Real life horror story
Pesticides...blah blah...Union Carbide introduces Sevin (carbaryl)...yadda yadda...methyl isocyanate(MIC). There, now you're caught up.
So sometime in the 1970s, the government of India invited Union Carbide (UC) to build a plant there to create pesticides and rid farmers of the unholy plague of insects and increase food production to feed the millions of Indians facing starvation and malnutrition. UC thought they had this awesome untapped market and jumped at the chance, saying "Ok we'll invest 51% of the money for this venture but Indian gov't and other Indian investors have to invest the other 49%." But the farmers in India were so poor from fighting to raise food through floods and droughts that they couldn't afford UC's fancy pesticides. This caused UC to lose money on its pesticide operation. In 1979, the plant started manufacturing its own MIC to make Sevin because it was cheaper than having it shipped in from the US. Still UC continued to make pesticide at a loss, producing less than half of its capacity. To reduce costs, they reduced the work force at the plant, did less maintenance and safety checks because production and staff were so low, and finally in early 1984, they decided to put it up for sale.
Fast forward to December 2, 1984, 9:00 pm: Pretend for a minute that you live in a slum that the city of Bhopal, India has allowed to grow up right outside the UC plant. You spent your day selling usable/recyclable items you found in a pile of garbage, and now you return to your shelter, walking past rubbish littering the ground, your stomach aching with hunger even though you just ate your dinner, a dry piece of chapati. You have 10 rupees so you can buy breakfast on the street tomorrow. Inside the UC plant, which hasn't been sold yet, there's a large pressurized storage tank with around 10,000 gallons of MIC. They've been using it gradually to make small amounts (by small I mean a few thousand pounds) of Sevin, but they stopped making the MIC intermediate entirely a couple of months prior.
10:00 pm: You are dozing off to the sounds of your "roommates" in your small hut: the old woman coughs, the couple shushes their 3 children, the rats begin their nightly scurrying, squealing, and copulating on the roof. Right now some of the MIC plant crew are flushing some pipes that run to the scrubber (basically a big shower to neutralize toxic vapors in the plant exhaust before venting it to the atmosphere). The pipes are interconnected with all of the plant piping, including pipes that run to the MIC tank. The crew is not aware that to do the washing operation, a slip blind is needed to block the pipe and isolate the water from going where it shouldn't. Since the MIC plant is shut down, there's no vapor being pushed to the scrubber, so the scrubber isn't running (conflicting info on whether it was shutdown for maintenance or just on standby).
10:30 pm: The shift changes and a new crew comes on to continue water washing the pipes. You are sound asleep and dreaming of delicious poha and jalebi. At about this time there are two alternate versions of what occurred. The first is that water from the washing operation started backing up at a clogged pipe, ran through the pipes to a leaking pressure valve on the MIC tank, and began to flow into the MIC tank. This version is favored by the Indian government and many technical experts. The other version is that a disgruntled employee, intending to merely contaminate the tank contents, removed a pressure gauge on a pipe leading into the MIC tank and connected a water hose at the point where the indicator was removed. This version is favored by UC and their consulting firm because later efforts to duplicate the situation that night could not confirm that the washing operation caused water to enter the tank. Whichever the case, it is undisputed that a large volume of water entered the MIC tank. The water starts a runaway exothermic reaction, causing the MIC to heat up over the next hour and a half because the tank refrigeration system, which would have reduced the reactivity of the MIC, had been drained of Freon 6 months ago for use elsewhere in the plant. As the MIC heats up, the corroded metal in the tank catalyzes another exothermic reaction where MIC reacts with itself. As the temperature builds in the tank, the MIC begins to boil, and the MIC vapor along with the other gases from the reactions expand, pushing out on the tank in every direction.
Midnight, December 3, 1984: The pressure in the tank is 4 times atmospheric pressure and a pressure safety valve pops open to prevent the tank from failing (i.e. exploding). The gas begins escaping. It vents, not to the emergency flare (down for maintenance), but to the scrubber (also not operational, and in truth not adequately designed for the amount of gas now venting from the tank anyway). The operator tries to engage the caustic at the scrubber to neutralize the toxic gases escaping from the tank, but the caustic doesn't flow properly or the scrubber was shut off for maintenance. The gases exit the stack and clear the fenceline of the plant because of the wind, but they are heavier than air and instead of dissipating, the gas begins to settle near the ground throughout the slums surrounding the plant. It creeps under doorways, through windows and cracks in walls, and into your home.
