It was on the midnight of December 2 and 3, 1984 when tonnes of deadly poisonous gas had leaked into the air from the Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal — the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh — killing thousands of citizens and exposing hundreds of thousand others to toxic gas.
Twenty-six years after the disaster, the gas victims continue to visit various city hospitals for treatment of their chronic health problems and those residing near the abandoned plant continue to be poisoned every day as the soil inside the plant area, especially its northern and north-eastern side, remains contaminated by toxic chemicals.
Not far from the abandoned Carbide plant, live thousands of people, most of them victims of the gas disaster. At a stone’s throw from this site is a habitat where people are either getting piped water in trickles or were being forced to fetch water from hand pumps as the city municipal corporation maintains only a skeletal supply of water through mobile tankers in some gas affected areas. Since the quantity of water being supplied to these communities is inadequate, the residents, including children, have been left with no other option but to drink water from hand pumps even after water samples from these sources have tested positive for toxic contaminants and the hand pumps have been marked unsafe for drinking.
Studies conducted on samples picked from the site of the solar evaporation pond, north-east of Union Carbide plant, the reaction vessel at the Sevin structure and from sacks in the formulation shed, the BHC store, and barrels and sacks that continued to lie abandoned in the cycle shed at the Carbide after the gas disaster have proved that the stockpile at Sevin formulation shed contained carbaryl and HCH isomers, including the concentration of HCH.