Bhopal gas explosion victims still suffering after 26 years

On the 20th anniversary in 2004 of the world’s worst industrial accident in Bhopal, India, we posed the following question: “What price a human life?” Our answer then, based on the fact that thousands of victims were still waiting to be compensated and to be rehabilitated, was this: “Obviously not much in India.”

It now turns out we were prescient in our observation. On Monday, a court in Bangalore, India, found seven former executives of U.S. chemical giant Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary guilty of negligence and sentenced them to two years in jail.

This is the punishment for the 40 metric tons of poisonous gas that spewed into the atmosphere when a storage tank burst five minutes after midnight on Dec. 3, 1984. The gas enveloped the city of Bhopal and thousands of residents were overcome.

The death toll ranges from 3,800 claimed by Union Carbide, to between 10,000 and 12,000 estimated by the Indian government, to 20,000 cited by Bhopal activists. Regardless of the number, the people died over the years of gas-related illnesses, such as lung cancer and kidney and liver failure.

But it isn’t only the dead for whom justice has been delayed and is being denied. More than 600,000 Indians have become ill or have had babies born with congenital defects over the past two and a half decades.

It is, therefore, not surprising that the two-year sentences handed down this week have triggered an outcry from victims and activists in India and from fair-minded people around the world.

To add insult to injury, there was no mention in the Indian court’s verdict of former Union Carbide Chief Executive Warren Anderson, who jumped bail and fled India after the disaster. Although India maintains a warrant for his arrest, Anderson has remained free in the United States, with no attempt being made by the U.S. government to extradite him.

Union Carbide India was fined $10,600, but it’s not clear the fine will ever be paid. Michigan-based Dow Chemical Co. acquired Union Carbide, the parent company, in 2001 and has denied any inherited responsibility for the incident or its aftermath.

A year ago, Bhopal Medical Appeal, an advocacy group, tested groundwater and found it contained 2,400 times the recommended safe levels of carbon tetrachloride, a known carcinogen banned from U.S, consumer products in the 1970s.

In 1989, Union Carbide agreed to a $470 million out-of-court settlement with the Indian government that absolved it of further liability. Many of the victims and survivors got about $500. Tens of thousands got nothing because they were unable to cut through the bureaucratic red tape.

BP oil spill

It is ironic that while Americans today are rightly condemning British Petroleum for the oil disaster in the Gulf, it is an American company that is guilty of causing the deaths of thousands and the suffering of hundreds of thousands in India.

The explosion of a BP oil rig claimed the lives of 11 workers and has resulted in at least 40 million gallons of oil being spewed since the environmental crisis began more than 50 days ago.