space Press Releases, News Stories

By Ken Ward Jr., The Sunday Gazette Mail

BHOPAL, India, 2 December 2001-- Seventeen years ago tonight, about 52,000 pounds of poisonous methyl isocyanate started to leak from Union Carbide's pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. The leak continued through the morning of Dec. 3, 1984. An estimated 3,500 to 7,500 people died from direct exposure to the gas. Many died in their beds. Others staggered from their homes, blinded and choking, and died in the street. Since then, up to 16,000 people have died from the lingering effects of the leak. Studies of the survivors have found they suffer from headaches, disturbed balance, depression, reproductive problems and immune disorders. Today in Bhopal, the former Carbide plant site is polluted with high levels of chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, mercury, lead and other toxic chemicals. Most of the 20,000 people who live nearby have no alternative but to use polluted groundwater for their drinking water supply. Carbide sold its share of the property in 1994. For more than 15 years, survivors and their advocates fought to make Carbide clean up the site and fairly compensate the victims. In February, Carbide ceased to exist. The company merged with The Dow Chemical Co. Now, Bhopal activists want Dow to take responsibility for the disaster. On Monday, a group of Bhopal residents - along with Greenpeace activists - will visit Dow's corporate headquarters in Midland, Mich., to draw attention to the ongoing tragedy in Bhopal. In a letter last week, Greenpeace toxics campaigner Damu Smith asked for a meeting with Dow CEO Michael Parker. "It is the view of Greenpeace, organizations in India and around the world, that Dow's merger with Union Carbide requires your company to accept responsibility for addressing the myriad and severe contamination and health problems which persist in the wake of this catastrophe," Smith wrote to Parker. John Musser, a spokesman for Dow, said Friday that he and several other corporate officials will meet with the activists. Musser said the company had no plans for any action to clean up the site or further compensate the victims. Musser pointed to a February 1989 legal deal in which Carbide and the Indian government agreed to settle claims over the leak for $ 479 million. "Our position, accurately so, is that was clearly a closed matter at that point," Musser said.

According to Greenpeace, this settlement provided an average payment for personal injury of between $ 370 and $ 533 per person. Greenpeace called these payments, "barely enough money to cover medical expenses for five years."

Last year, Dow reported sales of $ 23 billion and profits of $ 1.5 billion. Parker was paid $ 1.6 million, not including stock options. "It is important that a company of your enormous wealth and stature rise above the arduous legal battles which remain and simply do what is right and necessary for people who have been so unjustly treated and harmed," Smith said in his letter to Parker. In a company newsletter published shortly after the merger, Dow repeated the Carbide assertion that the Bhopal leak was the work of "a disgruntled employee."

"Although not known at the time, the gas was formed when a disgruntled employee, apparently bent on spoiling a batch of MIC, added water to a storage tank," the Dow newsletter said. "Carbide accepted moral responsibility for the incident despite its being an act of sabotage."

Most investigators agreed that the leak was caused by a runaway reaction that occurred when a combination of water, iron, rust, sodium and chloride compounds entered an MIC storage tank. But most investigators also dismiss Carbide's sabotage theory. They blame poor maintenance and the failure of numerous safety systems at the plant. "Accident by sabotage was technically improbable because the accident had involved simultaneous failures in design, technological subsystems, safety devices, managerial decisions, and operating procedures," wrote journalist Paul Shrivastava in his book, "Bhopal: Anatomy of a Crisis."

In the Kanawha Valley, Bhopal has always been a controversial topic. The former Carbide plant in Institute, which is being purchased by Bayer, is the sister facility to the Bhopal plant. Tens of thousands of pounds of MIC are stored in an underground tank at the Institute site. A series of plant owners has refused to reduce the MIC stockpile. After Bhopal, many area residents marched in the streets to show their support for Carbide. In August 1985, a leak of aldicarb oxime and other chemicals from the Institute plant injured 135 people. That leak raised concerns about chemical plant safety and emergency response in the Valley and across the country. Congress responded with federal chemical safety and right-to-know legislation. On Monday, the Institute group People Concerned about MIC will sponsor a forum to discuss Bhopal and chemical safety in general. The event is scheduled for 7 to 9 p.m. at the West Virginia State College Student Union. Speakers include James Cox, state training officer for the Office of Emergency Services, Department of Environmental Protection environmental advocate Pam Nixon, chemistry professor Basudeb Das Sarma, and Mark Scott of the National Institute for Chemical Studies.

For information about the Bhopal tragedy, visit www. bhopal.net/.