In the United States, the 20th century is thought of the time when the safety revolution is noted as happening. In other parts of the world, safety has taken a backseat to other issues. The prevalence of abundant cheap labor has resulted in a number of safety violations that have contributed to outright disasters, causing human suffering on a scale most Americans can’t imagine. One such tragedy, in which all safety professionals should familiarize themselves on, is called the Bhopal Tragedy. The Bhopal Tragedy is one of the greatest injustices brought on by a lack of workplace safety in the 20th century. It is even considered the worst industrial disaster the world has yet seen. However it has largely been forgotten by the majority of …show more content…
For example, in the book, The Basics of Occupational Safety, author David Goetsch, states that, “The International Medical Commission visited Bhopal to assess the situation and found that as many as 50,000 other people were exposed to the poisonous gas” (Goetsch, 2010, p. 7). Other sources said that the complete death toll is much higher than what has been previously established and that many more people are continuing to suffer the lingering effects of the gas leak to this day. Although the numbers of people with illnesses related from the spill continue to rise, so has the long term death toll as a result of the accident. Some figures show that in the year 2002, the number of people who have ultimately died has risen to over 20,000 people and will continue to rise in the future (Sarangi, 2002). The company that is most considered responsible is called Union Carbide. Though it is an American owned company, they had a chemical plant located directly in Bhopal India, ran by a subordinate company, Union Carbide India, Ltd. There has been speculation on the exact cause of the leak at the chemical plant. Topics have ranged from negligence, faulty equipment, lack of safety standards, and even so far to warrant the gas leak as an act of sabotage. Indian officials contend that signs of criminal negligence have even been found in key
There has been many occasions where workers have either died or gotten hurt. From reading our book, Chew on This, we heard of tons of deaths and injuries. A few examples are, “Employee’s getting arms caught in meat grinder.” Dead. “Employee’s neck caught in flying blade.” Dead. “Employee caught in Gut Cooker.” Dead. All of these accidents have something in common. They all have died. Not only are these factories disgusting, they’re also dangerous and deadly.
Another place where the lack of safety is evident is in the main event of the book the fire. The company locked its doors after the work day to ensure security of its products and created small ways of escaping from the building. Even the fire escape wasn’t usable. This is exactly what enabled so many to die during the event. However, it took the death of so many workers to create change.
Throughout history, there has been a multitude of events that have helped shape the Occupational Safety and Health doctrines that we have today. Some events have had small impacts, and others have totally reshaped how an entire industry operates. Although there are many incidents that we can talk about, we are going to focus on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Within this subject, we will talk about the specific events that happened, what safety standards existed and what standards were penned because of the incident, and how the existing safety standards keep a similar tragedy from happening in the current era. With all of this information, we will have a better picture of how the world of Occupational Safety and Health evolves throughout
What’s important to examine is that before the Triangle Factory Fire is that that casualties from unsafe conditions were reported and expressed as a concern before. Where was the outrage that pushed for safer working conditions? The answer to that is that there were many times that people were upset with such conditions.
An organization’s safety and the health of its employees has been an ongoing issue from the industrial revolution starting in about the 1820’s (americanhistory), on to the present day. Somebody had to look out for the individual’s themselves, the conditions they were working in everyday, along
Prior to the disaster, the company had been facing a financial crisis for many years because the sale of pesticides had been fallen (Joseph, Kaszniak and Long 2005, p. 544). Due to the budget cuts, many plant operators received insufficient training on operations and safety awareness (Mannan 2012, p. 2649). As shown in Figure 1, there was a decrease in the length of training programmes for plant operators from 18 months in 1975 to only one month in December 1984 (Chouhan 2005, p. 207). Therefore, with a lack of the knowledge of runaway reactions occurring in the storage tank when the accident happened, many workers could not immediately take any emergency action to lessen the risk of the MIC escape from the storage tank (Chouhan 2005, p. 207). To connect the tank with another
Many changes have occurred since the 1992 convention in Minamata, Japan. The world has recognized a need for an anticipatory approach to manage industrial disasters. In the US the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has tried to improve and anticipate the industrial safety of chemical facilities. In response to the Bhopal, India tragedy the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA) section 112(r) requires the EPA to publish the Risk Management Plan (RMP) regulations. Part of the CAAA mandated that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) create the Process Safety Management of Highly Hazardous Chemicals 29 CFR 1910.119 standard. These regulations require hazard assessments, chemical release prevention programs, and emergency response preparedness (Environmental Protection Agency, 2009).
