Pesticides At The Bhopal Plant example essay topic

Just after midnight on December 3, 1984, a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India had a chemical leak accident. The chemical that was released into the air is called methyl iso cyanate, or MIC, used to make pesticides. This chemical is tremendously harmful and fatal to humans, livestock, and crops. Only a short-term exposure may cause death or unfavorable health effects. The slums of Bhopal and its residents that surrounded the plant which were mostly affected by the gas suffered dearly. An estimated 8,000 people dead and about 300,000 more suffering from its effects.

Bloated carcasses of cattle dotted the streets. Tree and plant leaves were yellow and brittle. "Corpses littered the streets and discovered behind locked doors, trapped in private death tombs" (Diamond 8). These victims had no warning what so ever. As families ran from their homes and away from the plant, they had no idea that the wind was carrying the gas cloud in the direction that they were traveling.

The disaster effects on survivors are so great that the effects on generations to come are going to be serious and enduring. This could all have been avoided, if negligence and inattention didn't play a role in the Bhopal disaster of 1984. Bhopal is the capital of the state of Madhya Pradesh, which is located in India. Climate there varies from tropical heat to near-arctic cold. With fifty-five million people the average income is very low for most people in India. "This huge population means that much of India does not have the resources to meet the daily needs of its people.

As a result, most of the country is plagued by desperate poverty" (10). The city of Bhopal is spread out randomly in the midst of gently sloping hills and valleys. South of the city are two lakes that supply Bhopal's water. The city is outrageously crowded; taxis and horse pulled carts transport crowds of commuters. "Motorcycles and bicycles carry entire families. Cage-carts, drawn by bicycles, are crammed with schoolchildren on their way to lessons.

Seven to ten people may ride in one car" (12). But most people usually walk. ".. with the communities of people who make the streets their home" (12). Countless people crowd the railway station every day. The majority of the people are visitors, planning to meet with government officials, to shop, or to visit relatives. Others are working people taking the trains to other cities in efforts to make a few rupees. New people also arrive daily at the station seeking for jobs in the big city.

All over the place in Bhopal, religion is apparent. Hindus are seen praying to their gods for a safe trip. "They leave religious paintings, created with chalk, powder, and rose petals, on the floor of the station" (13). Eighty percent of Indians are loyal of Hinduism. Although the leading religion of India's people is Hinduism, the majority of Bhopal's residents are Muslims. Bhopal's Muslims worship mosques, and one of the biggest mosques in the world is the Taj-ul-Masjid, which is located south of the city.

They worship there five times a day to pray and also pray at other numerous mosques around the city. "Muslims have always been in conflict with the Hindu majority" (13). It all began when Muslims first invaded India. And their disputes still continue today.

In India, there are three main classes of people: top, middle, and bottom class. The top class includes people of such sort, such as managers and officials who work in government and industry, wealthy businessmen, engineers, doctors, and other professions. They all live in a new section of the city, with paved roads, and items that other unfortunate people don't have like air conditioning. These new and modern glitters are created especially for them.

And all of these is in the best location of Bhopal, away from all the crowds of people. The middle class people consist of lower management and government officials, artisans, and businessmen. These seem like high paying jobs but their incomes are low and their benefits are poor. Government official jobs, which people work in offices that do not have essential commodities like telephones and typewriters. The overwhelming population in Bhopal means very few jobs that are out there for the public. ."..

Even a meager, low-paying job is welcomed as a way to avoid abject poverty" (15). The bottom class of society, workers and job seekers take any job they can find if they are fortunate. If they are lucky, they will be found in such places as small industries around the city like the glue factory, the bone mills, the tannery center, the distillery, the slaughterhouse, and the straw products factory. "Otherwise, these people work as sidewalk vendors who shine shoes, give haircuts or clean ears" (15). They can also find jobs as street cleaners or in communal sewing centers.

"In addition to these unofficial social classes, Hindus in Bhopal and throughout India adhere to a rigid caste system that further separates people into classes" (15). It is very hard to change caste to a higher standard of living and converse with a higher class. But if some individuals have the desire to change caste, they can through immense effort, talent, and luck; .".. one may change caste by gaining prominence in a certain occupation" (17). The caste system offers little flexibility in village life, politics, and in marriage. Religion also plays a part in this caste; only Hindus can have caste. "In the midst of the poverty and chaos in Bhopal, Union carbide opened its chemical plant in 1969" (17).

