Bhopal Gas Tragedy: An Analysis Presented By :- Jenendar .R.Bohra Ajay .R. Bammankar Shrikant .S. Kumbhar Harish .B. Singh

How It Happens ?

In the early morning hours of December 3, 1984, a holding tank with 43 tonnes of stored MIC overheated and released toxic heavier-than-air MIC gas mixture, which rolled along the ground through the surrounding streets. The transportation system in the city collapsed and many people were trampled trying to escape.

According to the Bhopal Medical Appeal, around 500,000 people were exposed to the leaking tables.

Approximately 20,000, to this date, are believed to have died as a result; on average, roughly one person dies every day from the effects.

Over 120,000 continue to suffer from the effects of the disaster, such as breathing difficulties, cancer, serious birth-defects, blindness, gynaecological complications and other related problems

According to the report "The Bhopal Medical Appeal - What Happened in Bhopal?", It is believed that 50,000 people are unable to work because of their debilitating ailments.

"Tumhara ladka paida hua hai (you have a son)," says one nurse as she pats the child to make him cry. There is no response. In the dim light, the skin of the child looks macerated and bluish. Within minutes, a senior doctor is called in. He looks down at the curled figure, asks for the mother's medical record and scrawls in the column for details of the birth: "Stillborn boy weighing four pounds, born to the mother". Then he rushes out to the maternity ward to attend to another patient about to deliver. Outside there is silence as the father looks expectantly at the white-clothed figures washing hands in the waiting room. Then comes the sound of weeping from beyond the green curtains of the labour room.

“ A Carbide child whose fate was sealed inside its mother's womb"

"Yeh bhi gas kand ka baccha paida hua hai, (Here is another child of the gas tragedy)" says the nurse as she shows the father the shrivelled face of his newborn.

With these words, written in July 1985, the Indian magazine Sunday opened its report on The Babies of Bhopal, describing the situation as reporter Ritu Sarin found it, seven months after "that night". The grief of these parents was drowned in a universal horror, for hundreds of parents were to be told "Your child is another victim of the gas".

In a sample of 865 women who lived within 1 km of the plant and who were pregnant at the time of the gas leak,, 43% of the pregnancies did not result in live births. Of the 486 live births, 14 percent of babies died in the first 30 days compared to a death rate of 2.6 to 3 percent for previous deliveries in the two years preceding the accident in the same group of women.

Background and causes

The chemical accident was caused by the introduction of water into methyl isocyanide holding tank E610, due to slip-blind water isolation plates being excluded from an adjacent tank's maintenance procedure.

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

The resulting reaction generated a major increase in the temperature 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.

A number of background causes contributed to the explosion and the disaster’s intensity

Cost-cutting measures A long-term cause of the catastrophe was

the location of the plant; authorities had tried and failed to persuade Carbide to build the plant away from densely-populated areas.

Carbide explained their refusal on the expense such a move would incur.

Union Carbide previously produced their pesticide, Sevin (the commercial name of carbaryl), without MIC but, after 1979, began using MIC because it was cheaper. Other manufacturers, such as Bayer, made Sevin without MIC, although this caused greater expenses.

In the early 1980s, the demand for pesticides had fallen: the factory was operating at a loss and overproducing MIC that was not being sold, leading to a series of cost-cutting measures from around 1982 onwards.

. These measures affected the two interrelated areas of workers and their conditions, and the equipment and safety regulations installed at the plant

Work conditions

Kurzman argues that “cuts… meant less stringent quality control and thus looser safety rules. A pipe leaked? Don’t replace it, employees said they were told… MIC workers needed more training? They could do with less. Promotions were halted, seriously affecting employee morale and driving some of the most skilled… elsewhere

Workers were forced to use English manuals, despite the fact that only a few had a grasp of the language .

