A Quarter-Century Later, Lessons from the World's Deadliest Agrichemical Disaster

Today is the 25th anniversary of the Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. The number of people affected, injured, and killed has been the subject of debate. But it seems clear that a half a million were exposed to some degree to MIC and other chemicals released and approximately 40,000 people died either immediately or from injuries directly related to the accident. MIC was a key ingredient in India’s petrochemical Green Revolution-an intermediate chemical in the production of a number of insecticides, some still in use today.

Union Carbide still claims the MIC release was an act of deliberate sabotage and that “it” was the victim at Bhopal. This giant-chemical-corporation-as-victim delusion is symptomatic of our time; the end-of-free-market capitalism in which corporations have become too big to fail, too powerful to be held accountable.

So why remember the Bhopal tragedy on this 25th anniversary, aside from respect for all its victims?

I believe the Bhopal tragedy offers us some insights and lessons in our struggle to build true community food security today.

In the years after the tragedy, I encountered countless “near Bhopal scale” incidents in the U.S. chemical industry. At Bhopal’s sister MIC facility in Institute, W.Va., an emergency inspection of the unit found three of the four redundant safety systems disabled-the same as at Bhopal. A hydrofluoric acid spill in Texas City, Texas came within 6 inches of killing 50-100,000 people downwind. The petrochemical industry has a long record of valuing production and profits over safety. I believe they have made a calculation that the costs of an accident or an exposure are miniscule compared to the career building profits possible from a kind of “what can I get away with?” attitude towards production and safety.

Indeed, the record suggests they are right. No one has been held accountable for the Bhopal tragedy. Token payments have been made to some victims, but Union Carbide has never claimed responsibility for the failure. This denial is part of an agrichemical industry strategy to escape the costs of corporate irresponsibility or at least delay them long enough to allow current management to retire blameless.

In Michigan, where I live, Dow Chemical (now owner of Union Carbide) has fought a shameful battle against residents of the Midland and the Tittabawasee River basin exposed to very high levels of dioxins and furans. Dow’s goal has been to avoid responsibility for at least a quarter century of contamination while claiming it now acts with the highest standards of safety.

Remembering Bhopal A quarter-century later, lessons from the world’s deadliest agrichemical disaster 3

* Chris Bedford 3 Dec 2009 2:05 PM by Chris Bedford o Subscribe by RSSAuthor Feed * Posted in o Food, o Environmental Health * Read More About o agribusiness, o chemicals, o food security, o India, o toxins

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On site of the former Dow Chemical\\’s plant in Bhopal in 2002.On site of the former Dow Chemical’s plant in Bhopal in 2002.Photo and caption courtesy Ascanio via Flickr Union Carbide still claims the MIC release was an act of deliberate sabotage and that “it” was the victim at Bhopal. This giant-chemical-corporation-as-victim delusion is symptomatic of our time; the end-of-free-market capitalism in which corporations have become too big to fail, too powerful to be held accountable.

So why remember the Bhopal tragedy on this 25th anniversary, aside from respect for all its victims?

I believe the Bhopal tragedy offers us some insights and lessons in our struggle to build true community food security today.

In the west end of Louisville, Ky., in an industrial area known as Rubbertown, Dupont exposed largely African-American chemical workers to hazardous chemicals for decades. One Dupont manager reportedly said that the corporation would resist settling a class action lawsuit based on this poisoning until “all the plaintiffs were dead.”

I could go on and on with stories like these based on my two decades of work investigating the petrochemical industry. What is important for us today is to realize the large corporations that monopolize conventional industrial agriculture today aren’t going to suddenly change when they “see the light”. From the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico to the health of agricultural workers to consumer exposure to unsafe ingredients, these corporations have too much liability, too much to lose to engage in real negotiations about changing the way our nation farms.

Petrochemical domination of conventional and industrial farming is based on a fundamentally wrong paradigm of destruction of life in the soil. Living soil is seen as the enemy. Their goal is organism-free dirt that functions as a medium to deliver human-made inputs and nutrients. This extraordinary mistake has produced record amounts of production (not food) in the very short-term while reducing carrying capacity in the long term and causing almost unimaginable damage in the process.

If a realistic calculation were done to assess the total environmental, economic, and public health damage done by agricultural chemical and industrial corporations, the sum would exceed the book value of the corporations responsible.