Fears of catastrophic chemical leaks remains

HOUSTON (AP) – An entire generation has come of age since a cloud of cyanide gas in central India demonstrated horrifically just how vulnerable humans are to a catastrophic chemical accident.

On Dec. 3, 1984, lethal methyl isocyanate leaked into the night air from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in the Madhya Pradesh state capital, Bhopal. Thousands of families awoke coughing and gasping as the poisonous gas seared their lungs, eyes and skin.

At least 15,000 people died. Many of the 105,000 survivors – a number which the Indian Supreme Court this year expanded to 572,000 with post-disaster births and previously unreported cases – struggle with ailments ranging from breathlessness and fatigue to heart problems and tuberculosis.

The disaster spurred the U.S. chemical industry and federal regulators to implement safety rules and standards to prevent another Bhopal. Congress ordered new regulations, passed right-to-know laws and created the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, which investigates toxic gas releases and chemical explosions with the same independence under which the National Transportation Safety Board probes plane crashes and train derailments.

But 20 years later, Bhopal is not a memory – for many people, it is a reality that could happen again. The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks raised fears that terrorists might attack a U.S. chemical plant and cause a disaster of similar proportions.
The same kinds of backup failures and lack of disaster preparedness that contributed to Bhopal still exist, said Carolyn Merritt, chairman of the chemical safety board.

"Over and over again, we see companies – even those covered under process safety rules – committing the same kind of management errors, mechanical errors and process errors that set up the facility at Bhopal for the accident that occurred," she said.

"Bhopal was not a technical unknown. It was because of failures to maintain systems and employees not knowing what to do and having backup and systems that actually worked to prevent this. We have that same thing here. We investigate it every single day," Merritt said.

The cause of the Bhopal leak remains in dispute. Union Carbide, acquired by Midland, Mich.-based Dow Chemical in 2001, accepted moral responsibility for the tragedy, but continues to blame sabotage on an unidentified disgruntled employee. The company, based in Danbury, Conn., at the time of the accident, is now headquartered in Houston.

Environmental groups, the Indian government and those involved in lingering litigation blame shoddy safety practices and lack of community preparedness for anything to go wrong.

The legacy of Bhopal continues to evolve.

The U.S. chemical industry’s trade group, the American Chemistry Council, says Responsible Care, its performance initiative implemented four years after the disaster, has helped cut emissions and improve worker safety. The ACC also requires its members – 140 companies, or 90 percent of the industry – to exceed government standards of safety and public disclosures through the Responsible Care program.

"The tragedy of Bhopal is one that we’ll never forget and that was a defining moment for the chemical industry," said ACC spokesman Glenn Ruskin. "It changed how the industry operated."

Member companies range from small to the giants, including Dow Chemical, Bayer Corp., DuPont Co. and Shell Chemical. However, while the program is mandatory to ACC members, companies can drop out of the organization.

Dorothy Kellogg, senior director of security and operations for the ACC, said member companies recognize, at the very least, the economic benefit of avoiding deaths, minimizing injuries and preventing lawsuits by meeting or exceeding safety requirements with extra precautions and detailed community response plans.

"It’s not just an issue of the litigation," she said. "There’s just no money to be made in blowing up. There’s no money to be made in injuring your employees or shutting down your process."

Yet environmental groups say such initiatives must be mandatory to be meaningful because ACC member companies that give up their membership only have to do the minimum required by laws and regulations. And the PACE International Union, which represents about 50,000 workers in the paper, chemical and oil refining industries, says worker training in prevention and emergency response needs improvement.

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group said in an April 2004 report, "As a voluntary industry endeavor, the chemical companies are not accountable to either the public or the government to provide complete safety."

The PIRG report also said most federal and state policies that address chemical accidents focus on the back end, or mitigating effects of an accident, rather than prevention.

Ruskin said that while prevention is the goal, chemical plants need layers of protection, like backups that kick in when a mechanical or computer system fails. For example, when a swath of the Midwest and eastern United States went dark more than a year ago in the nation’s worst ever blackout, chemical plants dependent on power for safety kept running on generators.
Dr. Gerald Poje, a toxicologist who recently ended his second five-year term on the chemical safety board, said a string of system breakdowns at the Union Carbide plant led to the Bhopal disaster. He said the U.S. chemical industry, as well as the Occupational Health and Safety Association and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have taken monumental steps to improve safety since Bhopal – but far less than needed.

