India removes toxic waste from Bhopal gas leak site, 40 years after disaster | Health News

Authorities say burning the poison is environmentally safe, while activists are sounding the alarm about possible water contamination.

Indian authorities said they transported hundreds of tons of remaining hazardous waste more than 40 years after the world’s deadliest industrial disaster struck the city of Bhopal.

Waste from site 1984 disasterThe fire, which has killed more than 25,000 people and left at least half a million with serious health problems, has been sent to a waste disposal facility where it will take three to nine months to burn, officials said Thursday.

In the early hours of December 3, 1984, methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide plant owned by the American company Union Carbide, poisoning more than half a million people in Bhopal, the capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

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

Swatantra Kumar Singh, director of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Department, told Reuters news agency that the waste will be disposed of in an environmentally safe manner that does not harm the local ecosystem.

The state government said in a statement that the Federal Pollution Control Agency conducted a pilot trial of the waste disposal process in 2015 using 10 metric tons of poison, and found that the resulting emission levels were in line with national standards.

However, activists claim that the solid waste will be buried in landfills after being burned, polluting the water and creating an environmental problem.

“Why polluted? union carbide And why Dow Chemical doesn’t have to clean up its toxic waste in Bhopal? asked Rachna Dhingra, a Bhopal-based activist who worked with survivors of the tragedy.

Groundwater pollution

Built in 1969, the Union Carbide plant, now owned by Dow Chemical, was seen as a symbol of India’s industrialization, generating thousands of jobs for the poor and making cheap pesticides for millions of farmers.

Disaster struck the plant in 1984 when one of the tanks storing the deadly chemical methyl isocyanate broke its concrete casing, releasing 27 tons of the toxic gas into the air.

About 3,500 people were killed instantly, and the total death toll is estimated at up to 25,000. Hundreds of thousands were poisoned and condemned to a future of cancer, stillbirth, miscarriage, lung and heart disease.

Testing of groundwater near the site in the past revealed that levels of chemicals that cause cancer and birth defects were 50 times higher than what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.

Communities blame a group of Health problems – Including cerebral palsy, hearing and speech impairment, and other disabilities – from the accident and groundwater contamination.

The waste removal order was issued in December, after the 40th anniversary of the disaster, by the Madhya Pradesh High Court, which set a one-month deadline.

“Are you waiting for another tragedy?” Chief Justice Suresh Kumar Kate said, according to a report in the Times of India.