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Dow's Human Element in Bhopal

The Lasting Legacy of Corporate Negligence

Bhopal, India has suffered an immeasurable amount of pain at the hands of one of the world’s most powerful chemical companies and few people have looked twice.  Union Carbide’s criminal actions have largely been ignored by the press, the Indian government, and the company’s leaders as well.  On the night of December 2nd, 1984, one of the largest chemical leaks in world history wiped out thousands of Bhopal’s residents.  Every day since that night, one citizen of Bhopal dies from the lasting effects of the leak.  Also since that night, Union Carbide, now fully owned by Dow Chemical company, has done all it can to avoid responsibility for the lives lost, ruined, or threatened by the accident. These twenty-three years of suffering, neglect, and injustice at the hands of Union Carbide chemical company have gone largely unnoticed by the media. 

Local experts had warned of a chemical leak at Union Carbide’s pesticide plant for years. Only 5 months before the accident, Indian journalist Rajkumar Keswani frantically tried to warn people of the dangers posed by the facility, publishing an article entitled “Bhopal; On the brink of Disaster.”  This article followed two smaller, though fatal, accidents in 1981 and 1982, and also publicized the dangerous technology in use at the plant. Despite these warnings, when Keswani’s article was published in local and national newspapers, Union Carbide made a huge cut in capital funds allocated to international plants, aborting the possibility of meaningful change.

On the night of the accident, none of the six safety systems at the plant were functional. Within minutes of the accident, thousands of Bhopal residents collapsed, gasping for air, eyes burning from the chemicals.  Before dawn, thousands were dead. The official report by Union Carbide counts 3,800 fatalities, but municipal workers estimate up to 15,000 deaths.  Because proximity to the plant accounted for the most fatalities, whole families were wiped out with no one to account for them.  However, it is clear from statistics compiled by Students for Bhopal that 150,000 people were left critically injured, with 22,000 eventually dying from sustained injuries. Today, 1 out of 10 surviving Bhopal residents are still too sick too work for a living.

That night, workers at the nearby hospital frantically dialed Carbide for safety reactions for the pesticides and chemicals released; they were told it would act “as tear gas” and there would be no long term repercussions. Thousands of people died and continue to suffer, yet Carbide/Dow still refuses to release the chemical makeup of the gas for fear of the loss of “trade secrets”.

Despite the magnitude of the damage, Union Carbide continues to refuse to provide adequate compensation, rehab, or cleanup for the victims.  The chemicals released by the explosion and since untouched by Dow now contaminate the drinking water of the city.  Students for Bhopal have since determined that these chemicals included 27 tons of methyl isocyanate, 1, 3, and 5 trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead, and mercury.  All except the first were detected in the breast milk of female residents in 2002.

Methyl isocyanate was the most toxic of the chemicals released, and spread as a highly toxic vapor throughout the air of Bhopal.  The effects increased from coughing and chest pain into lung edema, hemorrhages, and frequently death.  Dichloromethane can burn the skin, and is almost certainly a carcinogen.  If there is exposure to this chemical during pregnancy, it causes fetal toxicity.  Chloroform is though to be a carcinogen as well, and because it is used as an anesthetic exposure will cause dizziness and depression of the nervous system, and in the long term will damage the kidney and liver.  Lead and mercury are neurotoxins, together causing damage to the nervous system and thought to cause retardation in children and develop dementia and/or psychotic behavior.  These chemicals, as only a percentage of those released at the site, cause a wide variety of illnesses and disabilities that can be both immediately fatal or gradually debilitating for the victims and their children. Because of the long lasting health effects of many of the chemicals, it will be years until Bhopal’s citizens are free of the effects of that night.

Five years after the accident, Union Carbide granted the victims approximately 500 US dollars each for their suffering- enough, over the long term, for a cup of tea a day, according to Students for Bhopal.  Victims could not pay for rehabilitation or treatment with this money, sadly, most of the injuries sustained are long-lasting and getting worse. Without the jobs at factory available anymore, dangerous as they were, the money was an insult for many survivors.

Two law suits are still pending.  When the residents of Bhopal moved to sue Carbide in US Federal Court in 1984, the Indian government was convinced to try the American corporate officials of Dow in Indian courts instead and therefore restricted the victims from immediate legal action.  Since 1987, the former CEO of Carbide has been on trial in India for manslaughter and is yet to appear in criminal courts of Bhopal twenty years later. Additionally, Bano v. Union Carbide was filed in civil court in 1999, suing for the contamination of drinking water by chemicals left at the site; it has survived four movements to dismiss and is still waiting to be heard.

Recent actions have brought these survivors and their campaign back into the spotlight. Beginning on February 20, 2007, the one-year anniversary of the 800k march from Bhopal to Delhi, a 27 day sit-in and 14 day fast began. These activists demanded clean water, health care, and economic rehabilitation of the area.  The same demands were agreed upon last April, but none of the promises were fulfilledr the people of Bhopal.  On March 19th, the government of the district of Madya Pradish agreed to take steps to provide gas-relief specialists with their own proper benefits at hospitals in the region: to make all information about soil and water public, to build a wall around the remains of the factory, to protect children and cattle from the hazardous waste, and to provide fifty additional safe water tanks in the following month.

Though the Indian government has not always followed through on its promises before, we can only hope these demands are met.  For the many groups active in this cause, the past few weeks have been a major success. However, if promises from the government come up empty a second time, the victims of the chemical leak have run out of places to turn.  As US citizens and extremely active players in the capitalist system, our power lies in doing what we can to influence Dow’s actions.

Erin Clark is a sophomore transfer student majoring in English and hoping to also major in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.  She  was active in Amnesty International in high school before working with the Corporate Action Network within Amnesty International at Wesleyan. She can be contacted at EClark@Wesleyan.edu.