Union Carbide Case Study

Changing circumstances within the workplace can cause hazards because other workers can be put at risk because they haven’t been made aware of the changes and management needs to be informed. Risk assessment is a method put in place that is suitable and sufficient to control the risk to health and safety to both employees and other persons who may be affected.

The aim of workplace risk assessments is to identify hazards, evaluate the degree of risk and to put into place control measures to minimise the risk. If the staff team is not involved in the process then they may have little awareness of the hazards and the actions required of them to minimise the risks. This is at odds with the requirements of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. A risk assessment

As previously stated, the Bhopal plant was responsible for the production of Carbaryl, otherwise known as Sevin which was released under the brand name Eveready. The plant itself aided Bhopal somewhat with attracting new people with the promise of jobs and fixing the inconsistent electricity supplied to the city. While the plant was initially very profitable, eventually the market changed, leaving the factory making a loss every year. The plant eventually stopped producing Sevin due to a large backlog of Methyl Isocyanate and little demand in the market for it[1]. Many of the safety features could have reduced the severity, or completely stopped the Bhopal Disaster altogether. However, with none of these active, very little stopped the Methyl Isocyanate cloud from descending upon Bhopal. In addition staff size was reduced below recommended levels, leaving very few workers on shifts with only a single supervisor[1]. Available positions would now be a less attractive prospect to workers, leading workers with fewer skills than previously to take up positions in the plant. Over 50 tons of Methyl Isocyanate in liquid form was stored in two tanks beneath the plants (though some workers claim that a 3rd reserve tank was in use too), and were kept there for several months.

Over 500,000 people were exposed to toxic gas from a pesticide plant, leading to thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of injuries.

On December 2, 1984, water inadvertently entered a storage tank containing more than 80,000 pounds of methyl isocyanate, or MIC, which reacts violently with water. A subsequent runaway reaction generated heat and pressure causing a relief valve to open and resulted in a massive toxic gas release. A dense, lethal cloud of approximately 40 tons of MIC was released to the city exposing to thousands of people. An estimated 3,800 people died immediately, and tens of thousands of people were injured. As of 1994, more than 50,000 people remained partially or totally disabled as a result of exposure to MIC. This tragedy led to the establishment of laws and Process Safety Management system.

Intro –What is a hazard? - Human and Physical Factors – How to manage with events

An assessment of the risks to health arising from the use of hazardous substances at work and deciding what precautions are needed,

In mid-September 2005, Ashley Swenson, the CFO of large CAD/CAM equipment producer must choose whether to pay out profits to the firm¡¦s investors or repurchase stock. On the off chance that Swenson pays out profits, she should likewise settle on the extent of the payout.

Q #1 The factors I would consider in setting a just financial compensation for each of the victims are as follows:

In Bhopal, India there was incident where a plant located nearby had a terrible gas leak. The pesticide plant, Union Carbide India Limited had some type of malfunction causing a methyl isocyanate gas leak and poisoned the people of Bhopal. “Half a million people were exposed to the gas and 25,000 have died to date as a result of their exposure” (Union Carbide Disaster). The cause of this disaster is known, however who is to blame for it still remains under debate. The Indian government claim that it was poor management and budget cuts that caused the plant to not abide by safety protocols. Had these budget cuts not been made then the routine pipe maintenance would not have caused a backflow of water into the tank, which is what triggered the

This accident is one of the biggest industrial incident till date taken place in India. The chemical, methyl isocyanate which leaked out from the Union Carbide India Ltd's factory killed thousands of people. Within a weeks of the accident the worst was over. The people were still suffering from common ailments such as TB. Till today no body knows much about the toxin gas or its antidote and how to treat people exposed to this gas. The children born after the incident were also affected because of the exposure to the poisonous gas in their mother's womb.

Union Carbide Corporation & Sahu v. Union Carbide Corporation commonly known as Bhopal Gas Tragedy the tragedy occurred on December 2-3, 1984 in Bhopal where Carbide gas plant disaster at Bhopal, India, filed suit against Union Carbide and its former CEO, Warren Anderson, in federal court in New York.The leak of poisonous gas from the Bhopal pesticide plant killed over 5,000 people immediately, and injured many thousands more. Union Carbide's actions violated international human rights law, environmental law, and international criminal law, and the plaintiffs sought to hold the corporation accountable for these violations. US Court of Appeals confirm the transfer of litigation to India and rules that UCIL is a separate legal entity, owned, managed and operated exclusively by Indian Citizens in India. In November, 2004, a similar law suit was filed against Union Carbide on behalf of other plaintiffs who were injured by the water pollution at Bhopal and in March, 2007 a similar suit was filed on behalf of other plaintiffs alleging property

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.

The plant’s placement (near a densely populated area) was noted as hazardous years before the tragedy, but UCC insisted on the location. The planning board’s motivation for their insistence was primarily that it was cheaper to build using a pre-existing plant in the non-ideal location as a basis rather than building an entirely new plant in the more thinly populated area the Bhopal government had designated for hazardous industry (Eckerman). Had the plant been built in a more sparsely populated area, casualties and damage from the gas leak might have been drastically reduced. The tragedy might have been completely averted had UCC opted to use the more expensive production process (obviating the need for MIC) instead of the cheaper, more dangerous process (as discussed above). More economies were taken with the safety and security systems (Eckerman), which, properly installed and maintained, might have kept the tragedy from happening or lessened its effects; although the company maintained at first that the Bhopal plant was equipped as well as were its plants in other countries, UCC later admitted that the safety equipment in the plant was subpar

In the early hours of 3rd December 1984, chemical industry's worst nightmare came true when around 41 tons of highly toxic methyl isocyanate gas leaked out of the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant, Bhopal, India. The incident, famously known as The Bhopal Gas Tragedy, victimized hundreds of thousands of people. The incident took place when a huge amount of water entered the TankE610 of the plant due to a manual failure, causing a highly exothermic reaction with methyl isocyanate gas accelerating the pressure inside the tank. This eventually led to an emergency release of pressure from the MIC tank venting out a huge amount of highly poisonous MIC gas. With over 16,000 deaths been claimed and at least 558,125, non-fatal injuries, the disaster is referred to as the world's worst industrial disaster. The cause of the manual failure remains unidentified and debated with two possible cases: ‘corporate negligence' and ‘disgruntled employee sabotage'. Some reports claim that the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), parent of the Indian subsidiary UCIL, had been ignoring to maintain the safety standards in the Bhopal Plant. Whereas, UCC claimed that the plant operations had been sabotaged by an employee who had the appropriate knowledge of the site. Amidst the constant legal feud between the UCC and Government of India, the victims of the catastrophic mishap were heedlessly deprived of justice. This research focuses on how the victims of Bhopal Gas Tragedy struggled