The Hindu : `A time-bomb ticking away'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 03, 2003

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`A time-bomb ticking away'

By Kalpana Sharma

MUMBAI DEC. 2. Nineteen years ago, on the night of December 2, a tank containing 40 tonnes of the deadly methyl isocyanate burst in the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. The poisonous cloud released from the tank spread over the city and left in its wake 8,000 dead. Since then, thousands more have died. Yet, the site of the disaster remains untouched and the poison that killed and permanently impaired thousands of people in the Madhya Pradesh capital are still embedded in the soil, water and buildings of the now abandoned plant.

Speaking to The Hindu, Ruth Stringer, senior scientist with the international environmental campaigning organisation, Greenpeace, said: "I have travelled the world but haven't seen anything like the Bhopal plant."

Ms. Stringer was part of a Greenpeace team that went to Bhopal last year and collected a dozen samples from six locations within the compound of the factory and four from the solar evaporation ponds that Union Carbide had used from 1977 to 1984 for its liquid effluents. Their findings, documented in a detailed scientific report, "Chemical stockpiles at Union Carbide India Limited in Bhopal: an investigation" (November 2002), says that there are "significant stockpiles of toxic and persistent chemicals within the Union Carbide India Limited Site." It also notes that these stockpiles are "inadequately contained." For instance, the lining of the solar evaporation plants is damaged, allowing the toxins to leach into the soil and most of the storage facilities are damaged with sacks of unknown chemicals lying unattended and exposed to the environment.

The Greenpeace Research Laboratory, located at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, put the samples through rigorous tests following internationally accepted norms. Its findings suggest that the city of Bhopal still has a ticking time-bomb, a receptacle of highly toxic wastes that continue to affect the surrounding soil, water and air.

Ms. Stringer says that the tests have shown that the area on which the plant stands still contains dangerous levels of carbaryl, otherwise known as sevin, a broad spectrum insecticide that the Bhopal plant manufactured, and hexachlorocyclohexane isomers (HCH). These, states the report, were found in almost every sample that was tested. While the toxic action of carbaryl inhibits an enzyme critical to regulation of the passage of signals between nerve cells, and large doses can be fatal unless an antidote is administered, in combination with HCH it can affect the nervous system. It can also be retained in the body for several years and create long-term health complications.

In November last, Greenpeace handed over the results of the survey and the clean-up guidelines to the Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh. Ms. Stringer says that Mr. Singh assured them that his Government would pursue the matter and look into cleaning up the site of the plant. However, a year later she finds that no steps have been taken and the poisons remain where they were.

Ms. Stringer points out that cleaning up the site is an extremely complex issue. For instance, the contaminated soil would have to be removed from the plant and treated. The process of ridding the soil of the toxics should not result in more contaminants being released into the atmosphere. Therefore, she says, Greenpeace strongly recommends a "closed-loop technology" that ensures that the toxics released in the clean-up process are contained.

Ideally, she says, the toxic waste from the Bhopal plant should be removed and shipped to the United States or some other industrialised country. This would be cheaper than setting up a toxic waste processing facility in Bhopal. And, the costs, which could be anywhere in the range of $200,000 or more, should be met by Dow Chemicals, which took over Union Carbide in 2001. The latter, however, refuses to acknowledge its liability in this instance.

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