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Two Protesters Self-Immolate Over Bhopal Toxic Waste Plan in India
The plan to remove more than 370 tons of toxic waste from Bhopal and transport it to another city has been denounced as a "farce and greenwashing publicity stunt."
Jan 03, 2025
After more than 370 tons of hazardous waste from the deadliest industrial disaster in history arrived in the town of Pithampur in central India, two men were filmed in the city on Friday dousing themselves in liquid before they were set on fire in an apparent self-immolation protest.
The men poured the flammable liquid on themselves in a crowd of protesters and were then set on fire by another demonstrator.
They were taken to a hospital after the self-immolation and are "safe now," the administrative head of Dhar district, where Pithampur is located, told Agence France-Presse.
Note: The below video contains graphic images.
The protest took place 40 years and one month after a chemical disaster at a factory owned by the American company Union Carbide in Bhopal.
On December 2, 1984, a tank storing the toxic chemical methyl isocyanate, which Union Carbide used to produce pesticides, shattered from its concrete casing—allowing about 40 tons of the deadly gas to drift across the city of more than 2 million people.
The disaster killed roughly 3,500 people in the following days from direct exposure to the poisonous chemical, and 25,000 people are estimated to have died overall as the contamination has been linked to deadly illnesses including cancers, lung disease, and kidney disease.
Large numbers of babies have been born with severe disabilities, to parents affected by the gas leak, and a high rate of stillbirths in the area has been reported.
But Union Carbide—now owned by Dow Chemical—and the Indian government have never carried out an operation to remove all the contamination from Bhopal's groundwater, which has been found to contain levels of carcinogenic chemicals that were 50 times higher than what's accepted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Dow Chemical has denied liability for the accident, citing a 1989 settlement with the Indian government. The deal also gave about $500 to each person identified as a victim at the time—but nothing was set aside for most people who later developed health problems.
Last month, on the 40th anniversary of the disaster, the Madhya Pradesh high court ordered the government to begin removing the toxic waste and a plan was devised for the transport of more than 370 tons of sealed waste, which would be taken to a plant in Pithampur—150 miles away—and incinerated.
The plan has garnered condemnation from both Pithampur residents and people in Bhopal as well as campaigners who have demanded justice for Bhopal for decades.
The incineration is expected to take six months and to create nearly 1,000 tons of toxic residue, which will be buried in landfills—prompting fears that the damage and public health threats in Bhopal will spread to Pithampur.
The Hindu reported that police used water cannons and batons to disperse some protesters who tried to march toward the facility where the waste was delivered on Wednesday.
In Bhopal, Rachna Dhingra, a coordinator of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, told The Guardian that the plan to move the contamination was a "farce and greenwashing publicity stunt to remove a tiny fraction of the least harmful waste," which had already been placed in containers and moved to a warehouse in 2005.
"There's still 1.2 million tons of poisonous waste leaching into the ground every day that they refuse to deal with," said Dhingra. "We can see for ourselves the birth defects and chronic health conditions. All this does is take the heat off the government and lets the U.S. corporations off the hook."
"It does nothing," said Dhingra, "to help the people in Bhopal who for decades have been seen as expendable."
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We All Live in Bhopal Now
The petrochemical industry has brought us together in a perverse solidarity, having chemically trespassed into places all over the world.
Dec 22, 2024
Forty years ago this month, a Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India sprung a toxic gas leak, exposing half a million people to toxic fumes. Thousands of people lost their lives in the immediate aftermath, with the death toll climbing to more than 20,000 over the next two decades. Countless others, including children of survivors, continue to endure chronic health issues.
In the United States, the events in Bhopal ignited a grassroots movement to expose and address the toxic chemicals in our water, air, and neighborhoods. In 1986, just two years after the disaster, this growing awareness led Congress to pass the first National Right to Know Act, which requires companies to publicly disclose their use of many toxic chemicals.
In India, Bhopal victims have had a long struggle for justice. In 1989, survivors flew to a Union Carbide shareholders meeting in Houston to protest the inadequate compensation for the trauma they’d suffered. The settlement awarded each Bhopal victim was a mere $500—which a spokesperson for Dow Chemical, Union Carbide’s parent company, called “plenty good for an Indian.”
We can take inspiration from the people of Bhopal, whose fierce commitment to health and justice sparked a global movement.
Union Carbide had the survivors arrested before they could enter the meeting. Meanwhile, their abandoned chemical factory was still leaking toxic chemicals into the surrounding neighborhoods and drinking water.
Nevertheless, Bhopal survivors never stopped fighting. They opened a free clinic to treat the intergenerational health effects caused by the disaster. They marched 500 miles between Bhopal and New Delhi. They staged hunger strikes. They created memorials to the disaster and established a museum to ensure that the horrors of their collective past are not forgotten.
The survivors even obtained an extradition order for Union Carbide’s former CEO, Warren Anderson, but the U.S. government never acted on that request. Forty years later, the factory in Bhopal has never been properly cleaned and is still leaking poison.
Unfortunately, the kinds of chemicals that flow through the veins of Bhopal survivors also flow through ours. The petrochemical industry has brought us together in a perverse solidarity, having chemically trespassed into places all over the world.
According to one figure, Americans are exposed to dangerous chemical fires, leaks, and explosions about once every two days. In one dramatic example in early 2023, a rail tanker filled with vinyl chloride derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, forcing the evacuation of 2,000 residents.
Nearly all Americans now carry toxic substances known as PFAS in our bodies. These have been linked to cancer, liver and kidney disease, and immune dysfunction. And the continued burning of fossil fuels is killing millions of people each year around the world through air pollution.
Petrochemical and fossil fuel companies know they can only survive if they avoid liability for the damage they are doing to our health and the planet’s ecosystems. That’s why they are heavily invested in lobbying to prevent any such accountability.
