The Bhopal legacy

In an earlier post, I mentioned that there are elections coming up in Bhopal. The Union Carbide disaster there almost 20 years ago is still a central issue in elections, because nothing has been resolved. The place still has not been cleaned up, pending lawsuits and the refusal of anybody to make significant compensatory and cleanup payments. Greenpeace wasn't even allowed to take on the task on a voluntary basis. In fact, those who tried were arrested. Union Carbide now belongs to Dow, and Dow says it's not their problem.

Nineteen years ago this week, families in Bhopal, India were awakened in the middle of the night by terrible burning in their eyes and lungs. Within minutes, children and mothers and fathers staggered into the street, gasping for air and blinded by the chemicals that seared their eyes. As they ran in terror, someone shouted that the Union Carbide pesticides factory had exploded, spewing poisonous gas throughout the city.

Soon thousands of people lay dead in the city's main roads. Every truck, taxi and ox cart was weighted down with injured and terrified refugees. No one in the emergency room at the city hospital knew what the toxic gases were or how to treat the thousands of patients that flooded into the hallways.

By morning, more than 5,000 people were dead, while a half million more were injured.

...Nineteen years have passed, but today in Bhopal thousands of people remain sick from chemical exposure, while more than 50,000 are disabled due to their injuries.

...The abandoned factory site in Bhopal remains essentially the same as the day that Carbide's employees ran for their lives. Sacks of unused pesticides lay strewn in storerooms; toxic waste litters the grounds and continues to leak into the neighborhood well water supply. The buildings themselves are ghostly, a rotting monument to the excesses of the pesticide revolution in India and the lack of corporate responsibility for its failures.

...During this time lapse, we have continued to learn more about the dark side of the chemical revolution. We have learned that today we all carry the chemical industry's toxic products in our bodies. Every man, women and child in America has a "body burden" of chemicals that are linked to cancer, birth defects, asthma, learning disabilities and other diseases. We are all guinea pigs in an epic uncontrolled chemical experiment run by Dow, Monsanto, DuPont and other petrochemical companies.

...If we woke up one morning and learned that this chemical invasion was the work of foreign terrorists, the federal government would be completely mobilized to defend our citizens from this chemical warfare threat. But because the perpetrators are some of President Bush's most generous contributors and ardent collaborators, we are left defenseless as a nation against this chemical security threat.

Recently, it's become even harder to track the chemical industry, since it has been working with the Bush Administration behind the veil of homeland security to conceal information about the "worst case disaster" for its facilities and the health threat posed by its products. But the picture that is emerging is a frightening one.

According to federal government sources, there are 123 chemical facilities nationwide that could kill at least one million people if they accidentally exploded or were attacked by terrorists. Some of these chemical factories are located in major American cities and put as many as 8 million lives at risk.  article

Welcome to corporate chemical hell. It's your future.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.