the Sugar Conspiracy

Friday, December 03, 2004

Twenty years ago today

On the night of 2 December 1984, the worst industrial accident in history happened here. Highly poisonous methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the plant, together with even more toxic reaction compounds. Thousands of people were gassed to death as they slept in their beds near the factory. Others died on the road as they tried to flee, water pouring from their burning eyes, unbearable pain in their lungs, defecating and urinating in their clothes, unable to help themselves. They found dead mothers with their dead babies in their arms. In the months and years that followed, thousands more died from the effects of the gas they inhaled.

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The Union Carbide factory has never been cleaned up. It is still poisoning Bhopal. Recent tests showed the chemicals still at the factory site have contaminated the ground water, which is used as drinking water by some of the poor neighborhoods around the factory. There is mercury lying on the ground inside the site, according to a former foreman who worked for Union Carbide.

Dow Chemicals, the company which took Union Carbide over in a merger, refuses to clean up the site. It claims it is no longer liable because it sold its shares in an Indian subsidiary.

It doesn't end there. "In the past 20 years, I didn't live through a single day without painkillers, without a tablet," says Rashida Bee, one of the survivors of the disaster. Today Ms Bee, and thousands like her, are still suffering the long-term effects of poisoning by the gas that leaked from the Union Carbide factory that night.

A lesson learned or a lesson forgotten?

posted by chris at 7:53 AM
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