Polluting industries are certain to have strong allies in the coming Trump administration, which plans to open even more land to fossil fuel production and, under the blueprint for conservative governance known as Project 2025, to slash environmental and public health regulations. But we can take inspiration from the people of Bhopal, whose fierce commitment to health and justice sparked a global movement.
Earlier this month, on the 40th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, congressional allies of this movement including U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), introduced a resolution designating December 3 as National Chemical Disaster Awareness Day.
“Chemical disasters are often the result of corporations cutting corners and prioritizing profits over safety,” said Merkley, who chairs the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee. “These catastrophes cloud communities with toxic fumes, upending lives and threatening the health and property of those living and working close by.” He called for “stronger laws to prevent chemical disasters and keep our communities and workers safe.”
This growing global alliance, which has been called the largest movement for environmental health and justice in history, is fighting for a future in which everyone has the right to live in a healthy environment. It’s a movement that unites us all. Because in many ways, we all live in Bhopal now.
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40 Years of Suffering and Injustice Since Bhopal Disaster
We should never forget that Dow Chemical was behind the infamous 1984 chemical leak in India. Neither should we forget the courage of those who have never stopped fighting for justice on behalf of the victims.
Dec 02, 2024
Shortly before midnight on December 2, 1984, a terrible cloud, consisting of tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate (MIC), along with other chemicals, began to leak into the atmosphere from the storage tank of the U.S. multinational corporation Union Carbide Corporation (UCC)’s pesticide plant on the outskirts of Bhopal in central India.
The immediate consequences of the mass poisoning were catastrophic. As many as 10,000 people are believed to have died within three days of the leak.
As the world marks the 40th anniversary of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, what lessons should we take from what happened on that awful night? I think perhaps there are at least three important ones. Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, is that a single tragic event can have consequences that last generations.
As well as those who succumbed to the gas in the first few hours, many thousands more people were exposed to it, and they continue to suffer from a range of chronic and debilitating illnesses. It is now estimated that more than 22,000 people have died as a direct result of exposure to the leak, while more than half a million people continue to suffer some degree of permanent injury.
Shockingly, it is not only people exposed to the gas directly who have been affected. Over the years that followed, a large number of children born to gas-exposed parents have been affected by growth retardation, birth defects and other medical conditions.
As well as those who succumbed to the gas in the first few hours, many thousands more people were exposed to it, and they continue to suffer from a range of chronic and debilitating illnesses.
Meanwhile, to this day, thousands of tons of toxic waste remain buried in and around the abandoned plant. This has contaminated residents’ water supplies and harmed their health, adding to the already dismal health status of gas-exposed residents.
As well as the health impacts, the tragedy has pushed already impoverished communities into further destitution. In many families, the main wage earner died or became too ill to work. Women and children suffered disproportionately.
An unfortunate second lesson of the Bhopal tragedy is how easy it has been for UCC to escape accountability. Pitted against the largely poor victims of the gas disaster was the hugely powerful and enormously rich multinational corporation, which escaped providing the survivors, their children and grandchildren with adequate compensation and medical care.
The catastrophic gas leak was the foreseeable result of innumerable operational failures at the plant, but from the start, UCC’s response to the disaster was inadequate and callous. For example, although thousands of people were dying from gas exposure, or suffering agonizing injuries, UCC withheld critical information regarding MIC’s toxicological properties, undermining the effectiveness of the medical response. To this day, UCC has failed to name any of the chemicals and reaction products that leaked along with MIC on that fateful night.
In 1989, without consulting Bhopal Gas Tragedy survivors, the Indian government and UCC reached an out-of-court compensation settlement for $470 million. This amount was less than 15 percent of the initial amount sought by the government, and far less than most estimates of the damage at the time. Thousands of claims were not registered at all, including those of gas-exposed children under the age of 18, and children born to gas-affected parents who, time later showed, were also severely affected.
There have been numerous attempts to hold UCC and individuals to account, either through criminal or civil claim proceedings launched in India and the U.S. But these have had no or very limited results.
One challenge has been created by the restructuring of the business entities involved in the tragedy. UCC sold off the India-registered subsidiary that operated the plant. It was then, in turn, bought by another giant U.S. corporation, the Dow Chemical Company (Dow). To this day, Dow shamefully claims it bears no responsibility since it “never owned or operated the plant” and that UCC only became a subsidiary of Dow 16 years after the accident.
In 2010, the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s Court in Bhopal found seven Indian nationals, as well as UCC’s India-based subsidiary guilty of causing death by negligence. By contrast, U.S. individuals and companies have escaped punishment, and there is significant evidence that the U.S. authorities have helped protect them.
Companies have a responsibility to respect human rights wherever they operate. Dow may not have caused the gas leak, but it became directly linked to the tragedy after it bought UCC. The company boasts of following the highest human rights standards, but its continued failure to respond to the urgent needs of the survivors is utterly disgraceful.
But there is a third lesson to draw from the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and its aftermath. It can be found in the inspiring story of the survivor groups and their supporters, who over 40 years have refused to give up their fight for justice. They have initiated or intervened in many legal actions; conducted scientific research into the contamination and health impacts; and they have launched practical initiatives in the absence of sufficient state and corporate support. For example, in 1994, survivor groups fundraised for the Sambhavna Trust Clinic and they later opened the Chingari Rehabilitation Centre. Thousands of gas- and contamination-affected adults and children have benefitted from the highly specialized and professional medical care and rehabilitation provided by these institutions – unparalleled by any of the government-run facilities.
Their campaigning has also meant that Dow has never been able to disassociate itself from the Bhopal disaster. Until it finally addresses the needs of the survivors, their campaign will continue.
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