Christian Science Monitor
India: Bhopal disaster lingers, 25 years later
Activists and residents protested Thursday to mark the 1984 Bhopal disaster in which a gas leak killed 4,000 Indians in one day. New Delhi researchers say water in the area is still contaminated, though the state government says it is safe.
New Delhi – It was the deadliest industrial accident in history. On Dec. 3, 1984, clouds of poisonous gas leaked from a pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, and were carried on the breeze to nearby slums, killing 4,000 people in one day. Over the next few years, countless more died.
Twenty-five years later, the factory, now an abandoned wreck, still leaks toxins into the groundwater and soil.
Activists and residents of Bhopal marked the anniversary Thursday with protests for accountability and justice.
New research by a New Delhi-based think tank, the Centre for Science and the Environment (CSE), shows that less than two miles from the site, the groundwater contains nearly 40 times more pesticides than the level considered safe. Around the factory itself, the pesticide levels are 560 times higher.
The pesticides contain compounds that have been linked to serious illnesses, says CSE. Indeed, campaigners say that a quarter of a century later, Bhopal, a city in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, has an unusually high incidence of children born with birth defects.
Conservative estimates hold that 15,000 people died of illnesses caused by the leak within a few years. Activists say the health of at least 200,000 has been damaged.
This video contains disturbing images, but that is the point isn’t it, remembering what happened.