Corporate Profiles:
Union Carbide
Compiled by George Draffan from material originally prepared for the 10th Anniversary Commemoration of the 1984 Bhopal Disaster in India. The commemoration was held in November 1994 in Charleston, West Virginia, and sponsored by Communities Concerned About Corporations and the Council on International and Public Affairs. |
Bayer plant still home to MIC stockpile Press Release, April 3, 2008 Coalition against BAYER Dangers (Germany) At Bayer's Institute West Virginia plant, large quantities of the highly toxic chemicals methyl isocyanate (MIC) and phosgene are produced and stored. The Coalition against Bayer Dangers introduced a countermotion to Bayer´s Annual Stockholders´ Meeting which demands not to ratify the board until the stockpiles are dismantled and the frequent spills of hazardous substances are stopped. The countermotion will be discussed in the meeting at Cologne/Germany on April 25. In the 1980s, the factory belonged to Union Carbide and was regarded as the "sister plant" to the infamous factory in Bhopal, India. In December 1984, 30 tons of MIC leaked from the Bhopal plant and at least 15,000 people fell victim to the worst chemical accident in history. MIC can kill or cause permanent injury if inhaled, swallowed or absorbed through the skin. The substance is dangerous in concentrations lower than those humans can smell. After the catastrophe in India, public attention focused on the pesticides factory at Institute, because the same safety regulations applied as in Bhopal and large quantities of MIC were stored there. Despite assurances by the company management that no dangers emanate from the factory, there was a major incident in August 1985 when around two tons of toxic chemicals, including the very dangerous pesticide aldicarb, floated in a burning cloud over the residential area near the factory. At least 135 people had to be treated at local hospitals and another 175 by paramedics. Another major incident happened at Institute in August 1994 when an explosion destroyed part of the pesticides production plant. One worker was killed immediately and at least one other died later from the consequences. The Occupational Safety and Health Authority (OSHA) imposed a fine of 1.7 million dollars for "willful violation of safety regulations". In 1994 a worst-case scenario analysis came to the conclusion that, in the event of a Maximum Credible Accident (MCA), cases of fatal poisoning could occur over a radius of several kilometers. In February 1996 again a leak and fire occurred and forced thousands of residents to take shelter in their homes. Bayer took over ownership of the factory in 2001 as part of the acquisition of Aventis CropScience. Whilst the volume of supertoxic agents like phosgene and MIC stored at German Bayer plants was reduced following the Bhopal catastrophe, the tanks at Institute remained as they were. Today, Institute is the only place in the United States where MIC is produced and stored in such large volumes. At least twice the amount of MIC that escaped at Bhopal is constantly present in the factory. In addition, between five and fifty tons of the toxic gas phosgene, a nerve agent in World War I, are stored. American right-to-know laws allow such information to be reported in broad categories. The plant management refuses to give any more precise figures to the media. "There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about the amount of chemicals being stored in this valley," said Wendy Radcliff, a lawyer who has followed chemical industry issues, interviewed by the Charleston Gazette. "We should not forget that the risks are still there. Even if we don't hear about it, it's still the sleeping giant in our community", Pam Nixon adds. Nixon was among those injured by the toxic gas release in 1985. Nearly a decade later Nixon was diagnosed with a rare immune disorder that she blames on the exposure. In the eighties Pam Nixon and other Institute residents formed the group People Concerned About MIC. For more than a decade, they demanded that various plant owners reduce the MIC stockpile or take other steps to make the facility safer. Nixon says that reducing the quantity of MIC stored on site is the only real solution to eliminating risks of a Bhopal-type event happening there. Even in normal operation, large volumes of hazardous substances are released from the factory. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the plant released more than 300 tons of chemicals and pollutants into the air in 2006, including 200 kg of MIC, 50 kg of thiodicarb, four tons of chlorine and several kilograms of phosgene. The plant accounts for 90% of the stored MIC and 95% of the MIC emissions in the whole United States. The most recent incident at Institute occurred on December 28, 2007, when several drums containing the pesticide thiodicarb burst. Dozens of residents had to be treated for headache and respiratory problems. Kent Carper, president of Kanawha County where Institute is located, criticized Bayer's handling of the spill: "The notification was just absolutely abysmal from Bayer. Information given to the first responders was so inadequate that no one knew totally what to do". The company played down the incident and spoke of an "unpleasant smell", with no health hazards. Thiodicarb, however, is one of the most dangerous pesticides in existence. The World Health Organization (WHO) describes the substance as extremely toxic and potentially carcinogenic. Thiodicarb has been banned in the European Union. Last year, 154 organizations from 35 countries called on Bayer to stop selling all pesticides of the highest hazard category, including thiodicarb. The countermotions are online on Bayer´s website Charleston Gazette "Chemical Concerns"
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Decades Later, Toxic Sludge Torments Bhopal New
York Times, July 7, 2008 BHOPAL,
India — Hundreds of tons
of waste still languish inside a tin-roofed warehouse in a corner of the old
grounds of the Union Carbide pesticide factory here, nearly a quarter-century
