India cleans up toxic waste from gas leak site in Bhopal, 40 years after disaster | Health news
Authorities say burning the poison is environmentally safe, while activists raise the alarm over possible water contamination.
Indian authorities say they have moved hundreds of tons of hazardous waste left over more than 40 years after the world’s deadliest industrial disaster hit the city of Bhopal.
Waste from the site The disaster of 1984which has killed more than 25,000 people and left at least half a million people with serious health problems, has been sent to a landfill where it will take three to nine months to burn, officials said Thursday.
In the early morning hours of December 3, 1984, methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide factory owned by the American Union Carbide Corporation, poisoning more than half a million people in Bhopal, the capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
More than 40 years later, on Thursday morning, a convoy of trucks transported 337 metric tons of the poison to a waste disposal facility in the industrial town of Pithampur in Madhya Pradesh, 230 km (142 miles) from Bhopal.
Swatantra Kumar Singh, director of Bhopal’s Gas Disaster Relief and Rehabilitation Department, told Reuters news agency that the waste will be disposed of in an environmentally safe manner that will not harm the local ecosystem.
The federal Pollution Control Agency conducted a trial run of the waste disposal process in 2015 with 10 metric tons of the poison, finding that the resulting emission levels met national standards, the state government said in a statement.
However, activists claim that after incineration, the solid waste would be buried in landfills, polluting water and creating an environmental problem.
“Why is it a polluter Union Carbide and Dow Chemical is not forced to clean up its toxic waste in Bhopal?” asked Rachna Dhingra, a Bhopal-based activist who worked with survivors of the tragedy.
Groundwater contamination
Built in 1969, the Union Carbide plant, now owned by Dow Chemical, was seen as a symbol of industrialization in India, creating thousands of jobs for the poor and producing cheap pesticides for millions of farmers.
Disaster struck the plant in 1984 when one of the tanks storing the deadly chemical methyl isocyanate ruptured its concrete casing, releasing 27 tons of the toxic gas into the air.
About 3,500 people were killed immediately, and it is estimated that up to 25,000 died in total. Hundreds of thousands were poisoned, condemned to a future of cancer, stillbirths, abortions, lung and heart disease.
Groundwater testing near the site in the past found levels of chemicals known to cause cancer and birth defects to be 50 times higher than what the United States Environmental Protection Agency has accepted as safe.
Communities blame the series health problems – including cerebral palsy, hearing and speech impairments and other disabilities – about the accident and groundwater pollution.
The order to remove the debris was issued in December, after the 40th anniversary of the disaster, by the high court in the state of Madhya Pradesh, which set a deadline of one month.
“Are you waiting for another tragedy?” said Chief Justice Suresh Kumar Kait, according to a report in The Times of India.
