The Bhopal gas tragedy was a chemical industrial accident which occurred at the Union Carbide India Limited factory in the city of Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh in central India on the night of the 2nd of December 1984. The disaster came about as a result of over a decade of neglect and poor safety procedures at the plant. These culminated in water entering into a tank containing methyl isocyanate (MIC), leading to an exothermic reaction. This accelerated and leaked out huge amounts of gas and other toxic substances into the plant and wider Bhopal region. Half a million people were exposed to the contaminants and thousands died. Tens of thousands were badly injured over time and upwards of half a million people suffered some side-effects. It has been described as worst industrial disaster in recorded history. Many thousands of people were asked to move from the immediate vicinity of the plant in late 1984 and early 1985 once the extent of the damage became clear, but despite the hazardous environment there was no major drop in Bhopal’s overall population levels.[1]
Bhopal gas tragedy chronology of events
The Union Carbide India Limited Factory was built at Bhopal in the late 1960s by the Union Carbide Corporation, a subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Corporation in the United States. Union Carbide built the factory primarily for the purposes of producing a pesticide carbaryl, which they sold under the brand name Sevin. Production of this pesticide uses methyl isocynate as an intermediate in the chemical process. Cost-cutting measures were employed in the chemical processes. These issues were compounded by extremely poor management of the factory. Moreover, a decline in demand for the pesticide in the late 1970s and early 1980s led to an accumulation of chemical there, particularly methyl isocyanate.[2]
There had been warnings for years that chemicals were being improperly secured at the Bhopal chemical plant and that equipment there was faulty. These were largely ignored. Workers were consequently exposed to chemical leaks as early as 1976 and on one occasion in 1982 dozens were admitted to hospital after an incident. This process of escalating safety issues culminated in early December 1984 when large amounts of water entered into a tank containing just over 40 tons of methyl isocyanate. Shortly before midnight this led to a runaway exothermic reaction. Multiple safety measures which were meant to be in place failed. In one instance, a refrigeration system that was meant to kick in to cool the tanks in such a scenario did not work because it had been shut down nearly three years earlier. Within minutes workers in close proximity to the tank began feeling ill and a meeting was held to try and contain the leak.[3]
What followed over the next hours was the most catastrophic industrial incident in recorded history. The forty tons of methyl isocyanate escaped out of the Bhopal plant and blew over the city. It would impact hundreds of thousands of people, such is the toxicity of the gas. Alarm sirens at the plant briefly started ringing and were then manually switched off. Meanwhile, workers left the plant and were directed to head upwind away from the direction the gas was blowing in. The leak only stopped when the tank in question ran out of methyl isocyanate. By then over half a million people had been exposed to the gas to one extent or another.[4]
Extent of migration following the Bhopal gas tragedy
The Bhopal disaster led to the mass movement of tens of thousands of people initially. 20,000 people alone were hospitalized in the days and weeks that followed, some with serious conditions that they died from. The immediate official death toll was just over 2,250 people, though compensation would later be paid out for 3,787 deaths. Others developed non-fatal conditions like nausea and burning eyes which in many cases left them with lifelong health problems. Campaigners argue that around 8,000 people were actually killed in the days immediately after the disaster.[5]
Temporary camps were also set up to house people who lived in the immediate vicinity of the plant and the worse contaminated regions. Despite all of this, people soon began returning to their homes and to places not far from the plant, before the decontamination process had been completed. The response to the tragedy has been termed an act of mass ‘environmental racism’, with campaigners noting that very little compensation has been paid out over the years to victims of the disaster and that a disaster of the same magnitude would have been responded to very differently had it occurred in the United States or Europe.[6]
Demographic impact of the Bhopal gas tragedy
The demographic impact of the Bhopal gas tragedy was primarily in terms of the loss of life attendant on it. Nobody is sure how many people died. This is because some of the deaths were quite immediate, while others took place weeks, months or even years later from health complications caused by the tragedy. In such instances it is difficult to accurately identify all of the victims. However, there is no doubt that people who died of organ failure and other conditions in their twenties or thirties in the Bhopal region in the years that followed must have had their health compromised by the disaster.[7]
According to official statistics, 4,000 people died, but the actual figure is likely somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000. Half a million people were injured, many quite seriously. Thus, the demographic impact in the Bhopal region was tragic. Despite this, the population of the wider Bhopal city and region continued to increase unabated in the second half of the 1980s. Poor political responses to the tragedy meant that people were not properly moved out of the contaminated region.[8]
Explore more about the Bhopal gas tragedy
- The World's Worst Industrial Disaster at NPR
- The Bhopal Disaster and its Aftermath at Environmental Health
- India, Births and Baptisms, 1786-1947 records collection on MyHeritage
- India, Marriages, 1792-1948 records collection on MyHeritage
References
- ↑ https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/06/17/1181244389/the-worlds-worst-industrial-disaster-harmed-people-even-before-they-were-born
- ↑ https://www.bhopal.net/what-happened/setting-the-stage-for-tragedy-1969-1984/1969-1979-union-carbide-enters-bhopal/
- ↑ Edward Broughton, ‘The Bhopal disaster and its aftermath: A review’, in Environmental Health, Vol. 4, No. 6 (2005).
- ↑ Chandana Mathur and Ward Morehouse, ‘Twice Poisoned Bhopal: Notes on the Continuing Aftermath of the World's Worst Industrial Disaster’, in International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 62: Class and Catastrophe: September 11 and Other Working-Class Disasters (Fall, 2002), pp. 69–75.
- ↑ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/40-years-after-bhopal-toxic-gas-leak-suffering-continues/
- ↑ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/03/global-dows-failure-to-offer-remedy-for-the-bhopal-disaster-has-created-a-sacrifice-zone/
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/dec/08/bhopals-tragedy-has-not-stopped-the-urban-disaster-still-claiming-lives-35-years-on
- ↑ Colin Gonsalves, ‘The Bhopal Catastrophe: Politics, Conspiracy and Betrayal’, in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 45, No. 26/27 (June – July, 2010), pp. 68–75.