BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY

The Bhopal disaster was a gas leak incident in India, considered one of the world's worst industrial disaster. It occurred on the night of December 23, 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. A leak of methyl isocyanate gas and other chemicals from the plant resulted in the exposure of hundreds of thousands of people.

All because of.

Methyl isocyanate (MIC) is extremely toxic. MIC can damage by inhalation, ingestion and contact in quantities as low as 0.4 ppm. Damage includes coughing, chest pain, asthma, irritation of the eyes, nose and throat, as well as skin damage. Higher levels of exposure, over 21 ppm, can result pneumonia and death. At 25 C,it reacts vigourously in excess water, half of the MIC is consumed in 9 min,if the heat is not efficiently removed from the mixture, the rate of the reaction will increase and rapidly cause the MIC to boil.

As a result..
Twenty-five years have passed since that night of terror and death in Bhopal, which saw a cloud of deadly gases explode out of a faulty tank in a pesticide factory and silently spread into the homes of sleeping people. Some vomited uncontrollably, went into unconscious and fell dead. Although no official count of casualties has ever been done, estimates based on hospital and rehabilitation records show that about 20,000 people died and about 5.7 lakh suffered bodily damage, making it by far the world's worst industrial disaster ever.

A CHILD KILLED BY POISONOUS LEAK

 Photograph is perhaps the

most capable one to tell the story of that night. On 5th dec 1984 Pablo Bartholomew and Raghu Rai went to cover the disaster, and saw the people who were about to bury this child .They quickly took several shots before the grave was filled with dirt. They did not ask the name of the child or father. Unable to withstand the sorrow, they broke down and cried. So far, the identity of this girl child remains unknown. No one has come forward claiming to be a relative of this girl.

 After the incident,no one under the age of 18 was registered.The number of children exposed to the gases was at least 2,00,000. Doctors and hospitals were not informed of proper treatment methods for MIC gas inhalation.They were told to simply give cough medicine and eye drops to their patients

2,000
BUFFALO, GOATS, AND OTHER ANIMALS WERE COLLECTED AND BURIED

A view of the inside premises of the union carbide factory a year after the midnght 2-3 december,1984

What happended?????
Story Behind the disaster

Factors leading to the magnitude of the gas leak include:

During that night of December 2, a large amount of water entered Tank 610,' which contained 42 tonnes of MIC, much more than the safety rules permitted. The reaction generated a major increase in the temperature inside the tank to over 200 degree Celsius(actually MIC must be stored at temperatures below 40 C). This forced the emergency venting of pressure from the tank, releasing a large volume of toxic gases.

Contd
The reaction was speeded up by the presence of iron from corroding pipelines. It is known that workers cleaned the pipelines with water but they were not told by the supervisor to add a slip-blind water isolation plate. Slipblind plates that would have prevented water from pipes being cleaned from leaking into the MIC tanks through faulty valves were not installed. Because of this, and of the bad maintenance, the workers consider it possible for water to have accidentally entered the tank.

FAILURE OF SEVERAL SAFETY SYSTEMS

To reduce energy costs, the refrigeration system was idle. The MIC was kept at 20 degrees Celsius, not the 4.5 degrees advised by the manual. Only one gas scrubber was operating: it could not treat such a large amount of MIC with sodium hydroxide(caustic soda), which would have brought the concentration down to a safe level.
The MIC tank alarms had not worked for four years. The water pressure was too weak to spray the escaping gases from the stack. They could not spray high enough to reduce the

Another reason: Danger signs ignored

Local journalist Rajkumar Keswani had been warning that the Carbide plant was unsafe and that its management was aware of this. In 1981, a gas leak had killed one worker. In 1982, 25 workers were hospitalized after another gas leak. Dangerous amounts of water entered a tank containing methyl isocyanate gas.

The story didn't just begin on December 3 and end on December 4,1984. It is still continuing.

About the company

UCIL was the Indian subsidiary of Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) Union Carbide a subsidiary of Dow

Civil and criminal cases are pending in the United States District Court, Manhattan and the District Court of Bhopal, India, involving UCC, UCIL employees, and Warren Anderson, UCC CEO at the time of the disaster. In June 2010, seven ex-employees, including the former UCIL chairman, were convicted in Bhopal of causing death by negligence and sentenced to two years imprisonment and a fine of about $2,000 each, the maximum punishment allowed by law. An eighth former employee was also convicted, but died before judgment was passed.

Recent news:-Dow will sponsor London Olympics: British PM David Cameron

Union Carbide still faces charges of culpable homicide in Bhopal in relation to the disaster. The activists claimed that the evidence includes US court documents that prove that Dow traded Union Carbide products in India, thus violating a 1992 court order. Ethically,Dow Chemicals must not be allowed to sponsor London 2012 Olympics as it is a successor company of Union Carbide, which was responsible for the Bhopal gas tragedy.