The continuing catastrophe in Bhopal Jump down to information, photographs and resources on this subject The winds of "that night" blew Union Carbide's gases across the sleeping city of Bhopal and affected more than half a million people. Of those, more than 20,000 are now dead. Although it will never be possible to establish with any certainty exactly how many died in the first hours and days the death-toll was certainly much higher than either Union Carbide or official government sources were and are willing to admit. Based on evidence that includes eyewitness accounts of municipal workers engaged in disposing of bodies, we believe that at least 8,000 were killed in the first few days.
For the survivors further horrors lay in store. In the months and years that followed new illnesses began to appear in their bodies. The death-toll continued to mount as more and more succumbed to their injuries. For a full discussion of the medical problems, please see this article on our sister site, bhopal.org.
The progress of the continuing disaster can almost be chronicled in the order one illness after another appeared. See this collection of medical stories and headlines culled from newspapers over the two decades of the disaster. First the obvious damage to lungs and eyes, breathing difficulties, aches and pains, fevers. Almost fifty percent of gas-exposed women who had been pregnant on the night spontaneously aborted. In the months that followed there was an epidemic of what one doctor called "monstrous births". So terrified were women that they marched with urine samples to a government hospital and demanded to be tested. Tuberculosis rates soared in the gas-affected areas.
Nanko, who is in his 70s, lost his family and his ability to work A decade after the disaster, when girls who had been young children at the time of the gas were beginning to reach puberty, it became apparent that something terrible had happened inside their bodies. Some were menstruating three times a month, others once in six months. For many the disruption of their cycle was accompanied by intense, agonising pain. Next the generation who had been in the womb on the night, and those who were born afterwards to gas-affected mothers began reporting the same horrors. A 2002 study by the Sambhavna Clinic, published in JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) showed conclusively for the first time that the effects of the gas had crossed to a new generation. Boys born to gas-affected mothers showed stunted upper body growth. Their heads, chests and internal organs were smaller than average.
In 1999 a Greenpeace report established that highly toxic chemicals in the abandoned factory had leaked into the groundwater and thence into the drinking water supplies of 20,000 people. In February 2002 a study found lead, mercury and cancer- and birth-defect-causing organochlorines in the breast milk of women living near the factory. Today, some 120,000 people in Bhopal are still critically ill as a direct result of injuries sustained on that night. They are breathless, often in pain, unable to work. Many have been forced into destitution, some of the world's poorest people beggared by one of the world's richest corporations, from which came platitudes and evasions but no help. The ICJB wants Dow Chemical, the 100% owner of Union Carbide, to face up to its responsibilities and liabilities in Bhopal. Dow should make provision for the continuing medical care of Carbide's victims, including those who may yet be born harmed, it should pay for the clean-up of the factory and the remediation of poisoned soil and water, it must compensate people for their loss of livelihood. As you read this, people are still dying in Bhopal. PHOTOGRAPHS AND VIDEOS List of medical headlines, 1984 -2002 (large file, 90K)
Chronology of the continuing disaster mapped on the human body.
Sambhavna report on stunted growth in boys, published in JAMA. SUGGESTED KEYWORD SEARCHES OF BHOPAL.NET (automatically searches BHOPAL.ORG) WHAT YOU CAN DO
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