Finally India Clears Toxic Waste from Bhopal Gas Tragedy After 40 years of Disaster
Indian authorities claim to have relocated hundreds of tonnes of hazardous trash that were still present more than 40 years after the city of Bhopal was the scene of the greatest industrial accident in history. According to officials on Thursday, the waste from the 1984 disaster site which claimed over 25,000 lives and left at least half a million with serious health problems was moved to a disposal facility where it will take three to nine months to burn.
What’s the Bhopal Gas Tragedy?
The Union Carbide facility currently owned by Dow Chemical was built in 1969 and was regarded as a symbol of Indian industrialisation creating thousands of jobs for the underprivileged and producing low cost pesticides for millions of farmers.
On December 3rd 1984, a tank containing the lethal chemical methyl isocyanate cracked its concrete case unleashing 27 tons of the toxic gas into the atmosphere. Approximately 3,500 people were murdered instantly with up to 25,000 believed to have died in total. Hundreds of thousands of people were poisoned to a life of cancer, stillbirths, miscarriages, lung and heart problems. More than half a million people were poisoned in Bhopal, the capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh early.
Disposal Of Hazardous Waste After 40 years:
More than 40 years later on Thursday morning, a convoy of trucks delivered 337 metric tons of the poison to a waste disposal site in Madhya Pradesh’s industrial town of Pithampur, 230 kilometers (142 miles) from Bhopal.
Swatantra Kumar Singh, director of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Department said that the garbage will be disposed of in an environmentally responsible manner that would not impact the surrounding ecosystem.
The federal pollution control agency conducted a waste disposal trial run with 10 metric tonnes of poison in 2015 and discovered that the levels of ensuing emissions were in the limitation with national norms, according to a state government statement.
However activists claim that after incineration, the solid waste will be deposited in landfills poisoning the water and posing an environmental risk.
Groundwater contamination:
Previous groundwater testing at the site revealed levels of chemicals known to cause cancer and birth defects that were 50 times higher than what the United States Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.
The accident and groundwater contamination have been blamed by communities for a variety of health issues including cerebral palsy, hearing and speech difficulties and other disabilities.
The high court in Madhya Pradesh state issued an order to clear the garbage in December following the 40th anniversary of the accident with a one month deadline.