after a poison gas leak killed thousands and turned this ancient city into a
notorious symbol of industrial disaster. The
toxic remains have yet to be carted away. No one has examined to what extent,
over more than two decades, they have seeped into the soil and water, except
in desultory checks by a state environmental agency, which turned up
pesticide residues in the neighborhood wells far exceeding permissible
levels. Nor
has anyone bothered to address the concerns of those who have drunk that
water and tended kitchen gardens on this soil and who now present a wide
range of ailments, including cleft palates and mental retardation, among
their children as evidence of a second generation of Bhopal victims, though
it is impossible to say with any certainty what is the source of the
afflictions. Why
it has taken so long to deal with the disaster is an epic tale of the
ineffectiveness and seeming apathy of India’s bureaucracy and of the
government’s failure to make the factory owners do anything about the mess
they left. But the question of who will pay for the cleanup of the 11-acre
site has assumed new urgency in a country that today is increasingly keen to
attract foreign investment. It
was here that on Dec. 3, 1984, a tank inside the factory released 40 tons of
methyl isocyanate gas, killing those who inhaled it while they slept. At the
time, it was called the world’s worst industrial accident. At least 3,000
people were killed immediately. Thousands more may have died later from the
aftereffects, though the exact death toll remains unclear. More
than 500,000 people were declared to be affected by the gas and awarded
compensation, an average of $550. Some victims say they have yet to receive
any money. Efforts to extradite Warren M. Anderson, the chief executive of
Union Carbide at the time, from the United States continue, though apparently
with little energy behind them. Advocates
for those who live near the site continue to hound the company and their government.
They chain themselves to the prime minister’s residence one day and dog
shareholder meetings on another, refusing to let Bhopal become the tragedy
that India forgot. They insist that Dow Chemical Company, which bought Union
Carbide in 2001, also bought its liabilities and should pay for the cleanup. “Had
the toxic waste been cleaned up, the contaminated groundwater would not have
happened,” says Mira Shiva, a doctor who heads the Voluntary Health
Association, one of many groups pressing for Dow to take responsibility for
the cleanup. “Dow was the first crime. The second crime was government
negligence.” Dow,
based in Michigan, says it bears no responsibility to clean up a mess it did
not make. “As there was never any ownership, there is no responsibility and
no liability — for the Bhopal tragedy or its aftermath,” Scot Wheeler, a
company spokesman, said in an e-mail message. Mr.
Wheeler pointed out that the former factory property, along with the waste it
contained, had been turned over to the Madhya Pradesh State government in
June 1998, and that “for whatever reason most of us do not know or fully
understand, the site remains unremediated.” He
went on to say that Dow could not finance remediation efforts, even if it
wanted to, because it could potentially open up the company to further
liabilities. In
a letter to the Indian ambassador to the United States in 2006, the Dow
chairman, Andrew N. Liveris, sought
assurance from the government that it would not be held liable for the mess
on the old factory site, “in your efforts to ensure that we have the
appropriate investment climate.” The
claims have divided the government itself. It is now in the throes of a
debate over who will pay — a debate that might have taken place behind closed
doors were it not for a series of public information requests by advocates
for Bhopal residents that turned up revealing government correspondence. It
showed that one arm of the government, the Chemicals and Petrochemicals
Ministry, entrusted with the cleanup of the site, has wanted Dow to put down a
$25 million deposit toward the cost of remediation, while other senior
officials warned that forcing Dow’s hand could endanger future investments in
the country. A
senior government official, prohibited from speaking publicly on such a
contentious issue, described the quandary. “Do you want $1 billion in
investment, or do you want this sticky situation to continue?” the official
said, calling it a stalemate. The
government is expected to make a final decision later this year. Beyond
who will pay for the cleanup here, the question is why 425 tons of hazardous
waste — some local advocates allege there is a great deal more, buried in the
factory grounds — remain here 24 years after the leak? There
are many answers. The company was allowed to dump the land on the government
before it was cleaned up. Lawsuits by advocacy groups are still winding their
way through the courts. And a network of often lethargic, seemingly apathetic
government agencies do not always coordinate with one another. The
result is a wasteland in the city’s heart. The old factory grounds, frozen in
time, are an overgrown 11-acre forest of corroded tanks and pipes buzzing
with cicadas, where cattle graze and women forage for twigs to cook their
evening meal. Since
the disaster, ill-considered decisions on the part of local residents have
only compounded the problems and heightened their health risks. Just beyond
the factory wall is a blue-black open pit. Once the repository of chemical
sludge from the pesticide plant, it is now a pond where slum children and
dogs dive on hot afternoons. Its banks are an open toilet. In the rainy
season, it overflows through the slum’s muddy alleys. The
slum rose up shortly after the gas leak. Poor people flocked here, seeking
cheap land, and put up homes right up to the edge of the sludge pond. Once,
the pond was sealed with concrete and plastic. But in the searing heat, the
concrete cover eventually collapsed. The
first tests of groundwater began, inexplicably, 12 years after the gas leak.