1:00 am: You awaken to the smell of the toxic gas, the crying of the children, and the sound of chaos in the streets. You call to the young couple, "Has someone been burning chili peppers?" because your eyes are burning and you're coughing. So is everyone else in your small shack. In a panic, you and your neighbors begin to flee the area to escape the fumes, but as soon as you step outside the burning and coughing get even worse. The gases are reacting with the water in your mucous membranes. Your eyes begin to swell, your throat becomes very irritated, you have trouble breathing. Many people are making their way to hospitals for treatment. You do the same, but your eyes are so swollen you can barely see and you trip over a mother and her child, both already dead from the gases. In all, an estimated 27 tons of various gases (the exact makeup is still unknown) are released over a period of 2 hours.
December 7, 1984: You've managed to survive but you still cannot see and continue to suffer from respiratory problems. Thousands are dead, including your family, friends, neighbors. Because the gases were so dense, those who were nearer to the ground (children and shorter people) inhaled the highest concentrations. The government closes the plant and arrests the CEO (mostly to prevent retaliation by the people of Bhopal). He is then sent out of India on a government plane.
December 3-31, 1984: Within days of the release, the leaves on trees yellow and fall off. Hospitals are packed. Nearly 2,000 animal carcasses are collected and burned. Mass funerals and cremations take place.
1989: After years of litigation in courts both in the US and India, UC settles with the government of India for $470 million (a fraction of the $3 billion claimed in the lawsuit).
1994: UC sells their share of their India operations and the company is renamed Eveready Industries India Limited. The India Supreme Court approves the sale on the condition that all proceeds ($90 million) from selling the plant be used to build the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and to provide a trust fund to pay for 8 years of hospital operating costs to treat survivors.
1998: The state government of Madhya Pradesh takes over responsibility for the facility and any environmental cleanup.
To date: UC (now owned by Dow Chemical) still contends that the incident was caused by a disgruntled employee (although they have never released the name of the employee) and not lax safety standards or faulty plant design. The plant is pretty much a rusting abandoned dump, with no effort being made to clean the site. It is blamed for contaminating wells and soil in the vicinity, as well as birth defects and on-going health problems resulting from the contamination and/or gas release.
If you were to do a word association game with someone in the environmental field and you said "Bhopal", the first word out of their mouth would be "disaster". This has often been called the world's worst industrial disaster (a title no chemical company is eager to take from Union Carbide). The state government of Madhya Pradesh has confirmed that a total of 3,787 immediate deaths occurred related to the release. Some estimates say an additional 8,000 -20,000 more have died since, due to the release. An estimated 200,000- 500,000 people were injured temporarily or permanently by the gas release. Just for a comparison, the death toll for the worst terrorist attack in history (9/11) is just under 3,000 with around 9,000 injured and an estimated 18,000 with health effects related to the dust from the towers.
So sometime in the 1970s, the government of India invited Union Carbide (UC) to build a plant there to create pesticides and rid farmers of the unholy plague of insects and increase food production to feed the millions of Indians facing starvation and malnutrition. UC thought they had this awesome untapped market and jumped at the chance, saying "Ok we'll invest 51% of the money for this venture but Indian gov't and other Indian investors have to invest the other 49%." But the farmers in India were so poor from fighting to raise food through floods and droughts that they couldn't afford UC's fancy pesticides. This caused UC to lose money on its pesticide operation. In 1979, the plant started manufacturing its own MIC to make Sevin because it was cheaper than having it shipped in from the US. Still UC continued to make pesticide at a loss, producing less than half of its capacity. To reduce costs, they reduced the work force at the plant, did less maintenance and safety checks because production and staff were so low, and finally in early 1984, they decided to put it up for sale.
Fast forward to December 2, 1984, 9:00 pm: Pretend for a minute that you live in a slum that the city of Bhopal, India has allowed to grow up right outside the UC plant. You spent your day selling usable/recyclable items you found in a pile of garbage, and now you return to your shelter, walking past rubbish littering the ground, your stomach aching with hunger even though you just ate your dinner, a dry piece of chapati. You have 10 rupees so you can buy breakfast on the street tomorrow. Inside the UC plant, which hasn't been sold yet, there's a large pressurized storage tank with around 10,000 gallons of MIC. They've been using it gradually to make small amounts (by small I mean a few thousand pounds) of Sevin, but they stopped making the MIC intermediate entirely a couple of months prior.
10:00 pm: You are dozing off to the sounds of your "roommates" in your small hut: the old woman coughs, the couple shushes their 3 children, the rats begin their nightly scurrying, squealing, and copulating on the roof. Right now some of the MIC plant crew are flushing some pipes that run to the scrubber (basically a big shower to neutralize toxic vapors in the plant exhaust before venting it to the atmosphere). The pipes are interconnected with all of the plant piping, including pipes that run to the MIC tank. The crew is not aware that to do the washing operation, a slip blind is needed to block the pipe and isolate the water from going where it shouldn't. Since the MIC plant is shut down, there's no vapor being pushed to the scrubber, so the scrubber isn't running (conflicting info on whether it was shutdown for maintenance or just on standby).
