India cleans up toxic waste from Bhopal gas leak site 40 years after disaster | Health news

Officials say it’s environmentally safe to incinerate the poison, as activists raise the alarm about potential water contamination.

Indian authorities say they are hauling away hundreds of tons of hazardous waste left over more than 40 years after the world’s deadliest industrial disaster hit the city of Bhopal.

Site waste The tragedy of 1984The fire, which killed more than 25,000 people and left at least half a million people with serious health problems, has been sent to a disposal facility where it will take three to nine months to be incinerated, officials said Thursday.

On the morning of December 3, 1984, methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide plant owned by the American Union Carbide Corporation, poisoning more than half a million people in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, India.

More than 40 years later, on Thursday morning, a convoy of trucks transported 337 metric tons of the poison to a waste disposal plant in Pithampur, an industrial city 230 km (142 miles) from Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh.

Swatantra Kumar Singh, director of the Bhopal Gas Disaster Relief and Recovery Department, told Reuters news agency that the waste will be disposed of in an environmentally safe manner without harming the local ecosystem.

The federal pollution control agency conducted tests on the waste disposal process with 10 metric tons of poison in 2015 and found that emissions levels met national standards, the state government said in a statement.

However, activists argue that solid waste will be buried in landfills after incineration, polluting water and creating an environmental problem.

“Why is it a pollutant? Union carbide and Dow Chemical is not obligated to clean up its toxic waste in Bhopal? asked Bhopal-based activist Rachna Dhingra, who works with survivors of the tragedy.

Groundwater pollution

The Union Carbide plant, built in 1969 and now owned by Dow Chemical, was seen as a symbol of industrialization in India, creating thousands of jobs for the poor and producing cheap pesticides for millions of farmers.

It happened in 1984 when one of the tanks holding the deadly chemical methyl isocyanate at the factory broke through its concrete casing, releasing 27 tons of the toxic gas into the air.

About 3,500 people were killed instantly, and it is estimated that up to 25,000 people died in total. Hundreds of thousands of people were poisoned, condemned to future cancer, stillbirths, miscarriages, lung and heart diseases.

In the past, groundwater testing near the site has revealed levels of chemicals known to cause cancer and birth defects to be 50 times higher than what is considered safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Communities blame a number of health problems – including cerebral palsy, hearing and speech impairments and other disabilities – accidents and groundwater pollution.

The clean-up order was issued by the Madhya Pradesh high court in December, after the 40th anniversary of the disaster, with a one-month deadline.

“Waiting for another tragedy?” According to The Times of India, Chief Justice Suresh Kumar Kait said.