This week marks the 35th anniversary of the disaster at Bhopal's Union Carbide factory which remains the world’s worst industrial disaster, which saw 40 tons of toxic methyl isocyanate gas released into the air, killing over 3,000 instantly and condemning hundreds of thousands to a future of prolonged pain, cancer, stillbirths, miscarriages, lung and heart disease and the drawn out deaths of everyone around them. The official death toll is still disputed but an estimated 574,000 were poisoned that night and upwards of 20,000 people have died since from related conditions.
New data collected over the past nine years by the Sambhavna Trust suggests that even after three decades, the mortality rate for gas-exposed victims is still 28% higher than average. They are twice as likely to die of cancers, diseases of the lungs and tuberculosis, three times as likely to die from kidney diseases and 63% more likely to have illnesses. The Trust’s data also highlights the fact that over the past three years, almost a quarter of gas exposed victims were diagnosed with an under-active thyroid, which can have devastating long term health impacts.
The data also suggests that the explosion has had a particularly adverse effect on women exposed to the gas, even as babies just days old, causing high rates of infertility, stillbirths, abortions, early menopause and wreaking havoc on menstrual cycles. As a result, many women in Bhopal continue to be abandoned by their husbands, believed not to be capable of fulfilling the familial duties expected of them.
Yet it is the lasting impact on the second and third generation, and on those yet unborn that haunts those in Bhopal the most. The Chingari children’s centre, established for those born with disabilities as a consequence of the disaster, has registered over 1,000 children, with most affected by cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, autism, intellectual disabilities and severe learning difficulties.
“This is the terrible legacy of Bhopal: all of these children were born to parents, or even grandparents, who were in contact with the gas that night,” said Rashida Bee, the centre’s founder. “The situation is getting worse, not better. We are seeing more and more second and third generation children being born with such disabilities and coming here. Bhopal’s tragedy has not stopped.”
“It would be better if there was another gas leak which could kill us all and put us all out of this misery,” said Omwati Yadav, 67.
No one from Union Carbide was ever tried for the gross negligence that led to the gas explosion, despite multiple criminal charges being brought against them in India. A 1989 compensation deal, now widely panned as shamefully inadequate, saw most victims given just 25,000 rupees (£275), while some received nothing at all. None of the nine Indian officials who were convicted in 2010 for their role in the disaster served any time behind bars, while Union Carbide has never appeared in court.
No cleanup operation of the chemical waste – which was already being dumped into the local community before the explosion – has ever been conducted. Surveys done by the Bhopal campaign groups have shown this toxic waste, which according to their tests contains six of the persistent organic pollutants banned by the UN for their highly poisonous impacts on the environment and human health, has now reached 42 areas in Bhopal and continues to spread. The pond where Union Carbide used to dump the chemicals sits festering and untouched, with children and wild pigs running on about on its banks.
Activists allege that there has been a deliberate suppression by the Indian government of any research which proves the long term systemic or genetic damage caused by the gas explosion, to protect the corporations involved. Proof of the lasting damage of the gas exposure could have major legal implications for Union Carbide and its current owner Dow Chemicals, who took ownership of the company and its legal responsibilities in 2001, in terms of compensation liability. A civil court case, begun in 2010, is ongoing in the supreme court, which is arguing to re-open the compensation case for victims of Bhopal.
Indeed, one recent rare study authorised by government medical body the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), found that between 2016-2017, 9% of the babies born to gas-exposed mothers had birth defects compared to 1.3% born to mothers with no exposure. However, the study was subsequently discredited by the ICMR, who ordered it not to be published or disclosed.
“From the beginning the government has protected the corporations at the cost of human lives,” says Satinash Sarangi, founder of the Sambhanva Trust which runs an medical clinic that has treated over 300,000 Bhopal victims. Even today, in government-run hospitals, doctors will not acknowledge if victim’s diseases or disabilities are gas-related. “It has become obvious to me this is never about medicine and people, it is about politics and power,” Sarangi says.
New data collected over the past nine years by the Sambhavna Trust suggests that even after three decades, the mortality rate for gas-exposed victims is still 28% higher than average. They are twice as likely to die of cancers, diseases of the lungs and tuberculosis, three times as likely to die from kidney diseases and 63% more likely to have illnesses. The Trust’s data also highlights the fact that over the past three years, almost a quarter of gas exposed victims were diagnosed with an under-active thyroid, which can have devastating long term health impacts.
The data also suggests that the explosion has had a particularly adverse effect on women exposed to the gas, even as babies just days old, causing high rates of infertility, stillbirths, abortions, early menopause and wreaking havoc on menstrual cycles. As a result, many women in Bhopal continue to be abandoned by their husbands, believed not to be capable of fulfilling the familial duties expected of them.