10:30 pm: The shift changes and a new crew comes on to continue water washing the pipes. You are sound asleep and dreaming of delicious poha and jalebi. At about this time there are two alternate versions of what occurred. The first is that water from the washing operation started backing up at a clogged pipe, ran through the pipes to a leaking pressure valve on the MIC tank, and began to flow into the MIC tank. This version is favored by the Indian government and many technical experts. The other version is that a disgruntled employee, intending to merely contaminate the tank contents, removed a pressure gauge on a pipe leading into the MIC tank and connected a water hose at the point where the indicator was removed. This version is favored by UC and their consulting firm because later efforts to duplicate the situation that night could not confirm that the washing operation caused water to enter the tank. Whichever the case, it is undisputed that a large volume of water entered the MIC tank. The water starts a runaway exothermic reaction, causing the MIC to heat up over the next hour and a half because the tank refrigeration system, which would have reduced the reactivity of the MIC, had been drained of Freon 6 months ago for use elsewhere in the plant. As the MIC heats up, the corroded metal in the tank catalyzes another exothermic reaction where MIC reacts with itself. As the temperature builds in the tank, the MIC begins to boil, and the MIC vapor along with the other gases from the reactions expand, pushing out on the tank in every direction.
Midnight, December 3, 1984: The pressure in the tank is 4 times atmospheric pressure and a pressure safety valve pops open to prevent the tank from failing (i.e. exploding). The gas begins escaping. It vents, not to the emergency flare (down for maintenance), but to the scrubber (also not operational, and in truth not adequately designed for the amount of gas now venting from the tank anyway). The operator tries to engage the caustic at the scrubber to neutralize the toxic gases escaping from the tank, but the caustic doesn't flow properly or the scrubber was shut off for maintenance. The gases exit the stack and clear the fenceline of the plant because of the wind, but they are heavier than air and instead of dissipating, the gas begins to settle near the ground throughout the slums surrounding the plant. It creeps under doorways, through windows and cracks in walls, and into your home.
1:00 am: You awaken to the smell of the toxic gas, the crying of the children, and the sound of chaos in the streets. You call to the young couple, "Has someone been burning chili peppers?" because your eyes are burning and you're coughing. So is everyone else in your small shack. In a panic, you and your neighbors begin to flee the area to escape the fumes, but as soon as you step outside the burning and coughing get even worse. The gases are reacting with the water in your mucous membranes. Your eyes begin to swell, your throat becomes very irritated, you have trouble breathing. Many people are making their way to hospitals for treatment. You do the same, but your eyes are so swollen you can barely see and you trip over a mother and her child, both already dead from the gases. In all, an estimated 27 tons of various gases (the exact makeup is still unknown) are released over a period of 2 hours.
December 7, 1984: You've managed to survive but you still cannot see and continue to suffer from respiratory problems. Thousands are dead, including your family, friends, neighbors. Because the gases were so dense, those who were nearer to the ground (children and shorter people) inhaled the highest concentrations. The government closes the plant and arrests the CEO (mostly to prevent retaliation by the people of Bhopal). He is then sent out of India on a government plane.
December 3-31, 1984: Within days of the release, the leaves on trees yellow and fall off. Hospitals are packed. Nearly 2,000 animal carcasses are collected and burned. Mass funerals and cremations take place.
1989: After years of litigation in courts both in the US and India, UC settles with the government of India for $470 million (a fraction of the $3 billion claimed in the lawsuit).
1994: UC sells their share of their India operations and the company is renamed Eveready Industries India Limited. The India Supreme Court approves the sale on the condition that all proceeds ($90 million) from selling the plant be used to build the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and to provide a trust fund to pay for 8 years of hospital operating costs to treat survivors.
1998: The state government of Madhya Pradesh takes over responsibility for the facility and any environmental cleanup.
To date: UC (now owned by Dow Chemical) still contends that the incident was caused by a disgruntled employee (although they have never released the name of the employee) and not lax safety standards or faulty plant design. The plant is pretty much a rusting abandoned dump, with no effort being made to clean the site. It is blamed for contaminating wells and soil in the vicinity, as well as birth defects and on-going health problems resulting from the contamination and/or gas release.
If you were to do a word association game with someone in the environmental field and you said "Bhopal", the first word out of their mouth would be "disaster". This has often been called the world's worst industrial disaster (a title no chemical company is eager to take from Union Carbide). The state government of Madhya Pradesh has confirmed that a total of 3,787 immediate deaths occurred related to the release. Some estimates say an additional 8,000 -20,000 more have died since, due to the release. An estimated 200,000- 500,000 people were injured temporarily or permanently by the gas release. Just for a comparison, the death toll for the worst terrorist attack in history (9/11) is just under 3,000 with around 9,000 injured and an estimated 18,000 with health effects related to the dust from the towers.
