TOXIC FREE ASIA TOUR

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REMEMBER BHOPAL Late one Sunday evening, December 2, 1984, during routine maintenance operations in the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal, India, a large quantity of water entered one of the storage tanks triggering a runaway reaction that resulted in the deaths of more than 16,000 people and the maiming of more than 500,000 others.

Within hours of the incident close to 40 tonnes of highly toxic chemicals had been carried by the wind over an area of 40 square kilometres and a city of about one million people. People woke up surrounded by a poisonous cloud so dense and searing they could hardly see. The gases burned the tissues of their eyes and lungs, and attacked their nervous system. People lost control over their bodies. Some began vomiting uncontrollably. Others fell down dead. Nobody knew of the danger until the gas was upon them because the factory's emergency siren had been switched off.

When dawn broke the streets were littered with corpses. While the official death toll was 1,600, the real figure is not known. Many families living on the wayside without any address were killed. While it was still dark, hundreds of dead bodies were carried away in government vehicles and dumped in nearby forests, and a river.

the disaster continues.

The toxic legacy of Union Carbide continues to haunt the communities surrounding the abandoned plant. Medical research carried out by official agencies has established that the poisonous cloud caused damage to the eyes, lungs, kidneys, liver, intestines, muscles, brain and reproductive and immune systems of people nearby. 40% of the women from the severely affected communities and who were pregnant at the time of the disaster, aborted. Anxiety, depression, insomnia and irritability are common among the affected people. Chromosomal aberrations have been detected indicating the likelihood of congenital malformation in future generations of survivors. Huge quantities of chemicals wantonly dumped in and around the factory have found their way into the groundwater. Meanwhile, Union Carbide has managed to get away after paying a pittance in damages and continues to treat medical information on the leaked chemicals as a trade secret.

SLOW MOTION BHOPALS

Bhopals can happen anywhere, and are, in fact, already happening in many places. Local pollution problems, be they polluting factories, garbage dumps, pesticides in food, or medical waste incinerators are all mini-Bhopals happening in slow motion.

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