Students for Bhopal

Students for Bhopal is a group that is trying to get justice to the people of Bhopal who suffered (and continue to suffer) in the toxic chemical leak from Union Carbide's pesticide plant during the very early hours of 3rd December 1984. This incident is now widely acknowledged as the worst industrial disaster ever. Union Carbide is a US based chemical company which cut corners and due to it's blatant negligence, methyl isocyanate and other deadly gases leaked into the atmosphere. Other than killing thousands (8,000) on that night the leak left nearly 150,000 people severely disabled for life. A total of 22,000 people have died since that tragic day.

Union Carbide is still killing people of Bhopal because it left without cleaning up chemicals which continue to daily seep into drinking water sources around the factory. Dow Chemical has since acquired Union Carbide and refuses to clean up the contamination and compensate people who have suffered due to this poisoning.

Some hard facts:

• More than 27 tons of methyl isocyanate and other deadly gases turned Bhopal into a gas chamber. None of the six safety systems at the plant were functional, and Union Carbide’s own documents prove the company designed the plant with “unproven” and “untested” technology, and cut corners on safety and maintenance in order to save money.
• Today, more than twenty years after the Bhopal disaster, at least 50,000 people are too sick to work for a living, and a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association confirmed that the children of gas-affected parents are themselves afflicted by Carbide’s poison.
• Testing published in a 2002 report revealed poisons such as 1,3,5 trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead and mercury in the breast milk of nursing women living near the factory.
• Yet when the Independent speaks of "rape", the Guardian of "disgrace" and Jon Snow of "a crime against humanity", they are not talking about THAT NIGHT - but of what has happened since to those who survived it. Today, more than 20 years after the disaster, Bhopal remains a humanitarian disaster.
• Union Carbide left without cleaning it up. Tanks full of toxic chemicals have corroded and burst, dumping their contents onto the ground. Worst of all, twenty monsoons (three months of heavy rain each year) have washed the toxins Carbide left behind deep into the soil, poisoning the drinking water of the same people Carbide gassed 20 years ago.

Links that you can read up on this tragedy:

• Students for Bhopal
• What Happened
• BBC articles and videos on Bhopal - watch the video 'One Night in Bhopal'
• Bhopal Disaster - Wiki - a lot of research links on this page
• Bhopal - The world's worst industrial disaster - Greenpeace

I would like to urge you all to sign up on the Students for Bhopal web site, subscribe to their newsletters/mails and try to participate in some of their initiatives like calling government officials in Madhya Pradesh...spread the word...