Sunday November 29 2009

Food for thought as Carbide survivors continue to suffer

By Mahim Pratap Singh

Scroll down to read "Bhopal: The Hiroshima of the Chemical Industry "and "Bhopal: A Living Legacy of Corporate Greed"

­ 25 years on, agony unabated: Survivors of the Bhopal gas disaster staging a ‘benign buffet’ protest to mark the 25th anniversary of the tragedy in front of the abandoned Union Carbide factory in Bhopal on Saturday (A.M. Faruqui )

BHOPAL: Survivors of the Union Carbide industrial disaster staged a jhoot bole kauwa kaate (lie and the crow will bite) and ‘benign buffet’ protest in front of the factory here on Saturday.

Sitting with a huge dummy crow and plates of “delicacies” made of hazardous chemical wastes, they waited in vain for Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Minister for Gas Relief and Civic Administration Babulal Gaur, Chief Secretary Rakesh Sahni and other bureaucrats to join them at the “benign buffet.”

The menu included a “semi-processed pesticide on watercress” and “lime-sludge mousse.”

Facing questions from the local, national and international media, the survivors went on with rehearsed tales of their misery, repeating each sentence several times as television journalists asked them for a “bite.”

Rehearsed tales? Of course. They have been doing this for years. They have been “camera ready” since 1984, with the media feeding off on them every year since the tragedy occurred. And yet, as the establishment ushers them into the 25th year of their misery, nothing seems to have changed.

“Look at this,” says Laksmi Bai of Prem Nagar, holding out a bottle of acid-like golden yellow liquid. “The government wants us to believe this is water fit for human consumption. It has corroded all my utensils, leaves a yellow haldi-like residue and causes skin irritation.”

Yet, they drink it everyday. The tragedy ruined an entire generation and did not just stop at that.

Says Baano Bi of New Arif Nagar: “I lost five members of my family in the tragedy. Today, we continue to live in slum-like conditions. We will live out whatever is left of our lives, but what about the next generation? Our children have learning deficiencies. They have stopped studying since they can’t memorise anything. We are doomed forever.”

The collective hatred of the survivors seemed concentrated on one man: Mr. Gaur.

“In 2005, we tied rakhis to Babulal Gaur and he promised us clean water,” says Haazra Bi. “But when we went to him again to remind him of his promise, he blamed us of robbery and got us arrested. Cases are still on against 11 of us.”
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 July 12 2009
Published on Sunday, July 12, 2009 by The Scotland Sunday Herald

Bhopal: The Hiroshima of the Chemical Industry

Poisoned legacy: The Hiroshima of the chemical industry is still claiming victims – babies born 25 years later with serious birth defects

by Billy Briggs

BHOPAL - Unable to steer safely in the mud, the driver of our rickshaw pulls into the side of the road to allow us to take shelter from torrential rain. There, under a shop's awning, a small crowd of people are standing together waiting for the weather to break. They include Sapna Sharma and her brother-in-law, Sanjay. Sanjay is holding his 18-month-old nephew, Anshul, who has kohl-rimmed eyes and silver bracelets on his ankles. As we stand talking, some of the people start pointing to the child's hands and feet while speaking animatedly to us in Hindi. Through our translator, Sapna then explains that her son was born with 12 toes and 12 fingers.
People carry torches during a march to mark the 24th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy in Bhopal in December 2008. Twenty-seven members of the US Congress on Wednesday appealed to Dow Chemicals to pay to clean up the site of the world's worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, India 25 years ago. (AFP/File)

Shortly afterwards, about half a mile away in the Shankar Nagar area of Bhopal, we meet another Indian child with congenital defects, three-year-old, Raj, who is blind, cannot walk and whose head is oversized.