Yet it is the lasting impact on the second and third generation, and on those yet unborn that haunts those in Bhopal the most. The Chingari children’s centre, established for those born with disabilities as a consequence of the disaster, has registered over 1,000 children, with most affected by cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, autism, intellectual disabilities and severe learning difficulties.
“This is the terrible legacy of Bhopal: all of these children were born to parents, or even grandparents, who were in contact with the gas that night,” said Rashida Bee, the centre’s founder. “The situation is getting worse, not better. We are seeing more and more second and third generation children being born with such disabilities and coming here. Bhopal’s tragedy has not stopped.”
“It would be better if there was another gas leak which could kill us all and put us all out of this misery,” said Omwati Yadav, 67.
No one from Union Carbide was ever tried for the gross negligence that led to the gas explosion, despite multiple criminal charges being brought against them in India. A 1989 compensation deal, now widely panned as shamefully inadequate, saw most victims given just 25,000 rupees (£275), while some received nothing at all. None of the nine Indian officials who were convicted in 2010 for their role in the disaster served any time behind bars, while Union Carbide has never appeared in court.
No cleanup operation of the chemical waste – which was already being dumped into the local community before the explosion – has ever been conducted. Surveys done by the Bhopal campaign groups have shown this toxic waste, which according to their tests contains six of the persistent organic pollutants banned by the UN for their highly poisonous impacts on the environment and human health, has now reached 42 areas in Bhopal and continues to spread. The pond where Union Carbide used to dump the chemicals sits festering and untouched, with children and wild pigs running on about on its banks.
Activists allege that there has been a deliberate suppression by the Indian government of any research which proves the long term systemic or genetic damage caused by the gas explosion, to protect the corporations involved. Proof of the lasting damage of the gas exposure could have major legal implications for Union Carbide and its current owner Dow Chemicals, who took ownership of the company and its legal responsibilities in 2001, in terms of compensation liability. A civil court case, begun in 2010, is ongoing in the supreme court, which is arguing to re-open the compensation case for victims of Bhopal.
Indeed, one recent rare study authorised by government medical body the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), found that between 2016-2017, 9% of the babies born to gas-exposed mothers had birth defects compared to 1.3% born to mothers with no exposure. However, the study was subsequently discredited by the ICMR, who ordered it not to be published or disclosed.
“From the beginning the government has protected the corporations at the cost of human lives,” says Satinash Sarangi, founder of the Sambhanva Trust which runs an medical clinic that has treated over 300,000 Bhopal victims. Even today, in government-run hospitals, doctors will not acknowledge if victim’s diseases or disabilities are gas-related. “It has become obvious to me this is never about medicine and people, it is about politics and power,” Sarangi says.
The US government, who, throughout three decades of administrations, have repeatedly intervened to shade Union Carbide and more recently its owner Dow Chemicals, from legal liability, according to documents seen by the Guardian.
In 2003, when an extradition request was sent to the US for Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson to be extradited to India to face trial, emails released through freedom of information reveal that secretary of state Colin Powell and figures at the state department emphasised “the importance of this issue to the US business community” and various officials at Union Carbide met with officials at the US state department. The extradition request was later declined.
In 2010, when the Indian government pushed to reopen the compensation settlement for Bhopal victims, Robert Hormats, who served as President Obama’s under secretary of state for economic growth, energy, and the environment, met with then Indian cabinet minister Montek Ahluwalia to communicate that it would “look really bad to reopen a settlement”. Hormats is now vice president of Kissinger Associates, the geopolitical consulting firm set up by former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who took on Union Carbide as a client following the disaster and lobbied on their behalf for years after.
In his 2010 visit to India, President Barack Obama specifically did not meet with NGOs dealing with Bhopal out of fear of stoking the issue and that a key objective of the visit was instead to stress his “support for Dow’s business in India.”
US government intervention continues to this day. On six separate occasions between 2014 and 2019, the US Department of Justice has simply not passed on the summons for Dow Chemical to appear in the Bhopal Court on criminal charges of sheltering a fugitive, their subsidiary company Union Carbide. This is seen by campaigners as a direct violation of the treaty of mutual legal assistance between the US and India, and has ensured Dow Chemical has never appeared in the courts to answer the criminal charges.
The Indian government has also been accused of working against the victims by kowtowing to corporate interests. In 2015, while on a visit to the US, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi met with officials from Dow Chemicals. Contacted by the Guardian for this story, Dharmendra Kumar Madan, joint secretary at the ministry of chemicals, which is responsible for Bhopal, refused to comment, stating simply: “I am not concerned with this issue.”
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