http://www.corpwatchindia.org/issues...sp?topicid=105
http://www.bhopal.net/
http://www.bhopal.org
On the night of January 3rd, 1984, a tank in the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India containing a dangerously large quanitity of methyl isocyanate ruptured, sending out a cloud of poisonous gas over the unsuspecting city of Bhopal.
In 1999 a Greenpeace study (PDF file) found that the drinking wells of nearby communities were contaminated by chemicals leaking from the abandoned and now-derelict site. Then, in February this year mercury, lead and organochlorines were found in the breast-milk of local women. While Union Carbide and its new owner Dow Chemical continue to deny liability and refuse to pay for a clean-up, secret Carbide papers obtained last month during a New York court case show that the company
knew as long ago as 1989 that its site was dangerously poisoned, and must have realised the risk to ground water and thus drinking supplies...but they never said a word.
The full nature and extent of treatment required for the gas-exposed is impossible in the absence of medical information relating to methyl isocyanate .
Union Carbide refused to divulge this information claiming it was a "trade secret."
Even today, Union Carbide's toxic legacy continues to haunt the people of Bhopal. Thousands of tons of toxic wastes, abandoned by Carbide at its factory site in Bhopal, have leached their poisons into the groundwater feeding nearly 5000 families. Union Carbide refused to clean up the contaminated site. Dow Chemicals, which has acquired all of Carbide's assets, also has refused to accept the liabilities.
A study released in January 2002 demonstrated that the poisons found in Carbide's factory site have moved into the water and the food in the vicinity. In fact, chlorinated poisons and mercury were found even in the breast milk of mothers living near the contaminated factory.
The legal position of the Bhopal gas victims remains bleak. The question of civil liability was resolved by the Bhopal Settlement, the Supreme Court’s verdict of 14 February 1989, which accepted Union Carbide’s US $470 million. This settlement initially absolved Union Carbide from criminal prosecution, but following petitions by angry victims’ groups, in October 1991 the Supreme Court revoked the immunity from prosecution. But the likelihood of criminal proceedings ever starting seems slight. Bhopal’s chief judicial magistrate, Gopal Sharma, has issued an arrest warrant for Warren Anderson, who in 1984 was UCC’s chief executive officer, and several UCIL executives, charging them with culpable homicide. India’s Central Bureau of Investigation is supposedly pursuing Anderson’s extradiÂ*tion, but the case has become mired in the Indian legal system. UCC’s Robert Berzok thinks it unlikely Anderson will face charges. ‘There is no basis in fact or in law for such an extradition,' he said.
http://www.pan-uk.org/pestnews/pn26/pn26p4.htm
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