Scroll down for information, photographs and resources on the present-day poisoning of Bhopal.

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Most people, when they think of Bhopal, recall only the horrors of 'that night', when gas leaked from the Union Carbide factory and killed thousands. What is not generally known is that after the gas leak, the factory was closed and for all practical purposes abandoned by the company. To this day you can see piles of dangerous chemicals lying in the open air. The warehouses are full of sacks of poisons, many of which have split open. Children and animals have been in and left footprints in the chemical dust. The structures and buildings on the site have been left to rot.

Outside the ruins of the Alpha-Napthol plant a large heap of brown rocks lies exposed to the elements. The rocks are actually pure carbaryl. If they caught fire they would release MIC, the gas that leaked in 1984. There have been two major grass fires in the factory in recent years.

The monsoons of two decades have washed the chemicals deep into the soil and into the underground acquifers which feed wells and boreholes. The drinking wells and tap of communities living within a considerable radius of the plant have been contaminated with chemicals that are implicated in cancers and birth-defects. People have no other water supply and have been forced to drink and wash in Union Carbide's diluted poisons. 20,000 people are affected.

The French writer Dominique Lapierre, author of Five to Midnight in Bhopal wrote in 2002:

I wanted to reckon the aggressiveness of this pollution by drinking half a glass of the water of one of those wells.  My mouth, my throat, my tongue instantly got on fire, while my arms and legs suffered an immediate skin rash.  This was the simple manifestation of what men, women and children have to endure daily, some eighteen years after the tragedy. (Read Dominique's article in English, French, Italian or Spanish.)

People meanwhile are ill from the water. In many cases these are the same families who were decimated by the gas in 1984. A whole new generation is being poisoned. People complain of aches and pains, rashes, fevers, eruptions of boils and other skin complaints, headaches, nausea, lack of appetite, dizziness, constant exhaustion. Lead, mercury and organochlorines have been found in the milk of nursing mothers living near the factory with the result that women are terrified to breast-feed their babies because they are feeding them poison.

Sacks of poisons abandoned in falling-down warehouses.

This poisoning has been going on for decades. The first signs appeared in the early 80s, before the gas leak, when animals grazing near the factory became ill and died. The complaints of their owners were settled out-of-court. The company continually denied that the factory was contaminated or was responsible for polluting water, but it is clear from internal Carbide documents obtained via "discovery" in the New York court case (see below) that it had carried out tests and knew as long ago as 1989 that soil and water within its boundaries were lethal. It chose not to make this knowledge public, instead continuing to deny that any danger existed.

It was not until 1999, ten years later, that the first systematic study of the contamination was carried out by Greenpeace. Samples of soil and water were analysed at labs in the UK. In some places levels of mercury were six million times higher than expected. Local drinking water was found to be heavily laced with cancer- and birth defect-causing chemicals. You will find the Greenpeace report here. Scroll down for more articles and resources.

Survivors' organisations have fought back, demanding that clean safe water be piped to the affected communities, that the factory site be decontaminated and the toxins lying there removed, that Union Carbide which abandoned the plant knowing full well the dangers of what it had left behind, should pay for the medical treatment of those who are ill for as long as the illness lasts and that families should be compensated for their years of ill health and loss of earnings.

Union Carbide, which is now a 100%-owned subsidiary of Dow Chemicals refuses to clean up the plant or accept responsibility for the damage it has caused to people's health and livelihoods. It maintains that the state government of Madhya Pradesh should be held responsible. The state government and central governments meanwhile hold Union Carbide responsible for paying for a clean-up.

Survivors campaigning for clean water successfully petitioned the Supreme Court of India, which ordered in May 2004 that clean, safe water be piped into the communities. The state government has, until the time of writing (March 2005) ignored this order. A few tankers of water go into the affected areas, but supplies are sporadic. There are things you can do about this. Please see the list below.

Survivors have also filed a Class Action suit against Union Carbide on the issue of contamination and water poisoning in a New York court. The case is currently underway, four attempts by the corporation to have it dismissed have failed. For more information including the latest news on this, please follow links in the left column: Legal issues and cases.

PHOTOGRAPHS AND VIDEOS

An introductory view of the contamination at the site (hosted at www.bhopal.org)

Photographs by Maude Dorr

Photographs by Andy Moxon

Photographs by Dan Sinha

ICJB video of the 25 November 2002 survivors' attempt to begin a clean-up of the factory, caught police beating up survivors

INTERACTIVE

Virtual text-based tour of the factory (based on MUD technology) Coming soon.

REPORTS

Greenpeace report on contamination of drinking water (PDF 720kb)

Surviving Bhopal, Toxic present, toxic future: A Report on Human and Environmental Chemical Contamination around the Bhopal disaster site by Srishti For the Fact Finding Mission on Bhopal (January 2002)
(Word version 964kb)
(PDF version 772kb)

Summary of the contamination at the site (written 2001)

Technical guidelines (Greenpeace research laboratories; 2002)

Recommendations on remediation by an expert panel (2004)

16 page brief on the contamination history (2005)

UNION CARBIDE'S SECRET PAPERS

Carbide's seret "poison papers" obtained by court discovery(November 2002)

Survivors organisations press statement on discovery documents

Excerpts from Carbide documents, with photographs and comments

CLEAN-UP ISSUES

People vs Poison (an op-ed on the survivors' 25 November 2002 attempt to begin a clean-up at the factory)

ICJB video of the 25 November 2002 action, showing police beating up survivors

SUGGESTED KEYWORD SEARCHES OF BHOPAL.NET

poison
contamination
"drinking water"
groundwater
"class action"
discovery

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Sign the petition to Dow Chemical asking them to accept their responsibilities and clear up the site.

If you are a student, consider forming a support group at your college. Details of how, resources and support from www.studentsforbhopal.org

Make a donation to the Bhopal Medical Appeal and help fund the free Sambhavna Clinic which provides free medical care to gas- and water-affected people