Death Trap-Telegraph

he immensity of the death toll would seem to demand silence, but nature is indifferent to suffer- ing. As you walk through the derelict Union DEATH TRAP TCarbide factory in Bhopal there is the sound of birdsong and the chirruping of cicadas. Sunlight streams through the trees, dappling the vines that creep over the Twenty-five years since lethal gas escaped from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, rusting gantries, pipelines and towers. Grass has overgrown the killing thousands and injuring hundreds of thousands, the poison still lingers. Mick Brown paved footpaths. In any other country in the world, you think, all travelled to India to meet the victims of the world’s worst industrial accident who have not given up this would have been demolished long ago, all trace of its terrible history swept into oblivion, but here it stands, like a surreal art the fight for compensation, justice and their lives. Photographs by David Graham exhibit of industrial catastrophe. Few people come here nowadays. At the main gate, guards in khaki uniforms, killing time over a game of cards, scrutinise your papers with bored expressions before waving you through. Lizards scuttle into the undergrowth as you pass. In the old control room, the floor is strewn with rubbish. Along one wall, the dials that signalled the disaster have long since been ripped from their panel, leaving a row of neat, circular holes. A sign attached to the wall mockingly announces safety is everybody’s business. ‘And this is tank number 610,’ said TR Chouhan, who worked here as an engineer for nine years before that fateful night of December 2 1984, and whose life ever since has been dedicated to telling the world the truth about what happened. He pointed to a rusting steel tank, the size of a locomotive, lying on its side, half hidden in the undergrowth. The tank had been encased in a concrete carapace, but on that night, propelled by the force of the chemical reaction taking place inside it, it had been ejected like a rocket, sending it spinning on its side. ‘And there is where the gas leaked.’ Chouhan gestured to a tall, blackened finger of Thousands died as they slept. Thousands more ran panic-stricken through the streets in a desperate attempt to escape steel piping, some 120ft high, from which, shortly after midnight, some 40 tons of highly poisonous methyl isocyanate (MIC) poured into the sky. The gas disaster at Bhopal was the world’s worst ever industrial accident. Exact numbers are unknown, but most estimates agree that about 8,000 people died from poisoning within 72 hours of the gas leaking into the air. An Amnesty International report published in 2004 concluded that a further 15,000 people had died in the years afterwards as a direct result of long-term gas-related effects, and that 100,000 people continued to suffer from ‘chronic and debilitating illnesses for which treatment is largely ineffective’. The compensation tribunal set up in the aftermath concluded that more than 500,000 people in Bhopal suffered some damage, injury or trauma as a consequence. (By comparison, Chernobyl is esti- mated to have caused 57 direct deaths, with some 4,000 additional deaths from cancer among the approximately 600,000 most highly exposed people.) ‘Nobody in Bhopal’s life was untouched,’ Chouhan said. ‘What happened here was a crime. And the culprits have never been brought to justice.’ Today, the casual visitor to Bhopal would have little inkling of the magnitude of the disaster that befell the city 25 years ago. The state capital of Madhya Pradesh in the geographical centre of India, with a population of about 1.8 million, Bhopal is a vibrant and noisy city, its streets choked with buses and motorcycles, its people seemingly too busy getting on with their lives to look over their shoulders at the past. Only in the immediate vicinity of the factory is its legacy visibly apparent. On the high factory walls along what is still known as Union Carbide Road, fresh graffiti defies attempts by the local authorities to obliterate the memory of the past: justice for bhopal and union carbide you can’t hide. we charge you with genocide. Across the road stands a small memorial, a statue of a woman, one hand over her eyes as if to shut out the horror before her, the other clutching a baby to 24 TELEGRAPH MAGAZINE TELEGRAPH MAGAZINE 25 her chest. A plaque reads: no hiroshima, no bho- Right medical records grade of which acts as a detoxicant. According to Greenpeace and a trust established by Dominique that the gas affected this. There are still no studies pal, we want to live. Street urchins clamber over of victims of the disaster Sarangi, Union Carbide’s own medical director, Dr Lapierre, the French author of a bestselling book to confirm that it causes cancers, but we have found the railings around it and cling on to