According to the Bureau of Labor, statistics indicate that more than 4.1 million people were hurt or injured on-the-job in 2006 and 5,488 were killed in 2007 (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin, & Cardy, 2010, p. 511). Laws and regulatory requirements are currently in place to standardize and promote workplace safety. Organizations with extensive safety programs have reduced number of accidents, decreased workers’ compensation claims and lawsuits and lesser accident-related expenditures (Gomez-Mejia, et al, 2010, p. 511). This paper discusses the effects of legal, safety and regulatory requirements in
Although the government alleges that workplace safety has improved, the number of workplace deaths has been increasing over the years. Mr. Andrew Kim said, “the frequent occurrence of serious accidents that claim hundreds of lives in China has aroused the concern of both the public and the government” (Kim). Many believe that rapid
Death is considered a short-term effect. David (2002) believes they were roughly 7000 death cases at Bhopal. Baines (1993) mentioned other short-term effects at Bhopal such as difficulty and eye irritation. Similar symptoms appeared on Seveso survivors. Added to this, Shrivastava (1996) points out that people exposed to the released gas had some other short-effects such as cough, vomiting and chest pains. Long-term effects at Bhopal mainly were eye-sight weakness and high possibility of getting different kinds of Cancer. No long-term effects are in detail in “The long road to recovery”, (B. De Marchi, S. Funtowicz, and J. Ravetz 1996), neither in “Environmental Disasters”, (Baines 1993).
There were a number of contributing factors that led to this accident. As mentioned previously, the specific cause of this incident was that natural gas had inundated the mine through a crack in the floor. The accumulation of methane was not detected by the required mine examinations or by the methane monitors. Also, ventilation systems in the mine were inadequate. If there had been proper ventilation, the gas would not have reached the same dangerous levels that it had (Mine Safety and Health Administration, n.d.).
As a result, the following came a lot of lawsuits, demanding compensation, and investigations, investigating the cause of the MIC leak, against the plant. During the investigations, both the government of India and the interior of the Union Carbide did research on that incident. We are not surprised at their different answers because the plant wanted to cover the truth that was harmful to themselves and the government as a result could not get the truth on the other hand. However, I can¡¦t deny that the plant really did something such as relief fund, training school, and so on to prove that they really wanted to compensate for that gas leak. In this case, I don¡¦t think that the CEO of Union Carbide should be arrested or be sentenced. But I do think he should be responsible for the whole case. In other words, he should resign for the whole incident.
Organized labor has played a major part in the development of the safety movement. Sometimes management would think of organized labor use of safety issues as an advantage for better pay for the workers. On the positive side, the organized labor helped overturn the anti-labor laws relating to safety in the workplace (Goetsch, 2011). Through all the years of the past, safety concerns was nothing more than an expense that management and owners did not want to experience.
The Triangle was undoubtedly one of the most tragic events in the worlds history. The not only is the fire a horrifying event, but the factory had no safety precautions and didn’t have any emergency exits and kept doors locked. Not only did this strike sorrow on the community, but it awakened people to realize that workplace safety is a serious thing and needs to be practiced.
Bhopal is the capital city of Madhya Pradesh, the largest and one of the most economically depressed states in the nation. At 1970s, the public health infrastructure, sewage and waste system in Bhopal are still in very poor condition . Besides, mass casualty emergency response system also lacking in Bhopal.