"Chemical Chernobyl" in India on the orders of the United States

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The Chernobyl disaster has firmly established itself as the worst man-made disaster in human history. Books, films, serials are devoted to Chernobyl.

For ordinary people, it is often a revelation that there was something more monstrous than the atomic accident in the USSR. But the disaster that occurred in India in December 1984, in terms of the number of victims, is several times greater than that that happened in Chernobyl.

Particularly reluctant to recall the "gas night" in Indian Bhopal is the United States. Indeed, thousands of people died due to the fault of American businessmen who thought exclusively about their own profits.

Beneficial pesticides and American profits

At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, Union Carbide, the giant of the American chemical industry, received permission from the Indian government to build a pesticide plant in the capital of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal.

For India, in many regions of which agriculture suffered huge losses from pests, pesticides were worth their weight in gold. Therefore, the first years the business was going well. However, the economic crisis emerging in the early 1980s led to a decrease in demand for the plant's products.

Union Carbide's headquarters demanded cost-cutting measures from its subsidiary Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL). The simplest solution was to cut employees' wages. As a result, the Bhopal plant employed a large number of people with very low professional skills by 1984.

In 1982, the auditors who checked the enterprise, in their report, noted that the plant has a rather formal approach to the observance of safety measures. Emergency safety systems were out of order. However, the report did not force the managers of the enterprise to correct the identified deficiencies.

More toxic than chlorine and phosgene

The Bhopal plant produced the insecticide sevin, which was produced by reacting methyl isocyanate with α-naphthol in carbon tetrachloride.

Methyl isocyanate (CH3NCO) is one of the most highly toxic substances used in industry. It is more toxic than chlorine and phosgene. Methyl isocyanate poisoning causes rapid pulmonary edema. It affects the eyes, stomach, liver and skin. Methyl isocyanate was stored at the plant in three containers partially dug into the ground, each of which could hold about 60 thousand liters.

Taking into account the high toxicity of the substance, as well as the low boiling point (39.5 ° C), several protection options were provided. However, on the night of December 2–3, none of them worked.

Poisonous mist

Water entered one of the three methyl isocyanate containers, causing a chemical reaction. The temperature of the substance quickly exceeded the boiling point, which led to an increase in pressure and rupture of the emergency valve.

Minor emissions occurred regularly, there were even cases of employee poisoning. Therefore, when the devices recorded a leak on the night of December 3, the plant personnel at first did not understand the seriousness of what was happening.

The dwellings of the local poor adjoined the chemical plant. The inhabitants of this densely populated area were fast asleep when a poisonous cloud covered their homes.

The gas, being heavier than air, spread along the ground. Many babies who fell asleep in their cribs never woke up. Adults from their sleep fell straight into the pitch hell: terrible pain in the chest, pain in the eyes, nausea and bloody vomiting … People did not understand what was happening.

It was only when the sirens of the chemical plant sounded that the residents of Bhopal realized that an accident had occurred. In a panic, they tried to escape from the poisonous fog. But it was difficult to understand where to run at night. Some were lucky and they managed to escape from the zone of poisoning. Others, on the contrary, went to the very epicenter and died in agony there.

Me and my guys had to collect corpses

The release lasted for an hour and a half, and during this time more than a ton of poisonous vapors were released into the atmosphere.

“People fell to the ground, foam came out of their mouths. Many could not open their eyes. I woke up after midnight. People ran out into the street who was wearing what … - recalled a local resident Hazira Bi, one of those who got lucky that night.

The head of the Bhopal police subsequently recalled in an interview with British journalists: “Dawn began, and we had a clearer picture of the scale of the disaster. Me and my guys had to collect the corpses. Dead bodies lay everywhere. I thought: my God, what is this? What happened? We were literally numb, we didn't know what to do!"

Reporters visiting the city that survived the disaster said they had never seen anything like it before. In the streets, the bodies of people, animals, birds lay interspersed. And nearby were still living, but dying, literally spitting out bloody pieces of their own lungs. There was a shortage of doctors in Bhopal, and those who were there were simply not able to provide assistance to people with such a severe chemical injury.

Sham sabotage

Gas Night, as the locals called it, claimed the lives of 3,000 people. In the next three days, the number of victims reached 8000. In total, the number of people who died directly as a result of poisoning with poisonous gas was, according to various estimates, from 18 to 20 thousand people. Tens of thousands have become disabled. Of the 900-thousandth population of Bhopal at that time, more than 570 thousand people were affected to one degree or another.

The management of Union Carbide adhered to the version according to which the catastrophe occurred as a result of sabotage: allegedly a fired employee deliberately arranged the ingress of water into a tank with methyl isocyanate in order to take revenge on employers.

However, no evidence was presented that the saboteur actually existed. This is in contrast to the numerous security breaches identified at the enterprise.

The most amazing thing is that the plant continued to work for almost two more years. It was stopped only after the full depletion of the available raw materials.

Cost of living - $ 2,000

Union Carbide refused to admit its guilt in the incident, referring the claims to its subsidiary: Union Carbide India Limited. Ultimately, in 1987, Union Carbide paid out $ 470 million to victims and injured parties in an out-of-court settlement in exchange for waiving further lawsuits.

This amount, given the scale of the incident, was simply ridiculous: the families of the victims ended up receiving less than $ 2,100 for each life lost, and the victims were paid between $ 500 and $ 800.

It’s hard to imagine how much Union Carbide would have to pay if a disaster struck in the United States. But the white gentlemen once again showed that they do not consider some Indians as their equal.

Conditional punishment

Only 26 years after the disaster, in 2010, a court handed down a verdict against seven former leaders of the Indian branch of Union Carbide. They were convicted of fatal negligence and sentenced to two years' probation and a fine equivalent to US $ 2,100.

Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson, whom the Indian authorities tried to prosecute, escaped any punishment. The US authorities, to which India contacted, said that there was no evidence of Anderson's involvement in the Bhopal disaster.

Warren Anderson died in 2014 in a Florida nursing home at the age of 92.

According to the Indian authorities, at the moment the consequences of the disaster have been completely overcome. Residents of Bhopal think differently: they say they live on a poisoned land that has never been cleansed, and children born decades after the "gas night" suffer from hereditary diseases caused by poisoning of their parents.