It's 25 years since
the world's worst industrial disaster struck Bhopal, a town in central India. On 3 December 1984, a toxic leak in Union Carbide Corporation's factory unleashed 40 tonnes of lethal gas into the sleeping town. It killed 3,500 people instantly and an estimated 20,000 have died from complications since.
Hundreds
of residents of the Indian city of Bhopal have held a vigil to mark 25
years since a deadly chemical leak in the city caused the world's worst
industrial disaster.
Survivors and local residents joined activists late on Wednesday to
remember the thousands of victims of the leak from a pesticide plant
owned by US chemical company Union Carbide on December 3, 1984.
Groundwater found near the site of the world's worst chemical
industrial accident in Bhopal is still toxic and poisoning residents a
quarter of a century after a gas leak there killed thousands, two
studies have revealed.
Delhi's Centre for Science and the
Environment said that water found two miles from the factory contained
pesticides at levels 40 times higher than the Indian safety standard.
It was announced this week by state authorities that the sealed pesticide
plant that leaked deadly methyl isocyanate gas on December 3 1984 is to be
opened to the public for a week next month to coincide with the 25th
anniversary of the disaster.
Around 3,500 people died immediately when a storage tank of the plant run by
US group Union Carbide - bought by Dow Chemicals in 1999 - spewed the poison
gas over the populated slums of Bhopal in central India.
The immensity of the death toll would seem to demand silence, but nature is
indifferent to suffering. As you walk through the derelict Union Carbide
factory in Bhopal there is the sound of birdsong and the chirruping of
cicadas. Sunlight streams through the trees, dappling the vines that creep
over the rusting gantries, pipelines and towers. Grass has overgrown the
paved footpaths.
NEW DELHI - An Indian court issued a warrant Friday for the arrest of the former head of the American chemical company responsible for a gas leak that killed at least 10,000 people in Bhopal 25 years ago.
Warren Anderson was the head of Union Carbide Corp. when its factory in the central Indian city leaked 40 tons of poisonous gas on Dec. 3, 1984 - the world's worst industrial disaster.
BHOPAL - Unable to steer safely in the mud, the driver of our rickshaw pulls into the side of the road to allow us to take shelter from torrential rain. There, under a shop's awning, a small crowd of people are standing together waiting for the weather to break. They include Sapna Sharma and her brother-in-law, Sanjay. Sanjay is holding his 18-month-old nephew, Anshul, who has kohl-rimmed eyes and silver bracelets on his ankles. As we stand talking, some of the people start pointing to the child's hands and feet while speaking animatedly to us in Hindi.
NEW DELHI - A campaign in the United States led by two girl victims from Bhopal, highlighting lingering toxicity left behind by the 1984 gas disaster in their city, has paid off with a group of 27 members of the U.S. Congress asking Dow Chemicals to clean up the site.
Sarita and Sareen, both in their teens, were taken on a 42-day tour of the U.S., starting Apr. 21, by the Bhopal Group for Information and Action (BGIA) so they could meet and interact with officials, academics and politicians in New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco and other cities.
NEW YORK - A lawsuit contending that thousands of people in India were exposed to polluted drinking water after the 1984 Union Carbide toxic-gas disaster in Bhopal was reinstated on Monday by a U.S. appeals court, which said a lower court improperly threw out the case.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York sent the lawsuit back to a Manhattan federal court judge for further proceedings.