the statue, pile up in a Bhopal Vipin Avashia, had originally telexed confirmation about the tragedy, Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, the an alarming rise of cancers and a lot of TB.’ laughing, apparently without a care in the world. hospital. Below right that sodium thiosulphate could work as a detoxi- clinic moved to its present premises – a purpose- The doctors at Sambhavna argue that for many the tank that leaked cant, but later sent another telex advising against built two-storey building in a pagoda style in the gas-affected patients, ayurveda and other holistic hen the Union Carbide plant was about 40 tons of lethal its use. The company, Sarangi alleges, did not want heart of one of the areas worst affected by the dis- treatments are often more effective than treatment Westablished in Bhopal in 1969, it was methyl isocyanate gas the drug to be used, because its effectiveness would aster. The clinic is a model of environmental prin- with conventional medicines, which simply contrib- regarded as an integral part of India’s lies rusting at the plant. demonstrate that the poison had gone into the ciples – even the medical waste is treated by solar ute to the ‘toxic load’ already in the system. ‘Other ‘Green Revolution’, a government scheme to feed Far right the factory bloodstream. The clinic was quickly closed down disinfection. In the garden more than 100 species hospitals treat symptomatically,’ Mrithunjay Mali, the masses by boosting grain production using control room by the police. Three more attempts to open similar of plants are grown for use in the preparation of one of the clinic’s ayurvedic doctors, told me. high-yield seeds that demanded a heavy use of fer- clinics were also stopped, he says. herbal medicines (the clinic grows enough for 65 ‘When the patient complains of pain they are given tilisers and pesticides. The plant was built to manu- Steeping himself in studies of environmental per cent of all the medicines it uses). About 24,000 an analgesic; when they have an infection they are facture the pesticide carbaryl, under the trademark health and industrial diseases, Sarangi decided that people are now registered at Sambhavna, all receiv- given an antibiotic; with a severe infection they are Sevin, which had been developed in 1957 as a ‘safe’ what was required was a clinic that provided com- ing free treatment. given steroids. It is very common that after a few alternative to the controversial dichlorodiphenyl- munity care and that would be the catalyst for The effects of the gas on the people of Bhopal days of conventional treatment they say they feel trichloroethane (DDT). ‘Science helps build a new proper research into the ongoing effects of the gas. have been nothing short of catastrophic. Seven relief. But then they come off the medicine, and the India,’ ran the Union Carbide slogan. ‘When we studied what medicines people were tak- months after the explosion, the Indian government symptoms recur. When they are taking ayurvedic Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) was an ing,’ he said, ‘we found that the chemical disaster health minister reported that 36 women who had medicine or yoga, after three months the symptoms American company, but the plant was run by a had actually produced a windfall for the pharma- been pregnant at the time had spontaneously never recur. Ayurveda and panchakarma [a ‘purg- local subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited ceutical companies – which are part of the chemi- aborted, 21 babies had been born with deformities, ing’ of the body through the use of oils and mas- (UCIL) in which UCC had a 51 per cent share. cal companies. So one part of the chemical compa- and there had been 27 stillbirths, all believed to sage] have a capacity to detoxify their bodies.’ The Bhopal had been chosen as the location because of nies poisons people and produces the market for have been caused by the gas. Over the years child- clinic claims remarkable results in the treatment of its geographical position, and because of the ready the other part of the chemical companies…’ He ren have been born with cleft lips and palates, and rheumatic arthritis, lumbar backache, joint pains, supply of cheap labour. The plant was built in a became convinced that a combination of modern foreshortened limbs. As well as high incidences of abdominal problems, loss of appetite, menstrual former army parade ground close to the heart of medicine and traditional ayurvedic and related long-term respiratory problems and chronic lung problems and respiratory problems. the old city, and surrounded by densely populated holistic treatments offered a particularly effective diseases, myriad other illnesses have manifested, Dr Mali says the clinic has also been successful slums or bustis.

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