The plant is located at the city limits about a mile northwest of the railway station. Already people were setting up shantytowns close to the plant hoping to get a job there and didn't really care about the risk factor, but local leaders weren't all that excited about the plant being in the midst of the slums. They thought it was hazardous to have the plant there. They were hoping to persuade them into relocating to a located that is less populated. But Union Carbide didn't want to relocate and was too powerful and so the local leaders were overruled.

Union Carbide is well known in India for their plants are located all around India. Bhopal's people welcomed the plant and the jobs it will bring. In the early years, the Bhopal plant imported, packaged, and distributed pesticides and raw fertilizers. In 1980, the plant wanted its business to expand, and so they trim costs and decided to manufacture pesticides at the Bhopal plant. Many local leaders objected the new plan, saying if an accident were to occur, devastating results were be existing and for the large population living around the plant would be poisoned. Once again the local leaders were overruled.

The people didn't really mind it; they only wanted jobs to make their living to provide for their families. In December 1981, the first year of the pesticide production at the Bhopal plant, a worker died of being drenched with a deadly gas when he was cleaning a pipe. The substance that killed him was MIC. Since the plant's opening 1969, there had been six accidents. An American safety team came to the plant for an inspection analysis and to check the safety procedures. The team didn't like the safety program and suggested that a plan for alerting citizens in case of a spill.

But local officials were never told of this, so it was never drawn up. "In mid-1982, another team of American experts sent a report to Bhopal, warning of the danger of a major chemical reaction inside one of the chemical storage tanks" (23). The report made safety suggestions and all were met except one. In the following two years to come since the second inspection, leaks are turning up around the plant.

The plant managers were not too worried. They believed that the leaks were meager and a chance of a major spill was low. Also the 1982 inspection report identified serious problems in the design of the Bhopal plant. The problem was in the backup system.

The system was manual, and if a there was a problem, it had to be detected by a worker. And the safest backup system of course is automatic. These automatic systems are commonly used in plants in Europe and the United States. "Other factors influenced the safety of the plant" (24). Since 1981, business for the Union Carbide plant had not been going that well because of rising prices. The expensive pesticides that the plant produced were deeply ignored by much of India's population, who were seeking cheaper, local pesticides.

Also, the world knew of the ecological problems pesticides cause, and was then using less of the product because they knew it causes harm to people, wild life, and water supply. Due to this problem, many workers were told to be. ".. less diligent about quality control... ". (24) Because of the Union Carbide's economic problems affected safety procedures and it, I guess holding them back. So, instead of replacing leaky pipes, the workers who many were under qualified for their positions, were told to patch them. Union Carbide fired those who protested.

"Serious accidents continued to occur at the plant. From 1981 to 1984, eighteen more workers were exposed to deadly chemicals, including MIC. By 1984, forty-seven people had been injured at the plant and over $620,000 worth of property destroyed" (27). The people of Bhopal largely ignored accidents and the articles that were published in newspapers about them were ignored and not taken serious. In December 1984, 20 percent of the city population lived in the slums and shantytowns of Bhopal. And the two largest slums were right across the street of the plant.

On December 2, 1984, a tank that held the MIC pesticide cracked open, letting deadly fumes to escape. A sixty-foot long, six-inch thick cement slab covered the tank that held the gas. The pesticide had begun to boil, and then eventually cracking the tank and letting out gas fumes. A few of the technicians went to go take a closer look at the damage and see what was going on but when they got to close, they suddenly fell to their hands and knees, coughing and rubbing their burning eyes.

The technicians alerted other technicians and were acting as quickly as possible to try to contain the matter at hands. They had ideas to try to contain the problem but their efforts did absolutely nothing to stop it and some ideas they suggested involved the use of machine that they had on the premise that was for an emergency but it was in repair or broken. There was no solution they could think of and it was to frightening and frustrating to them, so they ran for their lives. There was nothing that they could do to prevent the deadly gas from drifting up into the air.

