ToxiCity

The vast quantity of contaminants dumped in and around the factory site over the 15 years the factory had been in operation had made its way into the water most people in the ‘‘gas-affected’’ colonies drank.

Union Carbide, as recently revealed documents (see box) show, was well aware of the tragedy. But till as late as 2003, the previous Congress government’s minister for gas relief, Areef Aqeel, was ‘‘reassuring’’ residents of the affected areas — by drinking water from handpumps that his own laboratories had certified unsafe.

In March 2004, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled that a lower court could reconsider its decision dismissing legal action against Union Carbide in the US should India send a ‘‘no objection’’ certificate before June 30. This was done after an Indian Express report that appeared on June 22.

The Central government’s decision to intercede and possibly open a way for a US court to order a clean-up of the Bhopal factory site by Dow Chemicals — Union Carbide’s parent company — may well signal the end of a long history of silence. A silence that is inexplicable, given evidence has been available for at least 14 of the past 20 years that waste at the site was continuing to damage public health.

Digvijay and the chemical zoo
ACCORDING to testimony by a Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) employee submitted before a US court, more than 1,000 tonnes of chemical toxic wastes and byproducts were dumped in and around the Union Carbide factory premises between 1969 and 1984.

A study of sediment from a waste storage area abandoned by Carbide, surface soil near the plant and drinking water from adjacent areas was carried out in 1990 by the Boston-based National Toxics Campaign Fund. It showed:
• high levels of dichlorobenzenes, which damage liver and kidney, also cause nervous system damage, eye irritation, weight loss and sometimes death;
• tricholorobenzenes. which are toxic to the liver and kidney;
• phthalates: highly nonbiodegradable, can cause liver and kidney damage and birth defects;
• polyaromatic hydrocarbons, many of these are carcinogenic;
• trimethyl triazintrione, which may cause muscular weakness and convulsion at high doses, inhibit reproduction in animals.

But despite the presence of this toxic waste, the Madhya Pradesh government went ahead and took back the site from UCIL on July 19, 1998. This despite the original lease clearly saying the land had to be returned in the condition it was in when UCIL took it over.

In other words, the government of then chief minister Digvijay Singh virtually gave UCIL a clean chit on the toxic waste. That waste continues to lie at the site.

For Dow Chemicals — which took over Union Carbide in 2001 and has since tried to disassociate itself from liability over the Bhopal gas tragedy — the strongest defence will lie in this foul-up, deliberate or otherwise, by the Digvijay government.

Following the New York court ruling in March, Dow Chemicals spokesman John Musser was quoted as saying he expected the lower court’s dismissal to stand even if the case were reopened. Responsibility for the clean-up, he argued, rested with the Madhya Pradesh government or with the Indian company that had leased the land before the state took it back.

In either case, neither the current Union Carbide nor Dow Chemicals was involved. The legal strategy is to delink Union Carbide Indian Limited from its longstanding US parent.

Drink water, think Carbide
WHILE the state government continued to dither, study after study had shown contamination from the chemicals and waste dumped in and around the Union Carbide premises had rendered the groundwater unfit for drinking.

In November 1996, a report by the government’s own Public Health Engineering Department was damning: ‘‘Ordinarily, COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) is zero in groundwater but in the areas tested, COD ranged from 45 mg/litre to 98 mg/litre, while the WHO limits for safe drinking water are six mg/litre. Such high levels of COD prove that the groundwater is severely affected by chemicals.’’

Observing there was no way to tackle contamination of groundwater, the report said, ‘‘This laboratory tested water from all other parts of Bhopal but chemical contamination was only found here (in regions close to the factory).

‘‘Five years ago, this laboratory had tested water and the results were similar, proving that the contamination is from chemicals used in the Union Carbide factory, which have proved to be gravely injurious to health. Therefore the use of this water for drinking should be stopped immediately.’’

But despite these observations the administration undertook to supply safe drinking water to the affected colonies only under the new BJP government, that is only in 2004.

Welcome to the cancer factory
RECENT reports show there is more cause for alarm. A detailed study by Delhi-based NGO Srishti released in January 2002 — based on fieldwork in 1999 and 2000 — said, ‘‘Results of the survey clearly indicate mobility of the toxic chemicals from the emanating source, the UCIL factory, to the adjoining residential areas … Another very significant aspect is that the human breast milk showed maximum concentrations for VOCs [volatile organic compounds such as the dichlorobenzene mentioned in the Boston study] and a higher concentration of the pesticide HCH.

‘‘It is evident that these carcinogenic toxics are bio-concentrated in the breast milk. Hence, this poses a serious concern to infants, as it is the easiest and shortest route of exposure to number of these suspected carcinogenic chemicals.’’

A September 2002 report on mercury contamination of water, brought out by the People’s Science Institute for the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udhyog Sanghathan (BGPMUS) shows the mercury contamination is spreading further from the factory site. Among those now affected are the ‘‘Gas Tragedy Widows’’, resettled by the government four km from the factory.

The levels of mercury in water were found to range from two to 24 micrograms/litre against a permissible limit of one micrograms/litre. The seepage is found to increase dramatically in the monsoon, with levels of mercury going up to as much as 70 micrograms/litre in some cases.

Hothouse Bhopal needs cold turkey
IF and when the US court does order a clean-up of the site, what will this entail? The Digvijay government, even while denying contamination had made its way to groundwater, had commissioned a study to assess the cost of depolluting the site. It had then proposed to raise a Rs 200 crore loan for the purpose.

But organisations working among the victims had protested, saying the clean-up was now Dow’s responsibility.

A Greenpeace study, The Bhopal Legacy, has outlined some of the steps that lie ahead. The first, most basic requirement is a complete analysis of the extent of the contamination.

This would require an inventory of all industrial waste within and beyond the plant boundaries and further sampling of soil, surface water and groundwater to map out the geographical extent and nature of the contamination.

Once this is done, and in the interim before the clean-up is carried out, the waste already present at the site needs to be contained to prevent further contamination. Only after these steps can the destruction and removal of contamination commence.

Disposal of solid waste will require the conversion of this material into non-hazardous chemicals. While a potentially dangerous process, this is far more easily achieved than the clean-up of the groundwater.

Forget the dead, save the living
THE Greenpeace report suggests, ‘‘The priority must be to ensure that further consumption by humans and livestock is prevented. Pumping equipment should be removed or deactivated and wells capped to prevent access. Alternative water supplies must then be made available as necessary.’’

The new state government has initiated the process of providing alternative sources of drinking water to the affected areas. But the cleaning of the aquifers is no simple job. The report admits as much: ‘‘A review of available approaches and technology will be essential in this regard.’’

Lastly, and perhaps equally importantly, the longterm health impact of this contamination has just not been documented. Given comprehensive data of the medical impact of even the initial tragedy is not available, this is not surprising.

But as is clear from the several reports of contamination, people in the affected areas have been drinking water heavily laced with carcinogens. Activists such as Abdul Jabbar of the BGPMUS have time and again pointed to the number of cases of cancer in these colonies — but in the absence of detailed studies nothing can be stated with certainty.

Yet, as Jabbar observes, ‘‘Dow cannot escape responsibility for this aspect of the tragedy. In any clean-up undertaken by the firm, the cost of treatment of those affected must be factored in.’’ Twenty years on, Bhopal is not going to go quietly into the night.