This article is also available in Italian / Questo articolo è disponibile anche in italiano
Rehana Bi is a 55-year-old Indian woman. When she was 16, she tells radio station Npr, she was struck by a cloud of toxic gas with her entire family. She survived but lost her parents and a brother. Fiza, whose last name we don't know, is in her early 20s. When reporters from the Atlantic magazine reached out to interview her in 2018, she regularly suffered from dizziness, palpitations, and headaches. She was unable to speak until she was 5 years old, she explained. On the same street lives Obais, a 13-year-old who rarely leaves the house because of the boils that cover most of his body.
One thing that the stories of Rehana Bi, Fiza, Obais, and the people close to them have in common is where they come from. All of them live around Bhopal, a city of more than 1.5 million people in the federated state of Madhya Pradesh, India. It was there in 1984, exactly 40 years ago, that the deadliest industrial accident in history occurred. On the night between 2 and 3 December, Union Carbide India's chemical plant, located on the outskirts of Bhopal, leaked more than 42 tons of methyl isocyanate, a compound used in the production of pesticides. A cloud of toxic gases spread to the surrounding area, mainly impoverished and densely populated residential neighborhoods.
Local government estimates spoke of 3,787 deaths in the immediate area and more than 15,000 within a week. Figures disputed by many in civil society, who believe that an estimate of no less than 25,000 casualties is more realistic. Overall, no less than half a million people were exposed to the gas.
December 3, 1984: the disaster
The Bhopal chemical plant was first established in 1969 near the city. It was owned by Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), a local subsidiary of the US multinational Union Carbide Corporation (UCC). Sevin, a trade name for 1-naphthyl methylcarbamate, a chemical compound used as an insecticide, was manufactured there. From 1979, the factory also began producing methyl isocyanate, an intermediate useful in the manufacture of Sevin that until then had been imported from the United States. A leak of methyl isocyanate will be the cause of the disaster in 1984.
Amnesty International would later accuse the property of abandoning toxic materials at the plant, which was closed after the accident, without providing the necessary cleanup. Some local organisations, such as the Bhopal Medical Appeal, claim that even in its operational years the factory spilled toxic processing waste in proximity to the production site, permanently contaminating soil and groundwater. Both the company and the authorities have disputed the hazardous nature of this waste. India, however, as the British newspaper the Guardian wrote in 2019, reportedly rejected proposals that had come from the United Nations and the German government for an independent study of the impacts.
By 1984 the factory, after a cycle of disappointing financial results, had almost ceased operations, but large stocks of toxic material remained. On the night of 2 December, a high-pressure water jet reached a tank full of methyl isocyanate. The reaction between the compound and the water raised the temperature to boiling point. Unstopped by any safety system, the gas formed escaped from the safety valves and, propelled by the wind, headed for nearby homes. No one in the plant noticed the event until a few minutes before midnight. Too late to prevent the tragedy.
“When I opened the door, I saw many people on their feet coughing. No one could see well, the air was burning as if they were cooking chili peppers,” Rehana Bi recalled to Npr. Her dramatic memories are similar to those of all the other survivors. “Around 12:30 a.m. I woke up to the sound of my baby coughing. In the semi-darkness, I noticed that the room was filled with a white cloud. Then I started coughing, and every breath felt like I was breathing fire,” is the account given to The Guardian by another eyewitness.
The exact dynamics of the accident have been debated for a long time, in and out of courtrooms. Union Carbide argues for sabotage, but it is unclear who or why would have wanted the tragedy to happen. Kumkum Modwel, a medical officer at the Bhopal plant between 1975 and 1982, spoke of the plant's management as “a case study of how not to do things.” She left her job precisely because she was critical of the safety measures at the production site, The Atlantic reports. Another worker, T. R. Chouhan, interviewed by the same news outlet, explained that “management had turned off a refrigeration unit that was supposed to keep the methyl isocyanate tank cool enough to prevent accidents. One of the three safety systems present had been out of service for weeks; the other had failed days before the accident. Small leaks had become so common that on 2 December, when a supervisor discovered a methyl isocyanate leak around 11:30 p.m., he put the matter off until the end of his tea break.” Although never acknowledged by the company that owned the plant, “criminal negligence” will also be mentioned in court rulings over the years.
The legal case and corporate matryoshkas
Four years after the disaster, Union Carbide and Union Carbide India settled with Indian authorities for 470 million dollars in compensation. Survivors and human rights organisations have always considered that figure laughable compared to the consequences of the disaster. However, complicating the demand for further compensation has come an intricate series of corporate takeovers and ownership changes.
