WASHINGTON - Twenty years after the disastrous leak of tons of poisonous gas at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, the Dow Chemical company, which bought Union Carbide two years ago, will be asked to provide a full accounting of possible liabilities it may face due to the disaster and of any initiatives it has taken to address what is a continuing environmental and health calamity.

The company's shareholders are due to vote on a resolution to that effect filed by Boston Common Asset Management when they hold their annual meeting May 13 in Midland, Michigan.

It will be the latest in a series of moves by activists designed to increase pressure on the company to take greater responsibility for the welfare of the Bhopal survivors and the damage wrought by both the leak and the dangerous contamination of the groundwater that resulted from the failure of Union Carbide to clean up the area around the plant.

"Dow continues to deny liability for Bhopal survivors and the remediation of the Bhopal site but asserts that there are significant legal risks associated with assisting survivors further, and yet fails to provide a balanced review of those risks against the other costs posed to the company of failing to respond to survivors' needs," said Lauren Compere of Boston Common.

"We feel that if Dow continues to do nothing to resolve this issue, it may cause serious damage to its reputation which may affect its growth prospects in Asia and beyond," she added. "Therefore, we are giving shareholders the opportunity to send a strong message to management that Dow should address these issues quickly."

While some 8,000 people who inhaled the highly toxic gas that leaked out of the plant during the night of December, 1984, died immediately, as many as 12,000 others passed away in the following weeks, months, and years, as a result of their exposure, according to public-health experts. An estimated 150,000 survivors suffer chronic illness, and about a third of them are too sick to earn a living.

In 1989, Union Carbide, which built the plant in 1969, settled a civil suit brought by the Indian government by agreeing to pay US$470 million for damages suffered by the half million people who were exposed to the gas. The company maintained that the payment was made out of a sense of "moral", rather than "legal" responsibility since the plant was operated by a separate Indian subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL).

But the settlement, which has so far provided an average of less than $500 to each victim, failed to cover criminal or punitive damages that are the subject of a 15-year-old trial in which Union Carbide and Dow refused to take part.

"The impact on survivors' health continues to exceed the most pessimistic predictions," said Nityanand Jayaraman of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal. "The compensation paid by Union Carbide is less than nine US cents a day per victim - a pathetically inadequate amount, given their economic and health needs."

The settlement package also failed to include the costs of cleaning up the plant. Union Carbide, which owned 50.9 percent of UCIL, severed its relationship with UCIL in 1994 and has argued that it has no legal obligation to conduct or finance the clean-up. The plant was eventually bought by another Indian company.

State public-health experts have found that the heavy metals and other chemicals used at the plant have made the groundwater within three miles from the plant unfit for drinking and that toxins like lead have even been found in the breast milk of women living near the factory zone.

"We are still finding children being born without lips, noses or ears," according to Rishida Bee, a local activist who has been campaigning for compensation for the past 20 years. "Sometimes complete hands are missing, and women have severe reproductive problems."

In recognition of their work, Bee, who has lost six family members to cancer since the leak, and her colleague, Champa Devi Shukla, received the coveted Goldman Environmental Prize in San Francisco last month and are currently touring the United States. They plan to attend the shareholder meeting later this month.

In 2002, the two women organized a 19-day hunger strike in New Delhi to gain support for several demands, including the extradition of Union Carbide's former chairman, Warren Anderson, on criminal charges to face trial in Bhopal; guarantees of long-term health care and monitoring for survivors and their children; a comprehensive clean-up of the site and the surrounding area; and economic and social support for disabled survivors and to families widowed by the disaster.

They campaign to gain compensation scored a victory in March when a federal appeals court in New York reversed a low-court decision that absolved Dow of responsibility for cleaning up the site. It upheld the plaintiffs' rights to seek medical monitoring from Dow related to exposure to contaminated groundwater and found that courts could consider requests for remediation of the environmental damage.

Eight U.S. lawmakers, including Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, sent a 23-page brief to the court urging it to hold Dow responsible and not dismiss the case against it. "It's outrageous that this year marks the 20th anniversary of this tragic event and that the CEOs of Union Carbide and its successor Dow Chemical remain absconders of justice," said Pallone.

"It is unacceptable to allow an American company not only the opportunity to exploit international borders and legal jurisdictions but also the ability to evade civil and criminal liability for environmental pollution and abuses committed overseas," he added.

The shareholder activists argue that the Dow's failure to assume more responsibility for the Bhopal may be affecting it's the value of its stock. Since taking over United Carbide, its stock price has dropped some 13 percent. Dow says the decline has been due to the poor performance of the economy, but Forbes magazine has cited both the ongoing litigation and the growing public attention to Bhopal as relevant factors.

According to Marc Brammer, author of an April report, 'Dow Chemical: Risks for Investors,' the company is facing a number of environmental- and health-liability challenges at the moment. "While facing shareholder questions about the ongoing Bhopal disaster in its most recent proxy statement, the company is also dealing with major risks such as asbestos, Agent Orange, dioxin contamination in Midland, Michigan, and numerous other risks relating to toxic chemicals and polluting by-products in its product portfolio."

These risks, he said, suggest that the company will be "under increasing pressure from investors and potential investors to mitigate these issues."

"Accused of culpable homicide, Union Carbide is officially a fugitive from justice, defying orders of the U.S. and Indian courts to face trial in India," said Sanford Lewis

Copyright © 2004 OneWorld.net.

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