By Pervez Bari, TwoCircles.net,
Bhopal: The United States managers of the defunct Union Carbide factory now owned by Dow Chemicals were aware of the danger of ground-water pollution from their factory in Bhopal which spewed death in thousands in December 1984.
According to survivors’ leader Rasheeda Bi, ‘As early as 1972, they had discussed various proposals to stop it happening – but they ignored all of them. Instead, knowing the dangers, they okayed the dumping of thousands of tonnes of solid and liquid chemical wastes in and outside the factory. They knew it would poison our water and our daily lives and they did it anyway.’
It may be recalled here that on the fateful intervening night of December 2/3, 1984 when nearly 40 tonnes of Methyl Iso Cyanate, (MIC), and other lethal gases spewed out of the Union Carbide Corporation’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, the capital city of central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, 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.
Suspicions that chemicals were leaking from the factory began in 1980 when cattle in fields nearby began dying. Carbide denied responsibility but paid compensation to the animals’ owners. After the catastrophic poison leak of December 1984, the factory was closed, never to reopen, but the corporation made no move to remove the huge stocks of lethal pesticides and process chemicals lying on the site.
In 1989, alarmed by increasing criticism from local community leaders, activists and the Bhopal media, all of whom by now believed that the factory was causing illness, Union Carbide conducted a secret investigation and found that soil and water within the site were massively contaminated.
Samples taken close to the factory wall caused 100 per cent toxicity in fish. On the other side of the wall was the community of Atal-Ayub Nagar, but Carbide chose to keep its findings secret. It never warned local people that their drinking supplies might be poisoned. Union Carbide hid its study from public view, because it showed that by 1989 the local water was already deadly.
Other confidential documents obtained via ‘discovery’, in a US legal action relating to the poisoning, reveal that after the 1984 disaster, Union Carbide had decided to get rid of the factory and wanted to off-load it onto the Madhya Pradesh Government with the land still contaminated, in violation of the original lease. The company carried out some cosmetic remediation work which did nothing to diminish the danger of contamination. Plans to dispose of toxic wastes by burning them in the factory (thus sending toxic smoke drifting over local communities) show that Union Carbide was willing to impose even more risks on the same communities its factory had decimated in 1984.
A 1997 study commissioned by Carbide from Arthur D Little warned that pollution of the underground aquifer (which feeds drinking water wells) could be happening at a rate far faster than imagined. In a worst case scenario, it could take as little as two years to contaminate the aquifer.
Still Union Carbide kept silent and did not warn people. It was not until 1999 – a full ten years after Carbide’s own investigation – that a Greenpeace report revealed the full extent of the poisoning, discovering severe contamination of the factory site, surrounding land and ground-water. Levels of mercury in some places were 6,000,000 times higher than background level. Drinking water wells near the factory used by local people were heavily polluted with chemicals known to produce cancers and genetic defects.
A 2002 study by the Fact Finding Mission on Bhopal found lead, mercury and oregano-chlorines in the breast milk of nursing mothers.
Survivors organizations highlight the need for medical assessment, monitoring and treatment of those affected by the contamination, and due compensation for those whose health and livelihoods have been damaged by this second attack by Union Carbide on their lives. ([email protected])