Bhopal Disaster

Introduction. On 06 January 2005, a cargo train carrying a massive amount of chlorine spilled in Graniteville, South Carolina creating panic and indeed chaos to both citizens and emergency managers on how to properly respond to the hazardous materials released from the train wreckage. The people of the small rural town of Graniteville located just outside of Aiken, South Carolina, where caught in their sleep when Freight train 192 traveling approximately 47 mph struck other consignments spilling a dangerous amount of chlorine gas into the atmosphere. As a result of this disaster, 5,400 individuals were evacuated from their homes whiling causing nine death. The magnitude of such disaster was one that would change any town or city forever.

There is certainly not enough space to examine all twelve stories presented in Lerner’s book in this paper, and they are all shocking—both in terms of the level of exposure to toxic chemicals and the questionable choices of corporate and government officials—but a few stories stand out.

DuPont was aware of the harmful effects this chemical had on animals and people but ignored the issue in accordance of high profit. Not only were people affected in the local community, but people in surrounding areas were also affected. Thousands of people and large amounts of property were inflicted with poor air quality and poor drinking water. DuPont had later discovered that there were dust fumes emerging from the factories that were unhealthy for people to inhale, and later found it in the drinking water. DuPont also found an astonishing key of evidence, they had found PFOA in the water, and it was twice the amount of what was allowed, and could cause some serious issues. They had known about the levels and did not notify any workers or anyone in the community due to the fear of loss of profit. Men and women were coming home with a fever, nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting. These workers endured injurious experiences, and were never notified about the condition in which they were working. DuPont was named as not trustworthy, and at times known to practice illegal activity. After going through the experiences of which they just endured, they might go through the process of mental thinking or what they just went through was not right and should not have happened to me. That process is known as

In the beginning of this essay I would like to present some facts and figures related to our topic. On December 3, 1984, at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India there was a deadly leak of methyl isocyanate. It caused thousands of people to die and affected generations to come. The leak happened due to a series of human and mechanical failures. The local health officials were neither knowledgeable about the deadly chemical that was being stored there nor were they equipped to handle the tragedy. Another incident happened at the Union Carbide plant in West Virginia. A toxic cloud of the same chemical was leaked into the atmosphere and it was a shocking reminder that such accidents could happen in the both developed and developing countries. The statistics prove that chemical spills occur on a regular basis in different parts of the world. In 1976 there were

Within the last ten years, the lack of awareness and false guidelines about the toxicity of pesticides has contributed to many tragic events. In 1988, Karen James, a Michigan postal worker, was walking past one of ChemLawn’s "fertilizer" trucks when a hose ruptured and she was drenched with chemicals. She was told by the ChemLawn employee not to worry because only fertilizers were in the spray and she would be fine. However, soon after she became seriously ill, with symptoms that include diarrhea, vomiting, and fatigue. When her doctor called ChemLawn to find out what chemicals she was exposed to, he was told that they do not use chemicals. But later tests on Karen revealed high levels of Dursban, a toxic pesticide, which forced ChemLawn to admit that they had been lying (Dieglman, 1996).

On August 28, 2008, at about 10:35 p.m., a runaway chemical reaction occurred inside a 4,500 gallon pressure vessel known as a residue treater, causing the vessel to explode violently in the methomyl unit at the Bayer CropScience facility in Institute, West Virginia. Highly flammable solvent sprayed from the vessel and immediately ignited, causing an intense fire that burned for more than 4 hours. The fire was contained inside the Methomyl-Larvin insecticide unit by the Bayer CropScience fire brigade with mutual aid assistance from local volunteer and municipal fire departments.

There is a duality of silence and silencing between victims and perpetrators, nature and humans, public and government. The chemical toxins work silently through the food chain and accumulate and magnify in human and non- human bodies. ‘Like the constant dripping of water that in turn wears away the hardest stone, this birth-to-death contact with dangerous chemicals may well prove disastrous.’ (Carson, 1962, 158). Carson is critical of both the advertising techniques of chemical companies, ‘lulled by the soft sell and the hidden persuader’ (Carson , 1962, 158) and government agencies including the Federal Aviation Agency’s assurances that planes spraying insecticide were ‘authorized to fly low.’ (Carson, 1962, 91) Carson compares chemical manufacturers to the infamous Borgias, who were masters of

Synthetic pesticides hand been in existence for not less than two decades but could be found everywhere in our water, soil, animals, plants, unborn children and even human mother’s milk. These pesticides where chemicals used for warfare and was produced during World War II that were found to kill insects. The chemicals are made by manipulating atoms and molecules and were being experimented to test the chemical killing of other

which is an herbicide known as “Roundup.” It is non-selective, which means that it kills any plants

Three causes of the 1984 Bhopal Chemical Plant disaster in India were long-term financial difficulties, poor safety management and inadequate emergency plans. The disaster occurred when water entered a methyl isocyanate (MIC) storage tank, which led to a runaway reaction and then discharged toxic MIC vapour into the atmosphere. The leak caused the deaths of more than 2,000 people and injured about 200,000 locals in the surrounding shanty towns (Kletz 2009, p. 338).

BP (British Petroleum) is one of the leading companies that are delivering energy products and services to the people around the world. In this report, we studied BP’s risk management plan for preventing oil spill. The main reason for choosing BP and its oil spill preparedness plan is that the oil companies have become increasingly vulnerable to unwillingly cause disasters and BP is one of them. An event that highlighted this vulnerability and subsequently drew attention to the need to investigate, is the BP oil spill in 2010 was one of the worst oil disasters that affected environment adversely. Issues such as these have been a serious concern for the oil companies around the world.

A single slip in action may cause lasting sorrow. A slight mistake in operation at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal of India causes a lot of deaths and injuries. What a tragedy it is. Undoubtedly, there must be something wrong with the management of the plant.

The second section of the book focused on the chemical industry, specifically vinyl chloride, where it was explained there was little known about the effects of chemicals. Because of this, there was the question of whether “a product was to be considered safe until proven dangerous” or vice versa where a product was considered dangerous until proven safe. This time the public showed greater opposition to the use of vinyl chloride, as environmentalists and labor unions united to reveal the harmful effects of it. Similar to the lead industry, the chemical industry also fought back reasoning to the government that only high levels of chemical exposure was harmful to people and the government

Now that we have an understanding of the Bhopal Disaster and its causes and effects, we can now try and understand the connection and importance that Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People has to the tragedy. In the first few pages of the novel, the narrator introduces himself stating, “I used to be human once. So I’m told. I don’t remember it myself, but people who knew me when I was small say I walked on two feet just like a human being,” (Sinha 1). As a reader, an introduction like this gets me curious to understand who or what the narrator really is or stands for. He had not even stated that he was an animal and as a reader, I inferred that it was a possibility. He goes on to state that this entire book is a record of his oral story on a set of cassette tapes. An Australian journalist named Phuoc and known as “Jarnalis” throughout the book had intentions of getting the victims stories out to the world, especially the story of this four-footed schizophrenic boy who went by the name “Animal”. Early on in the book, Animal argued why he did not want to tell the Jarnalis anything in the first place. “Somewhere a bad thing happens, tears like rain in the wind, and look, here you come, drawn by the smell of blood. You have turned us Khaufpuris into storytellers, but always of the same story. Ous raat, cette nuit, that night, always that fucking night” (Sinha 5). When Animal refers to that “fucking night” he is most likely talking about the Bhopal Disaster. In fact, Sinha’s book

The number of small and medium industries in the state has gone up from 14,163 in 2000 to 39,160 in 2011 and the