settlement, shares of UCC rose $2 per share or 7% in value. Had compensation in Bhopal been paid at the same rate that asbestosis victims were being awarded in US courts by defendant including UCC – which mined asbestos from 1963 to 1985 – the liability would have been greater than the $10 billion the company was worth and insured for in 1984. By the end of October 2003, according to the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Department, compensation had been awarded to 554,895 people for injuries received and 15,310 survivors of those killed. The average amount to families of the dead was $2,200 (source).

The CEO of Union Carbide at that time, Warren Anderson, who retired in 1986, was declared a fugitive from justice by the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal on February 1, 1992 for failing to appear at the court hearings in a culpable homicide case in which he was named the chief defendant. Orders were passed to the Government of India to press for an extradition from the United States, with whom India had an extradition treaty in place. However, the demanded extradition never materialized. Many activists allege that the Indian government has hesitated to put forth a strong case of extradition to the United States, fearing backlash from foreign investors who have become more important players in the Indian economy following liberalization. A seemingly apathetic attitude from the US government, which has failed to pursue the case, has also led to strong protests in the past, most notably by Greenpeace.

A plea by India's Central Bureau of Investigation to dilute the charges from culpable homicide to criminal negligence has since been dismissed by the Indian courts. To date, Anderson is still an absconder before the Indian courts and faces charges that if proven may result in imprisonment of up to 10 years.

Meanwhile, very little of the money from the settlement reached with Union Carbide went to the survivors, and people in the area feel betrayed not only by Union Carbide (and chairman Warren Anderson), but also by their own politicians. On the anniversary of the tragedy, effigies of Anderson and politicians are burnt. In July 2004, the Indian Supreme Court ordered the government to pay to victims, and families of the dead, the US$330 million remaining in the compensation fund.

Union Carbide sold its Indian subsidiary, which had operated the Bhopal plant, to an Indian battery manufacturer in 1994. The Dow Chemical Company purchased Union Carbide in 2001 for $10.3 billion in stock and debt. Dow has publicly stated several times that the Union Carbide settlement payments have already fulfilled Dow's financial responsibility for the disaster. However efforts by survivors to get Dow to clean up the heavily contaminated site are on appeal in US District Court.

While Dow Chemical and its subsidiary Union Carbide US have refused to respect the jurisdiction of the Indian Courts, criminal charges are proceeding against former Union Carbide India Limited employees including: Former UCIL Chairman Shri Keshub Mahindra; presently Chairman-cum managing Director Shri Vijay Gokhale; former Vice-President Functioning Incharge, Shri Kishor Kamdar; former works manger Shri J. Mukund; and former Production manager A.P. Division, Shri S.P. Choudhury.

Ongoing contamination

Lack of political willpower has led to a stalemate on the issue of cleaning up the plant and its environs of hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste, which has been left untouched. Environmentalists have warned that the waste is a potential minefield in the heart of the city, and the resulting contamination may lead to decades of slow poisoning, and diseases affecting the nervous system, liver and kidneys in humans. Studies have shown that the rates of cancer and other ailments are higher in the region since the event. Activists have demanded that Dow clean up this toxic waste, and have pressed the government of India to demand more money from Dow.

In an investigation broadcast on BBC Radio 5 on November 14, 2004, it was reported that the site is still contaminated with 'thousands' of metric tons of toxic chemicals, including benzene hexachloride and mercury, held in open containers or loose on the ground. Some areas are reportedly so polluted that anyone entering the area for more than ten minutes is likely to lose consciousness. Rainfall causes run-off, polluting local wells and boreholes, and the results of tests undertaken on behalf of the BBC by accredited water analysis laboratories in the United Kingdom reveal pollution levels in borehole water 500 times the legal maximum in that country. Statistical surveys of local residents, with a control population in a similarly poor area away from the plant, are reported to reveal higher levels of various diseases around the plant.

2004 hoax

On December 3, 2004, the twentieth anniversary of the disaster, a man claiming to be a Dow representative named "Jude Finisterra" was interviewed on the BBC. He claimed that the company had agreed to clean up the site and compensate those harmed in the incident. (video) Immediately afterward, Dow's share price fell 4.2% in 23 minutes, for a loss of $2 billion in market value . Dow quickly issued a statement saying that they had no employee by that name — that he was an impostor, not affiliated with Dow, and that his claims were a hoax. BBC broadcast a correction and an apology. The statement was widely carried .

"Jude Finisterra" was actually Andy Bichlbaum, a member of the activist prankster group The Yes Men. In 2002, The Yes Men issued a phony press release explaining why Dow refused to take responsibility for the disaster and started up a website, DowEthics.com, designed to look like the Dow website but give what they felt was a more accurate cast on the events. In 2004, a producer for BBC News emailed them through the website requesting an interview, which they gladly obliged.

Taking credit for the prank in an interview on Democracy Now!, Bichlbaum explains how his fake name was derived: "Jude is the patron saint of impossible causes and Finisterra means the end of the Earth". He explained that he settled on this approach (taking responsibility) because it would show people precisely how Dow could help the situation as well as likely garnering major media attention in the US, which had largely ignored the disaster's anniversaries, when Dow attempted to correct the statement .

External links

• Clouds of Injustice: Bhopal disaster 20 Years on Amnesty International report (link to 100 page pdf file)
• The Bhopal disaster and its aftermath: a review. (Environmental Health)
• International Campaign For Justice in Bhopal
• Union Carbide Corporation's Bhopal Information Center Web Site
• Bhopal Medical Appeal and Sambhavna Trust Clinic
• Students for Bhopal
• Hoaxer's website
• Health and Epidemiology Papers About the Bhopal Disaster - mostly from peer-reviewed journals
• Twenty Years Without Justice: The Bhopal Chemical Disaster International Campaign for Justice for Bhopal video
• The Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal: A review of health effects. V. Ramana Dhara & Rosaline Dhara. Archives of Environmental Health. Sep/Oct 2002;57(5):391-404

Further reading

• Jackson B. Browning, "Union Carbide: Disaster at Bhopal" in Jack A. Gottschalk, Crisis Response: Inside Stories on Managing Image Under Siege (Detroit, 1993), pp.365-282. Union Carbide's former vice-president of health, safety and environmental programs tells how he dealt with the catastrophe from a PR point of view. Also available online at
• Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro, Five Minutes Past Midnight in Bhopal (original title:Il était minuit cinq à Bhopal), 2001. ISBN 0446530883

• Indian environment
• Industrial disasters
• Environmental disasters
• Medical disasters
• Madhya Pradesh
• Disasters in India
• 1984 disasters