Bhopal: Hiroshima of the chemical industry

Almost 40 years ago, on Dec. 3, 1984, some 27 tons of poisonous methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas, 500 times more poisonous than hydrogen cyanide, leaked from a pesticide plant owned and operated by the U.S. transnational corporation Union Carbide (UCC) in India. The leaked gas killed thousands of people in Bhopal, the 16-square-mile city that is capital of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

Of Bhopal’s one million residents, 8,000 died in the first three days. Over 22,000 people eventually died from their exposure to MIC that night, and over half a million were maimed for life.

Illnesses, birth defects and deaths attributable to MIC exposure in the December 1984 disaster still occur, some of them to descendants of those exposed. Over 150,000 people in Bhopal live with chronic illnesses related to direct exposure or inherited from their parents’ exposure.

In addition to being responsible for the 1984 gas release, Union Carbide unsafely disposed of poisonous wastes within the factory compound starting in 1969. The company pumped hazardous waste into designated ponds starting in 1977. In 1996, it dumped toxic sludge from the ponds outside the factory. Over 100,000 residents of 48 communities within five kilometers of the factory were drinking dangerously contaminated groundwater without knowing it.

During the 40 years following this worst industrial accident in history, none of the eight executives of UCC’s Indian subsidiary in 1984 have spent a minute in jail.

After the Bhopal disaster, UCC sold the local company to Dow Chemical, which maintains that it has no responsibility for the cleanup. As a result, 93% of survivors of the 1984 disaster have received no more than $500 as compensation for personal injuries. Families of those who died received $2,000 for each death — and that only after years of struggle.

International Campaign for Justice for Bhopal

Dec. 3, 2024, will mark the 40th anniversary of the deadly Bhopal disaster. In anticipation of the anniversary, the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB) has organized a U.S. tour featuring Bhopal survivors. The tour’s goal is to revive global awareness on the causes and consequences of the event. It involves stops in 20 cities, including in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley and East Palestine, Ohio. For more information go to: www.bhopal.net/40-US-tour.

Participants in the tour spoke Sept. 18 at Making Worlds Bookstore in Philadelphia. Tour coordinator Rachna Dhingra provided background on the disaster and English translation for survivors Bati Bai Rajak and Farhat Jahan, who addressed the meeting in Hindi.

Dhingra described traveling across the U.S., including to Ohio, where a Norfolk Southern train derailment on Feb. 3, 2024, exposed nearly 5,000 residents of East Palestine to hazardous chemicals: She said: “These tragedies repeat, over and over.  We now know the type of chemicals people were exposed to, but other than that nothing has changed when it comes to corporations taking responsibility. Whatever the people have gained is because of their collective fight.”

Farhat Jahan, just five months old when the Bhopal disaster struck, lived with seven members of her family a third of a mile from the plant. When her father opened the door to the family’s house, all family members were immediately and badly exposed. Farhat and her mother were separated from the others, most of whom succumbed to illnesses in the years after the disaster due to gas exposure and drinking water contaminated by wastes from the plant.

Jahan’s sisters’ children were born with disabilities. She noted: “This is not just my story. It’s the story of every fourth or fifth house where children are still born with disabilities today.” For the past 15 years, Jahan has worked as a community health researcher, collecting data on deaths, illnesses and disabilities in the impacted populations.

Jahan reported that a 2016 study found “63 times more illnesses in those exposed than those not. Children born to exposed parents have eight times more birth defects.” She also noted that “prescribed treatment has often consisted of taking so much medication that people, including children, suffer from kidney renal failure [caused by the medication].”

Bati Bai Rajak, only four years old, was living two-thirds of a mile from the factory when the disaster struck. Based on advice a plant nurse gave them before the gas leak, her parents protected her and her siblings by covering them in blankets during the night and leaving Bhopal the next morning. She recalled leaving their house and “seeing piles of bodies lying around everywhere.”

Rajak said: “Perhaps the people who died that night were the lucky ones. The people who survived still bear the scars. Because their parents were too ill to work, children had to become the breadwinners.

“Union Carbide did nothing about the contaminants of gas or chemicals that leaked into the groundwater. Migrant workers who came to Bhopal looking for jobs drank the water and became ill. Nine known pollutants were found in water and in breast milk.”

Rajak has played an important role in mobilizing the women affected by the disaster. She coordinates grassroots research to study the continuing impact of chemical exposure behind birth defects and for testing for water contamination.

Dow Chemical yet to take responsibility

The speakers cited Dow Chemical for refusing to take its legal responsibility to the disaster victims and U.S. politicians, including late Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for getting the initial approval for the Bhopal MIC plant and then lobbying for impunity for Dow Chemical.

ICJB is working with U.S. senators and congresspeople to introduce a resolution on the 40th anniversary of the disaster and to create “Chemical Disaster Awareness Day” on Dec. 3. They are demanding that Dow Chemical pay for the clean-up of the soil and groundwater; that Dow pay a minimum of $8,000 to each Bhopal survivor; and that the Indian government make Dow pay compensation for health and environmental damage to soil and groundwater.

ICJB is calling on the Indian government to standardize treatment protocols for gas exposure-related chronic diseases and ensure a monthly pension to all women widowed by the disaster or left without means to support themselves.

A key demand is for the U.S. government to stop obstructing the criminal punishment of Dow Chemical.