The 1984 Bhopal gas leak is considered among the world’s worst industrial disasters. Over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate gas. The plant was built in 1969 to produce the pesticide Sevin using methyl isOCyanate as an intermediate.
About Bhopal disaster in brief
The 1984 Bhopal gas leak is considered among the world’s worst industrial disasters. Over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate gas. The cause of the disaster remains under debate. The Indian government and local activists argue that slack management and deferred maintenance created a situation where routine pipe maintenance caused a backflow of water into a MIC tank. The owner of the factory, UCIL, was majority owned by UCC, with Indian Government-controlled banks and the Indian public holding a 49. 1 percent stake. Dow Chemical Company purchased UCC in 2001, seventeen years after the disaster. In June 2010, seven Indian nationals who were UCIL employees in 1984, including the former UCIL chairman, were sentenced to two years imprisonment and a fine of about USD 2,000 each, the maximum punishment allowed by Indian law. All were released on bail shortly after the verdict. An eighth former employee was also convicted, but died before the judgement was passed. In 2008, the Government of Madhya Pradesh had paid compensation to the family members of 3,787 victims killed in the gas release. In 1994, UCC sold its stake in UCIL to Eveready Industries India Limited, which subsequently merged with McLeod Russel Ltd. Eveready ended clean-up on the site in 1998, when it terminated its 99-year lease and turned over control of the site to the state government ofMadhya Pradesh. In January 1982, a phosgene leak affected 24 workers, all of whom were admitted to a hospital. One month later, a local journalist published his findings in his paper Rapat, in which he urged people to wake up, which he likened to being on the edge of a volcano.
In February 1982, in February, a MIC leak affected 18 workers. In April 1982, 24 workers were ordered to wear protective equipment. In November 1982, the MIC leak was reported in a local paper, which urged people of Bhopsal towake up. In December 1982, all 24 workers exposed to the leak admitted that they had been wearing protective equipment, which they had not been told to wear before the leak. The MIC leak caused 558,125 injuries, including 38,478 temporary partial injuries and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries. Another 8,000 or more have since died from gas-related diseases. The plant was built in 1969 to produce the pesticide Sevin using methyl isOCyanate as an intermediate. An MIC production plant was added to the UCIL site in 1979. Another manufacturer, Bayer, also used this MIC-intermediate process at the chemical plant at Institute, West Virginia, in the United States. After the Bhopals, other manufacturers produced carbaryl without MIC, though at a greater manufacturing cost. In 1981, the demand for pesticides had fallen, but production continued regardless, leading to an accumulation of stores of unused MIC where that method was used. In 1982, two local trade unions complained of pollution within the plant. In 1976, a worker was accidentally splashed with phos gene as he was carrying a plant’s pipes.
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This page is based on the article Bhopal disaster published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
