Dear Mike
You are making valid queries but I do not have any information. I
suppose the official enquiries were more concerned with the plight of
the victims, their rehabilitation , payment of compensation etc. than
what type of chemicals the firm manufactured etc. As I stated earlier I
was not able to link up the second article. I
Reproduce it below as it is not a very long one.
-bhuban
THE TOXIC LEGACY REMAINS, 27 YEARS ON
EYEWINESSES by Nina Lakhani
Almost 27 years after the world’s worst industrial disaster struck
Bhopal, the abandoned gas factory and its toxic waste are part of daily
lifefor tens of thousands of poor families
Around the streets behind the factory, adults were either filling up
pots and urns with clean water – through taps installed three months
earlier – or else bathing their children. Campaigners won a hard-fought
battle in 2004. when the Supreme Court ordered the state government to
provide Bhopalis with clean water. And slowly water pipes are being
fitted into the homes of all affected communities. But water is scarce,
so the taps stop flowing after 3o minutes and families have to make
stores last for 48 hours. This means most still rely on dirty ground
water from hand pumps when the urns dry. “we know the ground water is
dirty, it smells funny, but what can we do?” said Habib Khan, 46.
Soon after the Union Carbide factory opened in the 1970s, waste was
sumped in three solar evaporation ponds. Documents show the ponds were
“almost emptied” through leaky lining by 1982. These have seeped into
water over the past three decades; monsoon rains spread the toxins
further.
Campaigners believe this is the cause of high rates of congenital
deformities, cancers and respiratory and endocrine problems among
communities too poor to move.
Dow, which bought Union Carbide in 2001, rejects claims that it
inherited the company’s liabilities, yet in the US it settled
asbestos-related claims dating back to the early 1970s. [The picture
not reproduced].
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