"The doctors said bad water could have been a cause of my son's condition. Older people here are gas victims and now the younger people are victims of the water," says his mother, Poona.
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Here, in the capital city of Madhya Pradesh in India, hundreds of children are being born with deformities and mental health problems. As we walk back to our rickshaw after the interview we come across more afflicted youngsters who have followed us along the road out of curiosity. They include Rajesh, 12, who is barefoot and bald. The other children make fun of him - his mother, Yashdabai, explains that they do so because they believe that her son is "mad".

Rajesh's older sister, Sonia, a pretty girl with her black hair pulled back off her face, scolds the other children and tells us that she always has to protect her brother from bullies. Sonia is barefoot, too, and as she speaks a colleague notices that the young girl has huge feet.

This is the horrendous legacy the city of Bhopal is facing 25 years on from one of the world's worst industrial accident. The Bhopal gas disaster, as it became known, occurred shortly after midnight on December 3, 1984, when a cloud of poisonous gas escaped from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in the city. It has been dubbed the "Hiroshima of the chemical industry". The accidental release of 42 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) from the factory exposed more than 500,000 people to toxic gases and up to 10,000 inhabitants are thought to have died within the first 72 hours after the leak.

At least 25,000 people exposed to the gas have since died, and today in Bhopal tens of thousands more Indians suffer from a variety of debilitating gas-related illnesses such as respiratory and psychiatric problems, joint pains, menstrual irregularities, tuberculosis and cancers. More disturbingly, the escalating number of birth defects in children include cleft palates, webbed feet and hands, twisted limbs, brain damage and heart problems.

Shankar Nagar is a slum area of the city just north of the derelict Union Carbide factory site. For years local campaigners have been demanding that Union Carbide - now owned by US multinational Dow Chemicals - clean up the abandoned pesticide plant, but so far their pleas have been ignored.

In 1999, a Greenpeace investigation found severe chemical contamination of the environment surrounding the former Union Carbide factory, including pollution with heavy metals and chemical compounds.

The Greenpeace report also said: "Analysis of water samples drawn from wells serving the local community has also confirmed the contamination of groundwater reserves with chemicals arising either from previous or ongoing activities and/or incidents.

"As a result of the ubiquitous presence of contaminants, the exposure of the communities surrounding the plants to complex mixtures of hazardous chemicals continues on a daily basis. Though less acute than the exposure which took place as a result of the 1984 MIC release, long-term chronic exposure to mixtures of toxic synthetic chemicals and heavy metals is also likely to have serious consequences for the health and survival of the local population."

Amnesty International's 2004 Clouds Of Injustice report said: "Toxic wastes continue to pollute the environment and water supply and it is appalling that no-one has been held account for the leak and its appalling consequences."

The abandoned factory site is now a vast wasteland of weeds and trees that is home to packs of wild dogs. The buildings and structure have been left to rot while tank 610, from where the poison gas escaped, sits like an old rusting locomotive in the sun. Piles of dangerous chemicals are lying in the open air and inside one of the abandoned labs we saw dozens of dusty brown bottles containing chemicals. Campaigners say drums of Sevin - the pesticide Union Carbide was producing at the time using MIC - have never been removed from the site and remain locked in one of the sheds under police guard.

"There are sacks of poisons, mercury drops, toxic carbaryl rocks from which toxic tars ooze into the earth, and subsoil water and tarry liquids that overflow when the monsoon comes," explained our translator and guide, Sanjay Sharma, 24, a student who lost his three sisters, two brothers and parents in the 1984 disaster. He has one sister left after his only other brother, Sunil, committed suicide on July 26, 2006. Sunil had been 12 at the time of the disaster and was a vociferous campaigner on behalf of victims until be became severely depressed.

"My brother hanged himself. When they found him he was wearing a T-shirt that said, No More Bhopalis'."

Survivors campaigning for clean water petitioned the Supreme Court of India, which in May 2004 ordered that clean, safe water be piped into the communities, but to date the state government has ignored this order.