By 1984, only six of the original twelve operators were still working with MIC and the number of supervisory personnel was also cut in half. No maintenance supervisor was placed on the night shift and instrument readings were taken every two hours, rather than the previous and required one-hour readings

Workers made complaints about the cuts through their union but were ignored. One employee was sacked after going on a 15-day hunger strike. 70% of the plant’s employees were fined before the disaster for refusing to deviate from the proper safety regulations under pressure from management

In the words of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, “poorly trained personnel, rapid turnover, leaking valves, shoddy gauges and inadequate water spray protection were all identified as representing “a higher potential for a serious incident or more serious consequences if an incident should occur”

Equipment and safety regulations

It emerged in 1999, during civil action suits in India, that, 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 quantities or dangers of chemicals used and manufactured at Bhopal

The MIC tank’s alarms had not worked for 4 years.

There was only one manual back-up system, not the four-stage system used in the USA.

The flare tower and the vent gas scrubber had been out of service for 5 months before the disaster. The gas scrubber therefore did not attempt to clean escaping gases with sodium hydroxide (caustic soda), which may have brought theconcentration down to a safe level. Even if the scrubber had been working, according to Weir, investigations in the aftermath of the disaster discovered that the maximum pressure it could handle was only one-quarter of that which was present in the accident. Furthermore, the flare tower itself was improperly designed and could only hold one-quarter of the volume of gas that was leaked in 1984.

Aftermath of the explosion

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 out.

Doctors and hospitals were not informed of proper treatment methods for MIC gas inhalation. They were told to simply give cough medicine and eye-drops to their patients.

The recent discovery of 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.

Previous warnings and accidents

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 and never made it to senior staff.

Union Carbide was warned by American experts who visited the plant after 1981 of the potential of a “runaway reaction” in the MIC storage tank; local Indian authorities warned the company of problems on several occasions from 1979 onwards. Again, these warnings were not heeded.

11 of the 30 “major hazards” documented in a 1982 review occurred in the MIC and phosgene units.

From 1981, inhalation accidents were reported at the factory. Five workers were hospitalised in 1982 after a leak of MIC

An employee was killed in 1981 by a phosgene leak

Soon after, 25 workers were injured after a pump seal failed

Union Carbide’s defense

Now owned by Dow Chemical Company, Union Carbide denies allegations against it on its website dedicated to the tragedy. The corporation believe that the accident was the result of sabotage, claiming that safety systems were in place and operative. It also stresses that it did all it could to alleviate humanitarian suffering following the disaster. These claims are countered by the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal and others.

Response

The company stresses the “immediate action” taken after the disaster and their continued commitment to helping the victims. On December 4th, the day following the leak, Union Carbide sent material aid and several “international medical experts” to assist the medical facilities in Bhopal.

Carbide put $2 million into the Indian Prime Minister’s immediate disaster relief fund on 11th December 1984. The corporation established the Employees' Bhopal Relief Fund in February 1985, which raised more than $5 million for immediate relief.

Union Carbide also undertook several steps to provide continuing aid to the victims of the Bhopal disaster after the court ruling, including:

Legal action against Union Carbide

Legal issues began affecting Union Carbide, the US and Indian governments, the local authorities in Bhopal and the victims of the disaster immediately after the catastrophe.

Fight for justice

Legal proceedings leading to the settlement

On 14th December 1984, CEO of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, addressed the US Congress, stressing the company’s “commitment to safety” and promising “to ensure that a similar accident “cannot happen again””. However, the Indian Government passed the Bhopal Gas Leak Act in March 1985, allowing the Government of India to act as the legal representative for victims of the disaster,[leading to the beginning of legal wrangling.

Pepole Protesting Against Andreson

Charges against Warren Anderson and others

Beginning in 1991, the local authorities from Bhopal charged Warren Anderson, who had retired in 1986, with manslaughter, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

This factory still stands in Bhopal like a hoary symbol of the worst tragedy of the industrial era.

The Union Carbide factory and the face of then Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson remained etched in the memory of millions of Indians as mascots of all that is wrong with transnational industrial corporations.

Surrounding the skeletal remains of the pesticide factory are maimed survivors of the nuclear winter of what a poet has called DeathSmog Day.

After 20 years, there are as many questions unanswered as the number of people who have died since that fateful day.

“ This should not happen again” As a Chemical Engineer It’s Our

Responsibility

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