Alarms were sounded and the people in the shantytowns heard them. Many people ran out of their home to the gates of the plant thinking it might be a fire and they wanted to watch". The unfortunate spectators were overcome by the gas and were the first to die" (31). As people woke up to the smell of gas and the sounds of people fleeing their homes, ."..

Union Carbide employees felt terribly helpless" (31). The employees recognized the smell of the gas but didn't have any gas masks, but. ".. at least they knew enough to grab articles of clothing or handkerchiefs, soak the cloth in water, and breath through it. Like everyone else, the employees gathered their families and followed everyone else into the streets and travel away from the plant, not knowing that they were traveling the same way the wind was carrying the deadly gas. Citizens began to choke with every breathe they took, while their eyes and nasal passages burning, they pleaded with Allah or other gods for help, clutching their necks, falling to the ground and their mouths oozing blood.

The town had been mutated to vigorous to a landscape of death. Hours passes and deaths continued. The surviving victims endured awful misery. "About 80 percent of the adults and 50 percent of the children could barely breathe for days because of lung damage" (38). Keeping their religious practices and beliefs, relatives were taking bodies from the morgue to be quickly cremated, so the total death count varied. Victims were in the thousands at some hospitals, which were also understaffed.

"Shortly after the leak, three hundred bodies lay in rows at the railway station, waiting for a single doctor to decide which were alive and which were dead" (41). While the doctors listened to the victim's heartbeats, he ordered those with heartbeats into one truck and those without heartbeats into another truck. .".. Officials and doctors thought an epidemic of Cholera might result if the corpses were not cremated immediately" (41). So the bodies were quickly rushed into trucks and taken to a nearby crematorium. Also, construction cranes were removing decomposing bodies of cattle and water buffalo from the streets.

While the cleaners were cleaning the streets, the officials were debating on how to handle Warren Anderson, the chief executive officer of Union Carbide. Anderson was due to arrive in Bhopal on December 6 from the United States. "The officials in Madhya Pradesh were naturally angry and wanted to take action against Anderson and his company" (42). As I told you, Union Carbide is a powerful force. It plays a huge role in India's economy and the government officials didn't want Union Carbide to take its plants out of the country. But. ".. after much discussion, the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Arjun Singh, decided to arrest Anderson" (44).

When he arrived in Bhopal, Warren Anderson was thrown I jail on the charges of negligence and criminal corporate liability and criminal conspiracy. The second charge can have a maximum penalty of death under Indian law. He was released on a $2,500 bond and flown to New Delhi, where the rest of his colleagues were being held. The Bhopal plant was secure and alike to the one's in the United States, Anderson argued, and also that the company was not responsible for the deaths at the plant but it was cruelty caused by unhappy employees and caused the disaster on purpose. The victims wanted.

".. Union Carbide to give them money to compensate for their suffering and medical bills" (46). These suits brought American lawyers. These lawyers encouraged victims to sue the company for damages and become their clients. The American lawyers figured the Bhopal case could have a quicker outcome if it were tried in the United States. Meanwhile, the Indian government took in effect to compensate the suffering victims.

People were paid 10,000 rupees ($830) for each dead member of their family. "In February 1989, before the case ever went to trial, all legal maneuvers and negotiations were suddenly halted" (51). Union Carbide and India's Supreme Court had reached an agreement. "Union Carbide agreed to pay the government of India $470 million by March 23, 1989" (51). This money would be distributed among the victims.

In exchange for this, the government agreed to drop all charges against Union Carbide, including the murder charge against Warren Anderson. They thought this was a fair settlement and compensation for the victims. But many Indians didn't like this settlement, saying it was too low and that its own government betrayed them. It is said that a rate of one per day that people still die from the. ".. medical complications caused by the poisonous gas leak" (51). After all this, India's government keeps on letting into their country foreign companies and not turning down any technology, and are still seeking foreign industrial companies around the world because they offer jobs which offer low wages for the people and get paid for the use of their services that they provide for the foreign companies.

"Unfortunately, many people desperate for work will accept hazardous job conditions. The likelihood of another disaster like the one in Bhopal looms large" (57).