The state pollution control board turned up traces of pesticides, including
endosulfan, lindane, trichlorobenzene and DDT. Soil sediments were not
tested. The water was never compared with water in other city neighborhoods.
The pollution board saw no cause for alarm. Nevertheless,
in 2004, complaints from residents led the Supreme Court to order the state
to supply clean drinking water to the people living around the factory. By
then, nearly 20 years had gone by. “It
is a scandal that the hazardous wastes left behind by Union Carbide
unattended for 20 years have now migrated below ground and contaminated the
groundwater below the factory and in its neighborhood,” wrote Claude Alvares,
a monitor for India’s Supreme Court, who visited here in March 2005. He
tasted the water from one well. “I had to spit out everything,” he wrote in
his report. The water “had an appalling chemical taste.” Neighborhood women
brought out their utensils to show how the water had corroded them. As
his report went on to point out, the government was long ago made aware of
the likelihood of contamination. A government research center warned more
than 10 years ago that, if left untreated, the toxic residue on the factory
grounds would seep into the soil and water. Around
the same time, under public pressure, state authorities finally scooped up
the toxic waste that had lain in clumps around the factory grounds, and
stored it inside the tin-roofed warehouse. The warehouse was padlocked only
about four years ago. The
waste was supposed to be taken to an incinerator in neighboring Gujarat, but
the government has yet to find a contractor willing to pack it into small,
transportable parcels. There have been delays in acquiring transport permits,
too, with citizens groups raising new questions about the hazards of
transporting the waste. Ajay
Vishoni, the state gas and health minister, said he was confident that none
of the waste was hazardous anymore, nor had anyone proved to his satisfaction
that it had ever caused the contamination of the groundwater. “There is
hype,” he said. In
2005, a state-financed study called for long-term epidemiological studies to
determine the impact of contaminated drinking water, concluding that while
the levels of toxic contaminants were not very high, water and soil
contamination had caused an increase in respiratory and gastrointestinal
ailments. In
the Shiv Nagar slum about half a mile from the factory, there is a boy,
Akash, who was born with an empty socket for a left eye. Now 6, he cannot see
properly or speak. He is a cheerful child who plays in the lanes near his
house. His
father, Shobha Ram, a maker of sweets who bought land here many years after
the gas leak and built himself a two-room house, said the boy’s afflictions
were caused by the hand-pumped well from where his family drew water on the
edge of the sludge pond for years. He said it had not occurred to him that
the water could be laced with pesticides. “We
knew the gas incident took place,” he said. “We never thought the
contaminated water would come all the way to our house.” The
stories repeat themselves in the nearby slums. In Blue Moon, Muskan, a
2-year-old girl, cannot walk, speak or understand what is happening around
her. Her father, Anwar, blames the water. In
Arif Nagar, Nawab and Hassan Mian, brothers who are 8 and 12, move through
their house like newly hatched birds, barely able to stand. They have no
control over their muscles. Their mother, Fareeda Bi, is unsure of exactly
what caused their ailment, but she, too, blames the water. “There
are more children like this in the neighborhood,” she said, “who cannot walk,
who cannot see.” To
compound the tragedy, there is no way to know to what extent the water is to
blame. The government suspended long-term public health studies many years
ago. ### |