On 2nd of December, 1984, a cloud of toxic gas leaked from The Union Carbide pesticide
plant in Bhopal, India.
Overnight, while residents of the city slept, the gas infiltrated hundreds of homes.
By the morning, thousands of people were dead or dying… but this was just the beginning
of an unprecedented disaster, the impact of which would last for decades.
Bhopal is the capital city of the state of Madhya Pradesh, located in central India.
It has long been a city of economic importance – a base for many large industries, including
the pesticide production industry.
In the 1960s and 1970s, in an effort to encourage investment, the government of India introduced
policies which made it easier for foreign companies to operate in India.
The American Union Carbide Corporation saw an opportunity and struck a deal to build
a new pesticide plant in India in 1969.
Negotiators insisted that a significant portion of the investment required for the plant came
from local shareholders.
This prompted the Indian government itself to take a 22% stake in the subsidiary company,
Union Carbide India Limited.
Bhopal was the perfect location for this new government-backed plant.
The city had an ideal central location and excellent transport infrastructure.
These factors helped the plant to thrive.
It provided jobs for hundreds of local workers, and significantly improved the economy of
the area.
It did so well, in fact, that it was soon expanded – as well as formulating pesticides
from component chemicals, it would now also manufacture some raw materials; a much more
hazardous process.
For several years all was well at the plant, but towards the end of the 1970s, demand for
pesticides fell dramatically.
Crop failures and famines meant that farmers had less money at their disposal, and so were
investing much less in pesticides.
The plant in Bhopal wound down its operation until it was running at just 25% of its capacity,
and efforts were made to find a buyer for the facility.
In order to keep the plant in operation, budget cuts were made across the board, including
a sharp reduction in routine maintenance and safety training.
In 1979, local trade unions complained about leaks within the plant, and in 1981 a worker
was killed after he came into contact with phosgene gas while carrying out maintenance
on some pipework.
A local journalist, Rajkumar Keswani, (a personal friend of the worker who was killed), began
investigating health and safety practices at the plant.
He was appalled with what he found, and wrote several articles including one entitled, “Bhopal
Sitting on Top of a Volcano.”
The local government were aware of falling safety standards at the plant, but were wary
of burdening an already-struggling enterprise with further penalties or costs.
Part of their job was to keep people employed, and the Union Carbide plant was integral to
the economy of the area.
The decline in standards at the plant, then, remained unchecked.
Production limped on.
And then, on the 2nd of December, 1984, the issue came to a head in the worst possible
way.
At around 10:00pm, during attempts to clean some internal pipework, water was accidentally
mixed with methyl isocyanate through a faulty valve.
This started a runaway reaction, which generated huge amounts of heat and pressure within a
tank.
A refrigeration system should have helped lessen the dangerously high temperatures,
but this was out of action at the time; the coolant within it had been removed for use
elsewhere in the plant.
As the heat and pressure continued to rise, two senior employees noted unusually high
readings, but in both cases put them down to malfunctioning instruments.
Such malfunctions were common occurrences at the plant.
By 11:00pm, the pressure in the tank had risen from 2psi to 10psi, and by 11:30pm workers
had started to experience symptoms consistent with exposure to the chemical methyl isocyanate.
Alarmed, they started to look for a leak.
At 11:45pm a leak was found, but the decision was made to address it after an employee tea
break at 12:15am.
In the meantime, workers on duty continued to search for other leaks.
Five minutes after the tea break had finished, at 12:40am, the pressure in the tank had reached
40psi.
A concrete slab above the tank cracked from the pressure, and an emergency valve burst
open.
A loud rumbling was heard throughout the plant as toxic methyl isocyanate was released directly
into the atmosphere.
This gas should have been partly neutralised by a flare tower – a safety device that
would burn off the gas as it escaped… but again, this was out of action.
The gas flowed freely into the air, and blew in a south-easterly direction through the
city of Bhopal.
An alarm within the plant was activated at 12:50am, triggering two sirens – one internal,
within the plant, and one external, for the benefit of the residents of Bhopal.
In accordance with company procedure, this external alarm was quickly shut off so as
to prevent panic in the local population.
At 1:00am, the local police were informed that people were beginning to flee from the
neighbourhood of Chola, around two kilometres (or 1.25 miles) from the plant.
When the police first called the plant, they were assured that nothing was amiss.
The evidence of their own eyes, however, told them otherwise.
People in the city were experiencing a range of symptoms, such as eye irritation, vomiting,
stomach pains and a burning sensation in the throat.
Hospitals were already overflowing with seriously ill residents.
In the absence of any clear information from the plant, however, police and doctors had
no idea what they were dealing with.
By 2:00am the leak from the plant had been stopped.
It was only a quarter of an hour after this that the public siren was reactivated, and
a plant employee walked to the police station to inform them that there had been a leak.
This warning, given more than an hour after the beginning of the accident, came too late.
Within hours, the streets were littered with bodies.
The horrifying effects of the gas leak were numerous.
People died in their homes, or fell ill while attempting to flee the area.
Hospitals were overwhelmed with more than 170,000 casualties.
Animals died in their thousands, as did almost every tree and plant in the affected area.
Food and medical supplies for the survivors were badly needed, but delivery drivers were
afraid to enter the affected area, creating a secondary humanitarian crisis.
Survivors were left with few resources, a completely overwhelmed healthcare system,
and injuries that ranged from liver damage to blindness.
More than half a million people in total were exposed to the gas, including 200,000 children.
Due to the density of the gas, it was at its most potent lower to the ground, so it was
children that were at the greatest risk.
Around 3,800 people died in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.
But this was not the end.
In the weeks and months and years that followed, the gas leak continued to exert a terrible
toll on the local population.
Infant mortality doubled, and thousands of people experienced increased incidences of
cancer and birth complications.
The immediate response to the disaster lasted for months… but the people of the area around
the plant would continue to suffer for years, and decades.
To compound their suffering, demands for compensation from Union Carbide would lead to a lengthy
legal battle – one which began just a week after the catastrophe, but which continues
to this day.
In March 1985 the Indian Government passed the Bhopal Gas Leak Act, which allowed the
government to act as the sole legal representative for the victims, in and outside of India.
After four years of legal proceedings Union Carbide accepted an out-of-court deal, in
which they took responsibility for the disaster, and paid $470 million in compensation to the
Indian Government.
This amount was based on the figures of 3,000 people dead and 102,000 with permanent disabilities.
Both numbers were, by most measures, huge underestimations.
In terms of personal responsibility, the chairman and CEO of the Union Carbide Corporation,
Warren Anderson, was arrested and then released on bail in India.
He fled the country, and when he was summoned back to face charges, he did not comply.
The United States also declined to extradite him.
In June 2010, more than 25 years after the gas leak, seven former Union Carbide India
Limited employees were convicted of death by negligence.
They were sentenced to two years in prison, and fined the equivalent of $2,500.
They were all released on bail shortly after the verdict.
A strong sense of injustice remains evident in Bhopal.
Even today, many hundreds of people suffer severe medical conditions as a direct result
of the disaster.
Just over half a million people have received compensation for their injuries, and just
over 15,000 relatives of victims have been compensated, receiving on average just $2,200
each.
Meanwhile, the site of the Bhopal plant sits abandoned in the city, leaking toxic chemicals
into the environment.
More than any other industrial disaster in India’s history, the Union Carbide gas leak
remains an open wound – a tragedy for which there has been inadequate compensation, insufficient
clean-up, no closure, and little accountability.