Union Carbide Corporation, the US parent company, was acquired in 2001 by Dow Chemicals, another US-based chemical giant. Dow Chemicals in turn merged with DuPont in 2017. The new company, DowDuPont, lasted only a few years: in 2019 the two companies became independent entities again, and Union Carbide remained under the Dow Chemical umbrella. That's why activists are calling for Dow to shoulder the medical and cleanup costs still needed. The company, meanwhile, considers its financial responsibilities concluded with the agreements already in place, and that the finger should, if anything, be pointed at the Indian subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited, which physically controlled the plant. At the time of the accident, UCIL was about 51% owned by Union Carbide Corporation, but after the accident, it sold its shares to other companies. The successor company of Union Carbide India Limited is now called Eveready Industries India, but it too denies any responsibility regarding the events.
Contacted by Renewable Matter, Dow Chemicals merely explained that their company “never owned or operated the plant; it was owned and operated by Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL). Union Carbide Corporation (which was itself a separate company from UCIL) did not become a subsidiary of Dow Chemicals until more than 16 years after the tragedy and 12 years after the 470 million dollars compensation settlement for Bhopal – paid by Union Carbide Corporation and UCIL – was approved by India's Supreme Court. Today, the plant site is under the control of the Madhya Pradesh state government.”
Along with the ascertainment of economic responsibility, trials have continued, albeit slowly. In 2010, an Indian court sentenced seven executives, all from India, to two years in prison for gross negligence in safety. Warren Anderson, the owner of Union Carbide Corporation at the time of the disaster, was not present at the trial. The judiciary tried to indict him, but he was never extradited from the United States.
“The direct victims of those tragedies received minimal compensation, and they often had to wait between ten and twenty years to get it. Those who were born after the events and suffered from water and soil pollution never got anything,” Rachna Dhingra, spokesperson for the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, tells Renewable Matter. “What's worse, no one ever served a single day in jail for this carnage.”
Bhopal today
Forty years later, the Bhopal plant is still standing, abandoned but never cleared. A University of California study shows how exposure to the gas increased the chance of cancer, even for those who were still in the womb at the time of the accident. A second research, led by Canadian researcher Shree Mulay with support from the Sambhavana Clinic, expands the investigation to include those who did not come into direct contact with the 3 December 1984 gas leak. The data review work has not yet been completed, but preliminary results suggest that cases of cancer, paralysis, and tuberculosis increased not only in those who were affected by the toxic cloud, but also in those who routinely made use of local water resources. In May 2018, the Supreme Court of India compelled local authorities to build infrastructure to ensure the supply of uncontaminated water to residents in at-risk areas.
Tim Edwards is a trustee of the Bhopal Medical Appeal, a charity that co-founded a medical center dedicated to victims of the tragedy and funds another center that cares for second-generation children. “The gas leak was caused by safety cuts and lack of investment, but Union Carbide also used the land as a dumping ground. With or without the 1984 accident, there would have been a contamination disaster,” he reports to Renewable Matter.
“The polluter is Union Carbide, which is now owned by Dow Chemicals. According to the ‘polluter pays’ principle, it should be their responsibility to repair the damage, but Union Carbide claims it has no control over its subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited. An absurdity, considering that they held the majority of shares at the time of the gas leak. A US court agreed with them – and that tells us something about the health of our legal systems. To give you an idea, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the owning company spent 50,000 dollars to save a single American seabird: that's a hundred times the amount of money that went to the Indian victims of the Bhopal disaster [Exxon spent 42 million dollars to save 800 birds, editor’s note]. There is a degree of racism in the way this issue has been handled.
Activists insist on framing the Bhopal case as an ongoing tragedy. But what would it take to put an end to it? “First, establishing the extent of environmental and health damage. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has offered to help in this regard, but India has not taken up the offer,” Edwards continues. “First and foremost, remediation is needed,” Dhingra replies, “Then, exemplary punishments for those responsible. And, finally, we need to ensure the necessary medical and economic support for those who are still suffering.”
The photos on these pages are by Giles Clarke, a British photojournalist and Getty Images contributor, who portrays the human side of major global tragedies and conflicts in his work. In 2007, Clarke began an in-progress photojournalism project in collaboration with the Bhopal Medical Appeal to chronicle the toxic legacy of the Union Carbide disaster.