Bhopal disaster case

The Bhopal disaster was a watershed in the area of environmental policy and legislation worldwide. Suddenly the horror of the industrial model of development became very stark and real. How and where industries were sited and how they dealt with the dangers that they posed to the communities around them became real questions. After the Love Canal saga (see the case study later in this chapter), Bhopal was the one incident that led to worldwide regulation on chemicals and toxicity. Intertwined with all the information was the fact that communities be given information and be included as participants in industry decision making. 

An examination of the causes of the Bhopal disaster clearly indicates that the accident would not have occurred if all necessary precautions had been taken in the maintenance and operation of the Union Carbide Pesticide Plant. This required continued and apt maintenance, regular inspection by independent authorities, sufficiently well-trained staff, and location of the plant far away from residential areas and not just within 1 km of the railway station and within 3 km of two major hospitals, as was the case in Bhopal. 

Dhara, R., Dhara, V.R. (1995). Bhopal - a case study of international disaster. Int. J. Occup. Environ. Health 1 58-69. 

The banning of DDT and other eommonly used organochlorine (OC) pestieides led to inereascd use of other, more acutely toxic synthetic compounds that were also effective in pest control but were much less persistent in the environment. Subsequently, several cases of pesticide poisoning, including the Bhopal disaster in India, have been reported (Gupta, 2fKM). 

Many people are familiar with the Bhopal disaster in December 1984, and as is usually the case, there were multiple problems and failures leading up to the catastrophic release of methyl isocyanate (MIC). For this case study, we will focus on the organizational issues related to personnel turnover to provide an example of how such changes can contribute to process safety incidents. 

The American Society of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) is a technical society devoted to chemical engineering and associated technologies and issues. Many chemical engineers work in the chemical process industry. In 1985, AIChE established the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS). It was an industry response to the Bhopal, India, disaster (Case 24-1). It has become the center of expertise for process safety. It publishes many publications on process safety, and conducts conferences and training to advance process safety practices. 

The House vote appears to have been influenced by various extraneous issues. John E. Porter, a leading opponent, claimed that the hostage crisis in Beirut had been significant. There was a trade-off in the House-Senate conference between funding for anti-satellite weapons and for binaries. Some opponents of the binary programme had left the House. The issue of safety was given prominence following the Bhopal disaster. The administration had also been able to claim in support of its case the report of the Chemical Warfare... 

Environmentally hazardous projects are those where the risk of accidents is very high, which can result in a major and sometimes even catastrophic chemical pollution of the environment. Frequently, these disasters take casualties among the plant personnel, as well as among the nearby settlements population, which were the cases with the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster in Ukraine, or with the pesticide plant accident in Bhopal, India. 

Another type of activated double bond is found in isocyanates and isothiocyanates. Methylisocyanate was responsible for a disaster in Bhopal, India, in 1984 when approximately 40 tons of the gas were accidentally released leading to the death of thousands of people and injury to many more. Some have called this the worst industrial accident in history. Methylisocyanate reacts with nucleophiles as shown in Figure 8.18—in this case with a thiol. This reaction is reversible, and therefore a glutathione conjugate can act to... 

One of the most notorious cases of industrial disaster took place in 1984 in Bhopal, India. A plant with a license from the Union Carbide company was making methyl isocyanate (MIC), CH3NCO, which is an intermediate for the manufacture of pesticides. MIC boils at 39 °C, and the vapor density is heavier than air and very toxic by inhalation and skin absorption. The maximum allowable air concentration is 0.02 ppm by volume over 8 h. MIC also reacts with water and produces heat, which must be removed to prevent boiling over. On that day in 1984, the cooling system failed during... 

Social Acceptance. Social acceptance of chemical plants is still an issue. This is due to the fact that big disasters have occasionally occurred (Bhopal, Seveso) and also because chemical plants smell, due to diffusive emissions of volatile components. Via process intensification the amount of chemically hazardous, reactive material can be reduced considerably, by which the size of an emission in the case of an explosion will be far less and the chance of an explosion itself reduced by the lowered hazardous, reactive content. 

There have been numerous discussions about this accident, which produced the most casualties in the history of industrial disasters. Some arguments revolve around the direct cause of the accident. As is generally known, many major accidents have been caused by combinations of small accidents. The accident in Bhopal also happened as the result of a combination of serious mistakes the mixing of water with MIC caused by neglecting to put the metal sheet in place to separate reactive components, and the failures in operation of the exhaust gas scrubber and the flare stack. Such cases are frequently found where a safety device is temporarily removed because the device is troublesome. It is necessary to educate people that the reliability of a safety device should be tested and that the failure of a safety device can lead to unexpectedly terrible results. 

The authors of this chapter encountered a volunteer at Sambhavana Trust Clinic located near the now decommissioned pesticide plant. This young man was perfectly normal on the many occasions we saw him but other members of the clinic told us that from time to time he would become very depressed his parents had died during the disaster. One day in 2007 we received a message from Bhopal that he had committed suicide. There are reports of other such cases although it is never possible to causally link such tragic events with exposure to MIC. 

By their very nature disasters involving chemicals pose special problems because they involve a large number of people in a state of panic. Most places are not equipped to deal with such a situation especially if there is confusion about the nature of the chemical. If the chemical is a pulmonary irritant, as is the case with MIC, there is a good likelihood of cyanide poisoning as happened in Bhopal and for a short period in Japan when miscreants exploded organophosphates in the subway. The other reason for mass confusion is the erroneous belief that there exist antidotes for every poison. 

For investors to put Bhopal into perspective it is important to recognize one important factor - Bhopal is not just a synonym for industrial disaster, it is a leading test case for what is alleged to be wrong with the lack of corporate social accountability in the globalized economy. The actions of Union Carbide, and now Dow, are perceived worldwide as those of foreign investors more concerned about damage control than about the hundreds of thousands of human lives their operations have destroyed. 

In March 2004, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for New York issued an order allowing litigation by Indian property owners near the Bhopal plant to proceed against Union Carbide in the New York District Court for property damages, including environmental remediation of their properties. The case that is being allowed relates to contamination that is not from the gas disaster, but rather from the operation and abandonment of the plant site. 

Investigations of industrial accidents reveal that most are caused by human error. The twentieth century s worst industrial disasters—Bhopal, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl—helped clarify the complex chain of system problems that lead to human error. System problems are problems caused by a process system with built in design and operating deficiencies. The accidents provided numerous checklists and case studies for control room and equipment design. A partial list of some of the problems found at the industrial sites mentioned above are ... 

Petersen, M.J., Bhopal Plant Disaster - Situation Summary (Draft), International Dimension of Ethics Education in Science and Engineering Case Study, March 2009. 

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