Bhopal Disaster Revisited [updated]

On December 3, 1984, a chemical plant run by Union Carbide and located in Bhopal, India released about 40 tons of a toxic gas which was an intermediate chemical used in creating pesticides. (That is, the plant was in the business of creating chemicals deadly to life.) Safety at the plant had not been a concern of management; numerous safety systems were offline or non-functional. The gas cloud drifted over the city and killed thousands of people, and inflicted permanent injury to hundreds of thousands more. It was the worst industrial accident to date. Today, the site remains a contaminated wasteland, unusable and never cleaned up. The survivors have been minimally compensated, but as time passes, enough of them have died that compensation may now be in the works. Update: 12/03 15:51 GMT by M : Whoops, just kidding, the Reuters story linked there is wrong; the BBC was apparently hoaxed into putting a Dow spokesman on TV who wasn't actually a Dow spokesman. Dow has no plans to clean up the facility and no plans to compensate the survivors. Hope this clears things up.

Comments

On Regulation

[American AC in Paris]

Fortunately, corporate ethics have progressed in leaps and bounds in the past twenty years. Today, the world can sleep soundly knowing that increasingly de-regulated industries have learned their lessons and would never risk innocent lives in the name of saving a buck.

Without the monumental advances in overcoming human nature since these dark times, we wouldn't even be considering shifting regulatory responsibility from the government to the private sector. Yea, we are truly blessed to live in such an enlightened age.

...so next time somebody talks to you about phasing out cumbersome government regulatory systems, remember: we are no longer the savage brutes we were in 1984. The corporations of the world understand now that there are more important things than the bottom line. They would never, ever, ever sacrifice the safety of the community to further their own economic gains...

fnord

Wow! +9000 Informative!

[HarveyBirdman]

which was an intermediate chemical used in creating pesticides. (That is, the plant was in the business of creating chemicals deadly to life.)

Wow. Thanks for that obscure factoid, Sparky. Pesticides kill things. Huh. Who knew?

I'm sure there's a clever comment to be had here about floods and dihydrogen monoxide here, but I'm far too weary.

Ah...the old Chem. Eng. joke

[Zog The Undeniable]

- What's the difference between doctors and chemical engineers?

- Doctors kill in ones.

Re:This is why outsourcing is bad for america

[drinkypoo]

Why do we have labor laws when we allow and even *encourage* businesses to locate in places without them?

I know this was probably a rhetorical question, but the answer is that special interests (read: people or companies with lots and lots of money) control our government from the local to the federal. We allow this by allowing campaign (and other) contributions. If we make it so there are less and less ways corporate interests can manipulate government, we will see more and more moral activity on their parts.

Re:Dow-chem chairman Warren Anderson

[sharkey]

I diasgree a little. I don't think someone can be held responsible for inaction. Lets say you're in a grocery store and it gets held up. The grocery clerk can't take me in because I hid in the corner. You could have helped, and didn't and are therefore responsible? no.

Aren't Jerry, Kramer, George and Elaine in jail for this very offense?