In January this year, a major study was embarked upon to try to ascertain the extent of the current health problems facing the population. The year-long investigation is being carried out by the Sambhavna Clinic in Bhopal, an innovative medical facility built in the centre of the city most badly affected by the gas leak. Researcher Santosh Kshatria said 22 different communities near the factory site were believed to be drinking from a contaminated water supply.

"There are 10 researchers. I'm covering 20,000 people in 17 neighbourhoods. So far I have surveyed 5000 people and found more than 200 cases of children with congenital defects. Many have twisted limbs and many have mental health issues. Anecdotally, this is a very high rate of incidence," she says.

In many cases these are the same families from the poorest slum areas who were decimated by the gas in 1984. They have no option but to drink the water and complain of aches and pains, rashes, fevers, eruptions of boils, headaches, nausea, lack of appetite, dizziness and constant exhaustion.

Lead, mercury and organochlorines have been found in the milk of nursing mothers living near the factory with the result that women are terrified to breastfeed their babies in case they are giving them poison.

Another legacy for Bhopali females is that men have reservations about marrying so-called "gas victims" so many young local women face living in dire poverty having been stigmatised and left single.

Investigations into the 1984 disaster revealed that something had gone fundamentally wrong with a tank that stored methyl isocyanate. During the early hours of December 3, 1984, large amounts of water entered tank 610, containing the highly toxic chemical. The resulting reaction increased the temperature inside the tank to more than 200C, raising the pressure to a level it was not designed to withstand and eventually releasing a large volume of toxic gases.

Union Carbide has always claimed that its Indian subsidiary - Union Carbide India Limited, which was 49%-owned by the state - was solely responsible for the management of the plant and that the accident was the result of sabotage.

Union Carbide was taken over by Dow Chemicals, one of the producers of Agent Orange, in 2001, and the latter insists that all liabilities were settled in 1989 when Union Carbide paid around £300 million to the Indian government to be allocated to survivors. Furthermore, Union Carbide says it did all it could to alleviate the human suffering following the disaster and that it paid for a hospital in Bhopal to offer free medical care to victims.

The company also denies allegations that it abandoned the plant and says UCIL removed tens of thousands of pounds of MIC from the plant and spent around £1.5m undertaking additional clean-up work. The firm also says that a 1998 study of water sources near the plant site by the Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board did not find any traces of chemicals linked to any substance used at the UCIL plant.

In 1991, however, Bhopal's authorities charged Union Carbide's chief executive, Warren Andersen, with manslaughter. To date the retired American has avoided an international arrest warrant and a US court summons. Andersen was declared a fugitive from justice by the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal in 1992 for failing to appear at court. Although orders were passed to the Indian government to press for his extradition from America, Bhopal campaigners say ministers have not pushed the case, fearing a backlash from foreign investors.

A quarter of a century on the campaign for justice in Bhopal continues unabated. In June, 27 members of the US Congress appealed to Dow Chemicals to pay to clean up the derelict site and to meet survivors' demands for medical and economic rehabilitation. The politicians also asked the company to send a representative to take part in court proceedings in India.

"Bhopal is widely regarded as the worst industrial disaster in human history, a catastrophe with widespread implications for the chemical industry, globalisation and human rights," they said in a letter initiated by Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey.

They say the polluter, rather than taxpayers, should bear responsibility for environmental damage. Meanwhile, Bhopal's environmental crisis continues.
©2009 newsquest (sunday herald) limited

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
December 2 2004
Published on Thursday, December 2, 2004 by the lndependent (UK)

Bhopal: A Living Legacy of Corporate Greed

Twenty years ago today poisonous gases spewed from a Union Carbide factory, killing thousands as they slept. It was the worst industrial accident in history. Justin Huggler meets the forgotten survivors
by Justin Huggler
 
The control room at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India, looks like something from one of those post-apocalyptic science fiction movies. Cow dung is splattered across the floor. There are rows upon rows of broken dials, their plastic covers smashed, the needles stuck. The scale models of the plant are shrouded in thick spiders' webs. A dirty sign on the wall reads "Safety is everybody's business".

