About Bhopal

"On the morning of the disaster you thought mothing could be worse than this, now you know you were wrong... The world wept for Bhopal years back, now it knows little about the continuing aftermath" Sambhavna Medical Team

December 3rd 1984: the Indian City of Bhopal became the site of the biggest industrial accident in world history when 45 tonnes of methyl isocyanate gas spewed from a chemical storage tank and poured over a heavily populated part of the sleeping city. People woke up surrounded by a poison cloud so dense and searing that they could hardly see. With their eyes stinging and their throats burning, entire families ran screaming for their lives. As people gasped for breath, the gas became ever more suffocating. It burned the tissue of their eyes and lungs and attacked their nervous system. People lost control of their bodies. Urine and faeces ran down their legs. Some began vomiting uncontrollably. Others were wracked with seizures and fell dead in the streets.

Thousands died in terror that night, choked by chemicals and drowned by the lung fluid generated by them. In the years since, hundreds of thousands have been stricken with exposure induced chronic illnesses, many of which have proved fatal. To date well over 16,000 innocent people have died from exposure to the enormous toxic leak. In all, over 500,000 people were exposed.

ACCIDENT OR DESIGN?

The gas cloud escaped from a chemical factory majority owned by Union Carbide, a large North American multinational. In the days following the leak the company admitted full moral responsibility. In spite of this, the ensuing months and years witnessed an expensive P.R. campaign attempting to `Indianise' the disaster by a strategy of claiming local management responsibility and, more desperately, individual sabotage; a claim both morally and legally untenable, and which directly contradicts the opinions of expert chemical engineers and investigators; a claim intended to draw attention away from operational and managerial inadequacies of a factory designed and governed by it's North American parent company.

THE SECRET HISTORY

Only three years before the world's largest industrial disaster, workers at the plant took industrial action over inadequate safety measures after one employee was killed and a month later 28 workers severely injured by phosgene leaks during routine maintenance. Workers tried to warn local inhabitants about the great dangers just yards from their homes by holding meetings outside the factory gates. Leaders of the action were sacked by the company, the influence of the union was undermined. Months later a safety audit conducted by a North American team found "a total of 61 hazards, 30 of them major and 11 in the dangerous Phosgene/Methyl Isocyanate units". The response of management at Danbury, Conneticut, in the US was to continue to downgrade the operation: by halving staffing levels; slashing the minimum amount of training required for the highly dangerous M.I.C. unit; and reducing money spent on vital safety mechanisms. When water got into the fatal storage tank around the night of December 1st, thereby causing a runaway exothermic chain reaction, six measures designed to prevent a leak were either broken, turned off or inadequate to cope with the scale of reaction. The tank was three quarters full: it should have never been more than half filled. The refrigeration unit, meant to keep the contents at a safe temperature, was switched off in order to save £10 per day in electricity. A run off tank already contained M.I.C. There was no pressure guage to alert workers to a potential problem, the vent gas scrubber designed to neutralise escaping gas was empty, the flare tower not working. The warning siren in the factory had been switched off because of the frequency of it's soundings.

RESPONSIBILITY WITHOUT CARE

Carbide spent in excess of $30 million in the first few years after the disaster in seeking evasion of responsibility. They initially offered the Indian govt. around $100 million in full and final settlement, less than was covered by their insurance policy. After five years of wrangling, five years of deaths and deteriorating health, an out of court settlement was reached for a mere $470 million. The sum was lower than the standards set by the Indian Railways for railway accidents. It took into account less than 2 000 dead and and less than 50 000 injured. Nobody under the age of 18 at the time of the disaster was considered for compensation.

The company had failed to provide anything like adequate compensation to survivors. Lack of money has exacerbated problems and compounded misery. For a great number of the city's desperately poor, it has ultimately meant a choice between food or medicines. Medical care, however, has been mostly irrational and ineffective. At times families have spent the majority of their income on expensively packaged aspirins. Rather than suffer queues, neglect and corruption at government hospitals, great numbers attend the proliferating private clinics in the city. In some of the poorest communities, almost all the private doctors are without any formal medical training.

At least 100,000 people remain seriously ill to this day and the condition of many more is deteriorating.

"Information is almost as scanty, medical care almost as confused and the condition of many survivors as bad if not worse than in the morning of the disaster... in this situation of despair, it is essential and possible to keep hope alive in Bhopal." Sambhavna Medical Team

Some Facts About Bhopal

The worst affected area of the city housed some of the world's poorest people, 80% of whom depended upon heavy manual labour for their livelihoods.

Gas exposure-related ailments prevents around 50,000 people from earning a living, resulting in destitution and near starvation.

The little compensation that has been granted does not even cover gas victim's costs for the interim: on average, survivors have received £350. Families of the dead fare little better: courts value the life of a N. American at $500,000, that of a Bhopali at less than $2,000.

Union Carbide has not released it's research information concerning the composition of the gas, it's effects and the best way to treat them.

In the absence of adequate information, doctors in Bhopal indiscriminately prescribe antibiotics and steroids causing more harm than good.

Toxins from the poison gases crossed into the bloodstream via the lungs causing a range of chronic neurotoxicological problems, most commonly fatigue, memory loss, breathlessness, aching joints, skin diseases and susceptibility to other diseases due to damaged immune systems. Gynaecological problems are rife among women exposed, causing sterility, pain, frightening discharges and cervical erosion.

In 1994 an International Medical Commission anticipated a blight of lung cancers in the near future.

In the centre of Bhopal, 52% of the drugs market is controlled by multinationals: one of these, Rhone Poulenc, now owns the division of Union Carbide which the Bhopal factory was part of.

Gas poisoning has caused stillbirths. Infants have been born deformed and retarded. Women have been deserted and rejected as a result.

Thirteen years on, an estimated ten to fifteen people still die each month from gas-related illnesses.

"In the houses, mourning continues and people are dying slow deaths. Life is ebbing away... Some have got TB, some cancer... they have boils all over their bodies. Many people seem to be just clinging on to life... will they be able to get proper medicines?... This is all we hope, hope for better days." Aziza Sultan, Health worker and survivor

"Something has died inside us, so now we only think about when we'll die too. We don't know how much life is left in us." Nahne Kahn, survivor

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