Overview

• Poster Chronology of Events of the 1984 Bhopal Accident (pdf) by Rangaprasad Sarangrajan and Brinda Mahadevan

On December 3rd, 1984, thousands of people in Bhopal, India, were gassed to death after a catastrophic chemical leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant. More than 150,000 people were left severely disabled—of whom 20,000 have since died of their injuries¬—in a disaster now widely acknowledged as the world's worst-ever industrial disaster. None of the six safety systems at the plant were functional, and Union Carbide's own documents prove the company cut corners on safety and maintenance in order to save money. Today, twenty-one years after the Bhopal disaster, those who survived the gas remain sick, and the chemicals that Union Carbide left behind in Bhopal have poisoned the water supply and contributed to an epidemic of cancers, birth defects, and other afflictions. With its purchase of Union Carbide in 2001, Dow Chemical assumed Carbide's environmental and criminal liabilities.

References

• Bhopal Disaster Toxipedia
• International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal
• Clouds of injustice - Bhopal Disaster by Amnesty International 2004 (3.2 mgb pdf)