Outside, eagles are nesting in the long-defunct flare tower. They swing overhead from time to time. Fluffy bits of asbestos float on the breeze. They are strewn across the ground, caught on gorse bushes. The vast metal hulk of the factory is silent, huge tangles of metal pipes and tubes running from tank to tank, slowly rusting in the Bhopal sun.

A handicapped man walks past a graffiti urging death on former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson outside its closed factory in the central Indian city of Bhopal December 2, 2004. More than 3,500 died soon after the plant, now a subsidiary of Dow Chemicals Co., spewed clouds of highly toxic methyl isocyanate into the city, according to government figures. India continues to pursue criminal charges against Anderson, now in the United States. Union Carbide and its partner, Union Carbide India Ltd, and Dow Chemicals which took over UCC in 2001, have publicly stated they bear no responsibility for the leak, its consequences or the poisons still seeping into the ground. December 2, 2004 marks the 20th anniversary of what many describe as the 'chemical Hiroshima'. REUTERS/Raj Patidar

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.

You would not think, to look at Bhopal today, that it happened here. It's a charming city, built around the edges of a lake. Fountains spume lake water in columns near the shore, a solitary boatman is slowly working his way out across a lake that shimmers with the early morning haze.

There was a mayoral election here a couple of weeks ago. Trucks festooned with brightly colored banners made their way through the streets, blaring slogans from their loudspeakers. There was barely a mention of the Bhopal disaster. You would think the city had moved on, that it was all in the past.

But that could not be further from the truth. Round the corner from the rusting metal skeleton of the Union Carbide factory lies a warehouse. You can wander inside if you want, but the watchman who guards the site won't come with you. He is too scared. Step inside and the smell hits you. It is hard to breathe, almost impossible. It's a terrible smell, something deeply unhealthy, something chemical and poisonous. Huge mounds of brown toxic sludge lie in the warehouse, piled 10 feet high.

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.

Many of the survivors, when you speak to them, have to break off from time to time because of the Bhopal cough. It's a long, agonizing rattle that makes you wonder whether they can draw air back into their lungs. Women have menstrual irregularities. Others have more severe handicaps. Ms Bee's nephew was blinded by the gas.

And all of them have received just £300 in compensation from Union Carbide. This is as much the fault of the Indian government as of the American company. In 1986, the Indian government agreed a deal in which Union Carbide paid just $470m (£245m) in compensation to victims. The government agreed to drop a legal case in which Union Carbide was expected to end up having to pay as much as $3bn in compensation. It agreed that the payment would end all Union Carbide's liability for the disaster. It never consulted the victims. Today, 15 years later, less than half of that money has been paid to the victims. The rest is still sitting in the Indian government's coffers, earning interest for the government, but not for its rightful owners, the victims of Bhopal. The injured have received 25,000 rupees each (£300). The relatives of those who died received 100,000 rupees (£1,200).

One victim, Bhano Bee, told how in 1986 her six-year-old son developed intestinal problems because of the gas. "I spent a lot of money on his treatment, more than 50,000 rupees (£600), and we only got 25,000 rupees (£300) compensation each from the government," she said.

Today, Rashida Bee is sitting in the yard where some of the women survivors try to scrape by a living making basic stationery products. Many have lost their husbands and are the sole breadwinners for the families. Many are too sick to hold down any other job.

Big mosquitoes that can bite right through your clothes hover as she talks. When they bite, you feel a sharp pain like a bee sting. Ms Bee is sitting with her friend and fellow activist Champa Devi Shukla.

"If I had died at that point it would have been better, because the pain was unbearable," Ms Bee says, remembering the night of the accident. "I couldn't open my eyes. When I finally opened them a little I saw dead people all over the road, and people were walking over them. There were people crying out to God to kill them because the pain was so unbearable." The pain has not gone away. Both Ms Bee's parents died of the long-term effects of the disaster. So did her sister-in-law. Her nephew, the son of the sister-in-law who died, went blind. "I saw so many deaths in my family, that's where I get the source of my energy to fight against the multinationals like Union Carbide," she says.

