THE WORST INDUSTRIAL DISASTER; THE BHOPAL DISASTER

BHOPAL TRAGEDY

Ever since the “Industrial Revolution” began in the early 19^th century, every single industry had rapid developments in their particular areas & many more new industries came to the market. So that there was no restrictions for the chemical industry also. Chemical industry including the pharmaceutical industry has grown & developed enormously at that time. In those days developed counties were the leaders of manufactures of industry (even today also the same case remains). They had to obey strict rules & regulations of their countries & had to pay enormous amount of taxes to their states or governments in order to produce their products. So the manufactures started to think of an alternative way to sort out the problem. Their eyes started looking at the third world countries. Because of comfortable & law rules & little amount of taxes in those countries.

Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), whose parent company was in United States, started a chemical plant in Bhopal, India in 1969 in order to manufacture Sevin, a pesticide commonly used throughout Asia.UCC selected Bhopal because of its central location and access to transport infrastructure. At first management decided to import chemicals from its parent company. But as the competition of the market increased, they had to produce chemicals such as methyl isocyanate (MIC) themselves in 1979. MIC is little lighter than water but twice heavier than air.

On the fateful night of December 3, 1984 while most of the one million residents of Bhopal slept, an operator at the plant noticed a small leak of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas and increasing pressure inside a storage tank. The vent-gas scrubber, a safety device designer to neutralize toxic discharge from the MIC system, had been turned off three weeks prior .Apparently a faulty valve had allowed one ton of water for cleaning internal pipes to mix with forty tons of MIC . A 30 ton refrigeration unit that normally served as a safety component to cool the MIC storage tank had been drained of its coolant for use in another part of the plant .Pressure and heat from the vigorous exothermic reaction in the tank continued to build. The gas flare safety system was out of action and had been for three months. At around 1.00 AM, December 3, loud rumbling reverberated around the plant as a safety valve gave way sending a plume of MIC gas into the early morning air. Within hours, the streets of Bhopal were littered with human corpses and the carcasses of buffaloes, cows, dogs and birds. An estimated 3,800 people died immediately, mostly in the poor slum colony adjacent to the UCC plant .Local hospitals were soon overwhelmed with the injured, a crisis further compounded by a lack of knowledge of exactly what gas was involved and what its effects were. The injuries were treated by giving medicines for cough & pouring eye drops. After few days later, the number of people killed was increased up to 20,000 & 200,000 persons had permanent injuries. It became the worst chemical industrial disasters in history. Let’s discuss about the legal aspects of this disaster.

If we going to talk about the tragedy, it will be going to be a messy description of several pages. So it’s better not going into that much of level. Instead of that let’s discuss about this topic under some sub topics.

Conditions of the plant before the occurrence.

# There was only one manual back-up system, compared to a four-stage system used in the US

# The MIC tank alarms had not worked for four years.

# The flare tower and the vent gas scrubber had been out of service for five months before the disaster.

# To reduce energy costs, the refrigeration system was maintained in 20 degrees Celsius, not the 4.5 degrees advised in the manual.

# Carbon steel valves were used at the factory, even though they corrode when exposed to acid.

And more......

*UCC admitted in their own investigation report that most of the safety systems were not functioning on the night of December 3, 1984

Previous warnings & accidents

# A worker was splashed with Phosgene, by not wearing the mask ; by inhaling large amount of gas & he died 3 days later – 1981

# 24 workers exposed & had to be admitted in hospital; none of the workers had been ordered to wear protective masks – January, 1982

# 18 workers were affected by MIC leak – February 1982

# A chemical engineer lost his 30% of his body by contacting with liquid MIC – Oct. 1982

# During 1983 & 1984 leaks took place regularly ; no actions were taken to stop them.

# Reports issued months before the incident by scientists within the Union Carbide corporation & the reports were ignored and never reached senior staff

By these facts it’s true the management of UCC failed to produce it’s protective precautions in the plant. It shoes the Negligence of the company. At that period in India also had not got any technical knowledge to ensure about the safety and environmental hazards by the slugs & etc. For that we cant blame the government, because of lack of technical knowledge in third world countries such as India, Srilanka & etc. The fault was totally done by the company. Because they know how harm these chemicals & what will happen by a little leak.

Occurrences after the tragedy

The CBI filled a case in Indian high courts under killing & assaulting human beings under Indian rule sector 304. So that arrest warrants released on Warren Anderson, the CEO at that time, & 8 other directors of UCC. But unfortunately Warner Anderson had been arrested and released on bail in December 7,1984. Afterward any he managed to escape from India. Its believed that the Indian government at the period helped him to escape to the US. And also however the case was transformed to Indian rule sector 304-A.It was then transformed as an accident. The Indian government, maybe out of inertia, or maybe out of the mistaken belief that future multi-nationals may not invest in India if UC is charged with criminal neglect, has not done anything to prosecute UC. Indian government claimed a compensation of 350 million $ in 1986.Anyway now also Mr.Warren Anderson is a wanted person in India.

After two decades of fighting of Indian government they managed to get a compensation of 470 million $. The compensation amount been awarded to 554,895 people for injuries and 15,310 survivors of those killed. However any much of money is invaluable in front of a human being. Then Union Carbide sold its Indian subsidiary to Eveready Industries ,in 1994. The Dow Chemical Company purchased Union Carbide in 2001.

Lessons learned by this tragedy

# Government of India passed the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster Act - 1985.

# Awareness of chemical hazards & environmental pollution.

# Form a group of specialists to ensure about safety precautions of any plant or company.

# Local governments clearly cannot allow industrial facilities to be situated within urban areas, regardless of the evolution of land use over time.

# The Environment Protection Act was passed in 1986, creating the Ministry of Environment and Forests

#Other counties are also alerted.

# World Traders Organization produced some international laws for international industry.

Conclusion (In my point of view)

There is no need of occurring of this kind of tragedy in order to learn some lessons. As we are humans, sixth sensed, we can imagine some things and we can have precautions to prevent them. This case is telling us a truth, that money can do anything, rather than reborning of a human. By either the company refuses it’s fault or by the careless of the Indian government, the poor helpless people got affected by those kind of events. In my point of view this case still running, because of wanted listed person, Warren Anderson still free to move in his country. He was the fully responsible person for this. Because he had the duty of providing skilful labours to the plant and for a good management. By neglecting his duties a total area was destroyed.

In my view,

*The shortages in the Bhopal plant design can be summarised as:

- Choosing a dangerous method of manufacturing pesticides

- Large-scale storage of MIC prior to selling

- Location close to a densely populated area

- Under-dimensioning of the safety features

- Dependence on manual operations

*The shortages in the management of UCC can be summarised as:

- Lack of skilled operators because of the staffing policy

- Reduction of safety management because of reducing the staff

- Insufficient maintenance of the plant

- Lack of emergency response plans

In this case the international’s mouths also were shut-upped, fortunately or unfortunately. If it happened The US had to do cure to this than skipping the effects of it. So as mankind we need much care of safety related issues in order to prevent many accidents.