Editorial: Bhopal must not be forgotten

As a reporter at C&EN, I’ve covered several communities affected by environmental disasters. Last year, I visited East Palestine, Ohio, where a freight train had derailed and dumped toxic chemicals, displacing dozens of families and raising health concerns. A few months later, I reported from Flint, Michigan, where even after a decade, residents are grappling with serious health issues caused by unsafe lead levels in drinking water during a water crisis that began in 2014.

Then in December, I traveled to Bhopal, India, a city that in 1984 was struck by the world’s worst industrial disaster. It’s given rise to a community contending with chronic illnesses.

What has stayed with me after all three reporting trips is the helplessness and anger that people experience because of poor accountability, lack of transparency, and betrayal by authorities and institutions meant to protect them.

In interviews, families often describe instances where officials dismissed or downplayed their lingering health problems in the aftermath of the disasters. Many remain frustrated with scientists unable to ascertain if and how these health conditions are attributable to the disaster and unable to provide ways to treat them. The lack of robust research hinders accountability and rightful compensation for affected communities; it also makes these stories especially challenging for journalists to report.

I certainly experienced that covering the Bhopal disaster—the scale of which is unlike any other human-caused toxic disaster I’ve reported on. In the days I spent in people’s homes and with their families, I witnessed the helplessness, anger, and frustration that has persisted since that December night 4 decades ago, when a cloud of toxic gas escaped from the now infamous Union Carbide pesticide plant. More than 500,000 people living in dense settlements nearby were exposed, and thousands died within days.

As I report in this week’s cover story, survivors continue to experience chronic health issues, including respiratory disorders, vision problems, and psychological trauma. Women are reporting early menopause. And research indicates higher cancer risks among male offspring who were in the womb of mothers exposed to the methyl isocyanate and other gases that leaked from the Union Carbide factory. A Bhopal-based nonprofit called Sambhavna Trust Clinic that’s been conducting surveys to track survivors’ long-term health says it has also recorded high rates of diabetes, hypertension, and kidney-related conditions among affected populations.

But making sense of survivors’ long-term illnesses and health risks has been an uphill battle in Bhopal. Investigations—both legal and scientific—have been mired in politics. Activists have blamed government-funded scientific agencies for delaying the release of reports on disaster-related health effects and for suppressing certain research findings. They’ve accused government-employed surveyors of fabricating data. And they decry the lack of systematic monitoring of both persisting and emerging health issues in the community.

Meanwhile, some doctors and government officials continue to question the disaster’s role in the prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, and kidney-related conditions among gas-affected populations, conditions they say also commonly occur among nonexposed individuals. They’re skeptical about activists’ claims that the gas leak’s impact is intergenerational and expanding because of exposure to groundwater tainted by the toxic waste in and around the Union Carbide factory. These doctors and officials allege that many people in Bhopal have gotten into the habit of linking any and every health condition to the disaster, hoping for more compensation.

It’s undeniable that survivors of the Bhopal disaster received paltry compensation—amounting to roughly $500 per person—from Union Carbide. For years, they’ve navigated institutional apathy and contended with poor scientific support to ascertain the true and full impact of the disaster on their health. Given these knowledge gaps, we at C&EN have tried to report fairly on Bhopal’s complicated story. Forty years on, there are more questions than answers.

But the biggest takeaway for me is that Bhopal can’t be forgotten. The 1984 disaster remains a chilling case of corporate carelessness, government inaction, and human suffering. It is an enduring reminder to prioritize industrial safety, eradicate double standards of doing business, and ensure corporate accountability

This editorial is the result of collective deliberation in C&EN. For this week’s editorial, the lead contributor is Priyanka Runwal.

Views expressed on this page are not necessarily those of ACS.