Activists fighting for victims of the world's worst industrial accident in 1984 have accused the Indian government of dragging its feet on the extradition of the main accused in the case, US industrialist Warren Anderson. (AFP/HO)

She is the more outwardly aggressive. Ms Shukla, a gray-headed, smiling lady in a yellow sari, at first seems too mild for a campaigner. But as she speaks you sense there is more to her.

"In 1992, my eldest son committed suicide. He was very sick, he got fed up with life. He took a pesticide called Sulphas. He was 20. He was in a lot of pain. My daughter is paralyzed. She got married but she was not treated well by her in-laws. Both my daughters got married but both are back living in my house now.

"The deaths of my husband and son inspired me to take up activism. I thought nothing was left in my life, but I realized many others had lost their relatives and loved ones so I took up activism." Together, Ms Bee and Ms Shukla have won several awards for their activism. This year, they were joint winners of the Goldman Environmental Award, and they proudly display their awards for the camera.

But, for all the accolades, the world is ignoring these eloquent women. They are the forgotten. They are celebrated from time to time for their courage and determination, wheeled out as examples of tough women from the Third World looking for justice from the multinationals. But their demands are ignored. Nothing gets done.

Union Carbide has abandoned the victims of the Bhopal disaster. So has the Indian government. So have the local politicians of the Madhya Pradesh state government, busy touring around the city trying to get re-elected.

In 2004, Shahid Noor, who was orphaned as a child in the disaster, went on a hunger strike to protest against the state government's failure to live up to its promise to provide jobs for the orphans. "After four days, the police came and took away the tent where we were sitting," he says. "We sat two more days without a tent. The police took us to hospital and forcefully administered glucose. The government said they couldn't give us jobs but they would give us loans. We refused."

The memories of that night still live with the survivors. "My father got sick and we took him to the hospital," Mr Noor recounts. "We left him there. When I got there I heard my mother had died. It was 3 December 1984, the night after the disaster. Around midnight or 1am she died. The same evening after I got the news of my mother's death I heard my father had died.

"The most tragic part of the story is we were in that house for around eight, 10 days. My brother had also died but my uncle didn't tell us. He told me after several days and I went and saw the grave. Later, I learnt that he was the first to die."

Mr Noor is talking in his tiny first floor apartment just a few streets from the factory. Here, it is easy to imagine the terror of that night. There is a power cut and the flat is plunged into darkness. Without light, it is hard enough to feel your way down the steep narrow staircase to the street. They had to do it blinded by fumes that burnt their eyes.

As he talks, his wife burns the chili powder she has been cooking in the kitchen. All the time, that has been the recurrent description from the survivors of the gas. "It was like when some one has burnt chili powder." You feel it catching at the back of your throat. The survivors face this reminder all the time.

Across the city, among the paper files of the industrial records office, T R Chouhan makes the case against Union Carbide and, by extension, its new owners, Dow Chemicals. He should know, he used to work as foreman of the MIC plant, the one that leaked that night. "I was supposed to get six months' safety training, but after just 15 days training they told me to take charge of the MIC sub-system. I refused and they threatened to fire me. In the end, they agreed to one month's training," he says.

"The most vital safety instrument in the plant, the temperature indicator alarm, which could have warned of the disaster, was not working because of a design fault. It went wrong after just two weeks and never worked again. In the original design, there was supposed to be a back-up but it was never installed.

"There was a loud siren installed to warn the public of a leak, but four months before the disaster they changed it to a muted siren because there were so many leaks from the plant and they didn't want people to panic."

The US has refused to extradite Warren Anderson, the former chief executive officer of Union Carbide, to face trial in India. Dow Chemicals claims it has discharged its liability. It may sleep easy at night. But the victims of Bhopal do not.