« December 2003 | Main | February 2005 »

January 26, 2005

Bhopal as chemical warfare scenario: pointless experiment raises old fears

Dr Ramana Dhara, a medic who has finessed a career out of the Bhopal disaster is about to enter upon his finest hour. A tank containing 40 tonnes of methyl-isocyanate, the gas primarily implicated in the massive Union Carbide leak, is to be caused to erupt in a restaging of that night.

It will however rupture in the relative isolation of the Department of Energy's Spill Testing Ground in Nevada. Dhara and others will observe what happens. Will the gas emerge in a cloud, will it form an aerosol? What by products will be formed?

Dhara says that the answers will be useful, but the question must be, useful to whom, since he has already admitted that they will be of no value whatsoever to the survivors in Bhopal, who still suffer from a plethora of illnesses.

Posted by at 10:53 PM | Comments (0)

January 25, 2005

UK public should pay for clean up of Union Carbide's Bhopal site, says Dow director

An earlier piece (two below) reminds me that when the question of cleaning up the derelict Union Carbide factory was put to Dow director Jacqui Barton, her reply was that the ICJB should conduct an international fundraising campaign (presumably referring to the success of the Bhopal Medical Appeal in the UK) and thus get the money for the clean up, a sum Greenpeace incidentally estimated would run into hundreds of millions of dollars. If this seems unbelievable, read the actual interview report on the studentsforbhopal.org website. Meanwhile, the government of Madhya Pradesh continues to ignore an Indian Supreme Court order to arrange a piped supply of clean, safe water to the affected communities.

Posted by at 05:04 PM | Comments (0)