By Pervez Bari, TwoCircles.net,
Bhopal: The latest tests show that groundwater in areas even three km away from the Union Carbide India limited, (UCIL), pesticide manufacturing factory in Bhopal, contains almost 40 times more pesticides than the Indian standards.
The chronic poisoning due to the contamination of land and water even though it was closed down 25 years back following the fatal leak of Methyl Isocyanate, (MIC), from its plant in December 1984.
These are the findings of a study released here on Tuesday by Ms Sunita Narain and Chandra Bhushan, Director and Associate Director respectively of the New Delhi-based research and advocacy organization, Centre for Science and Environment, (CSE). The CSE’s Pollution Monitoring Lab has tested water and soil samples from in and around the Union Carbide factory, and found high concentrations of pesticides and heavy metals inside the factory as well as in the groundwater outside.
Thus, this pooh-poohs the stand taken by the Madhya Pradesh Government and the Indian Government that the defunct Union Carbide factory and the adjoining areas are free from toxicity and is safe for the inhabitants living around it.
It may be recalled here that on the fateful intervening night of December 2/3, 1984 nearly 40 tonnes of MIC and other lethal gases spewed out of the Union Carbide Corporation’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, exposing over 5,00,000 people to the toxic fumes. While 25,000-35,000 people have died since then and hundreds of thousands of persons have been maimed for life.
Chandra Bhushan, who is also in-charge of the CSE laboratory, while releasing the report said UCIL used to manufacture three different kinds of pesticides: Carbaryl (trade name Sevin), Aldicarb (trade name Temik) and a formulation of Carbaryl and gamma-hexachlorocyclohexane (trade name Sevidol). The plant also used heavy metals like mercury and chromium. Most of these products and elements are persistent and toxic. The CSE laboratory chose the same chemicals for its tests.
In October this year, one water and eight soil samples were collected from various places inside the factory. Eleven more water samples came from locations outside, ranging from colonies next to the factory’s boundary to those 3.5 km away.
All the samples collected from within the factory were found to be highly contaminated. The waste stored within the premises had Carbaryl content of 9,856 parts per million (ppm) and mercury content of 1,065 ppm. The soil sample near the Sevidol plant had 2,782 ppm of Lindane; soil from solar evaporation pond had chromium content of 1,065 ppm, while that from the Sevin plant had mercury concentration of 8,188 ppm.
It must be noted that there is no standard for these pesticides. Surface water samples had a pesticide concentration of 0.2805 ppm – which is 561 times more than the Indian standard.
Bhushan warned: “The reason this is extremely worrying is because we have found the toxins in the groundwater we have checked from almost 3 km below the factory”.
All 11 groundwater samples collected from colonies around the UCIL factory were found to be contaminated with chlorinated benzene compounds and organo-chlorine pesticides. Carbamates were found in four samples. The concentration of pesticides was 1.1 to 38.6 times higher than the Indian standard. The water sample from a hand-pump near the Chaurasia Samaj Mandir in Shiv Nagar – more than 3 km from the factory – was the most contaminated. It had the highest concentration of Carbaryl (0.011 ppm, 110 times the standard); Lindane (0.004 ppm, 40 times the standard); and mercury (0.024 ppm, 24 times the standard), the report said.
“The profile of chemicals found within the UCIL factory and in the waste disposal site of UCIL matches the chemicals found in the groundwater sample in the colonies outside. There is no other source of these chlorinated benzene compounds and pesticides than UCIL”, Bhushan added.
Meanwhile, speaking at the release of the study report, CSE Director Sunita Narain said: “Our findings suggest that the entire site is highly contaminated. The waste stored within the factory is a small part of the total contamination present in the site. The focus of the government to just dispose off the stored waste and ignore the site contamination problem is, therefore, not going to solve the environmental problems from the UCIL factory”. ([email protected])