Bhopal gas victims: Nightmare continues
A CREW Report
Even 26 years after the disaster, the gas victims continue to visit various city hospitals for treatment of their chronic health problems and those residing near the abandoned plant continue to be poisoned every day as the soil inside the plant area, especially its northern and north-eastern side, remains contaminated by toxic chemicals.
Not far from the abandoned Carbide plant, live thousands of people, most of them victims of the gas disaster. At a stone's throw from this site is a habitat where people are being forced to fetch water from hand pumps as the city municipal corporation maintains only a skeletal supply of water through mobile tankers. Since the quantity of water being supplied to these communities is inadequate, the residents, including children, have been left with no other option but to drink water from hand pumps even after water samples from these sources have tested positive for toxic contaminants and the hand pumps have been marked unsafe for drinking.
Studies conducted on samples picked from the site of the solar evaporation pond, north-east of Union Carbide plant, the reaction vessel at the Sevin structure and from sacks in the formulation shed, the BHC store, and barrels and sacks that continued to lie abandoned in the cycle shed at the Carbide for over 20 years after the gas disaster have proved that the stockpile at Sevin formulation shed contained carbaryl and HCH isomers, including the highest recorded concentration of HCH. (Carbaryl (sevin) was the main product manufactured in Bhopal. The hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) isomers are used as an insecticide under the common name of BHC and hexachlorobenzene is one of the known contaminants of BHC).
Recently-the authorities had partially responded to Court orders and shifted the stockpile of chemicals from many dilapidated sheds to a warehouse that has now been sealed from all sides. The operation clean up was conducted in the most hazardous manner as no precautions were taken and the workforce engaged in completing the task was exposed to toxic chemicals.
Local populations are vulnerable to exposure to the toxic chemicals through routes such as polluted ground water and direct contact with contaminated soil or inhalation of contaminated dust. The HCH and other organochlorines can also be passed on in the milk of cattle that the locals graze on the site.
We have more than 20, 000 people who are being routinely exposed to contaminants in their ground water. Contaminants that can cause damage to the liver, kidney and can cause cancers and birth defects and this is happening routinely. The source of the contamination of ground water near the Union Carbide's abandoned factory is the chemical waste generated in the factory from the time it began its operation in 1971. So for more than 14 years these wastes-highly toxic chemicals like chlorobenzenes, dichlorobenzenes, trichlorobenzenes, lindane and PCBs--chemicals that can cause cancer, birth defects and a whole range of systemic damages, were dumped both within the factory premises and outside the factory in a landfill but the landfill was leaking from 1981 onwards.
P.S. Dubey, former Chairman Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board, said in an interview: "We have waste in the vessels, pipes, containers and we don't know how much has been placed in the ground. In fact the responsibility which was given by the CPCB (Central Pollution Control Board) was simply that we should monitor the water there but I have gone beyond that after reading in the report of NEERI (National Environmental Engineering Research Institute) that contamination will reach to ground water in 23 years-- the maximum time. So after visiting (the site) I saw that lot of waste was there which was spreading here and there. That was making havoc. Hence I took the initiatives and even the court helped me. Supreme Court Monitoring Committee also helped me.This quantity is 370 ton which is repacked and placed in a shade under lock and key as per the order of the Supreme Court monitoring committee and honorable High Court of Madhya Pradesh. Another thing which is very important and alarming is that the company has been putting lot of waste and dumping it in the ground and we don't know where and what quantity of these materials has been going on for dumping. So this needs an assessment through survey. The material is there, the pipelines are there, the vessels are there, they are corroding and they are in a very bad shape. You will see that mercury leakage is from a corroded vessel. Then there was another reactor which rusted and all the material about 30 tons fell (on the ground).On August 10, 2006, a US appellate court rejected a plea against Union Carbide Corporation for compensation and removal of hazardous waste from its chemical plant. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected the petition filed by one Hasina Bi and 14 other survivors who had demanded damages from the company and alleged that their water acquifiers were polluted due to the leak of hazardous chemicals from the Carbide factory. The appellate court affirmed dismissal of claims because of impracticality of a court-supervised clean-up project on the land owned by a foreign sovereign.
In the meanwhile, many residents in the worst affected areas of old Bhopal, who have suffered irreversible lung damage, continue to fall sick as their immune system has been badly affected by the poisonous gas leak. Even twenty-six years after the catastrophe, the minimum the citizens expect from the local authorities is clean air and potable water that is not contaminated by toxic chemicals.
