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.

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