He said a 2002 CSB study found that uncontrolled chemical reactions – like the mixture of water and methyl isocyanate that, with failed safety measures, led to the Bhopal release – caused 167 accidents in the U.S. from 1980 through 2001 that killed 108 people. The board recommended that OSHA and the EPA expand regulations to cover chemical reactions in addition to listing chemicals based on their individual properties – such as whether they are toxic, corrosive or flammable – but no such action has been taken.

"I wish I could tell you that was 20 years ago and everything has worked out well since (Bhopal)," Poje said. "I’ve seen all too often the same underlying situations result in tragedies here in the U.S. They involve big and small corporations, and communities seem unaware of hazards in their midst."

The board’s eight ongoing investigations include a release of hydrogen chloride gas and allyl alcohol vapor from the MFG Chemical Inc. manufacturing plant in Dalton, Ga., last April. Poje said a chemical reactor overheated on a cold day; a statement from MFG said the privately owned chemical company declined to comment "due to the fact that our internal investigation continues, as well as the fact that the CSB has made no final factual findings or conclusions."

Poje said police wearing no protective equipment went door to door to warn plant neighbors of the MFG gas release, putting themselves at risk of exposure. Emergency responders also didn’t know what kind of chemical hazard they faced, Poje said.
He also said some companies provide model programs on safety management, but federal regulations are needed to reduce the risk of leaks – particularly since chemical plants often sit next to residential neighborhoods.

"It’s not a new trend," John Eldridge, head of the environmental practice group for the Houston office of law firm Haynes and Boone, said of neighborhoods closing the land buffer between them and chemical plants.

"Most plants in Houston were relatively isolated when constructed, but a lot of residential communities have grown up around them because of proximity to work or other factors. Those are now risks that are there and the good news is people can evaluate those risks themselves," he said.

Poje gave a more stark assessment: "500,000 people are victims of the event in Bhopal. That’s a warning sign for everybody."
Memories of the worst industrial disaster in history haven’t faded with time, due in part to survivors, environmentalists and lingering litigation.

In early November, Champa Devi Shukla, 52, and Rashida Bee, 48, accepted an award from the American Public Health Association in anticipation of the 20-year anniversary of Bhopal. In April they received the Goldman Environmental Prize – the best-known award for environmentalists – for their continued fight for more compensation to Bhopal victims, including themselves.

"Thousands of us in Bhopal take medicines every day to be able to breathe, to ease pain, to soothe burning in the stomach," Bee said in a statement read by an interpreter at the APHA awards ceremony. "Each of us have had kilograms of medicines. But our health keeps falling. If there is any relief at all, it is only as long as we take the medicines.
"For the drug companies it is a windfall; for us it is a slow death."

Union Carbide says the company is no longer responsible. Union Carbide and Union Carbide India Ltd., the joint venture of Union Carbide, Indian banks and private investors in India that ran and managed the Bhopal plant, reached a settlement with the Indian government in 1989 to settle all civil claims for $470 million.

But only part of that amount was paid to victims, estimated in 1989 to total 105,000. Last month the Indian Supreme Court ruled to release the remaining $330 million to 572,000 victims, including those suffering from post-disaster birth defects.
Survivor groups say the amount should be quadrupled to match the increase in victims, but it’s unclear whether the court will rule on an appeal or where additional money will come from.

Survivors also say Union Carbide retains responsibility for contaminated groundwater and soil. But the company points to a 1998 study in which the Madhya Pradesh state government collected and analyzed samples of drinking water and found no traces of chemicals that may be linked to the Bhopal plant, Union Carbide spokesman Tomm Sprick said in a statement.

At Dow’s annual meeting in May, the company’s directors rejected a shareholder proposal to prepare a report describing new management initiatives to address health, environmental and social concerns of survivors, noting the company already provides extensive information on Dow and Union Carbide Web sites. The company told shareholders in regulatory filings that litigation regarding property damages alleged to result from Bhopal plant pollution is ongoing, but Dow is confident Union Carbide won’t be found liable.

Sprick said the company in 1994 sold its share of Union Carbide India Ltd. – later renamed Eveready Industries India Ltd. – which continued remediation until 1998, when the state government of Madhya Pradesh took control of the Bhopal site and assumed all cleanup responsibility. Union Carbide gave the $90 million in proceeds from the sale of its share of UCIL to the Bhopal Hospital Trust for a hospital to care for Bhopal victims.

"Union Carbide has nothing but the highest respect and compassion for the people of Bhopal, but Union Carbide retains no interest in – or liability for – the Bhopal site," Sprick said.