Authorities say the caustic poison is safe for the environment as activists raise the alarm over possible water pollution.
Indian authorities say they have moved hundreds of tonnes of hazardous waste left over more than 40 years after the world’s deadliest industrial disaster struck the city of Bhopal.
Debris from the site of the 1984 disaster, which killed more than 25,000 people and left at least half a million people with serious health problems, was sent to a disposal facility where it will take three to nine months to incinerate , officials said Thursday. .
In the early hours 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 the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
More than 40 years later, on Thursday morning, a convoy of trucks transported 337 metric tons of that poison to a waste disposal plant in Madhya Pradesh’s industrial city of Pithampur, 230 km (142 miles) from Bhopal.
Swatantra Kumar Singh, director of the Bhopal Gas Disaster Relief and Rehabilitation Department, told Reuters news agency that the waste would be disposed of in an environmentally safe manner that would not harm the local ecosystem.
The federal pollution control agency had conducted a test of the waste disposal process in 2015 with 10 metric tons of poison, finding that the resulting emission levels were in line with national standards, the state government said in a statement.
However, activists claim that the solid waste would be buried in landfills after incineration, polluting water and creating an environmental problem.
“Why isn’t polluter Union Carbide and Dow Chemical forced to clean up its toxic waste in Bhopal?” asked Rachna Dhingra, a Bhopal-based activist who has worked with survivors of the tragedy.
Groundwater pollution
Built in 1969, the Union Carbide plant, which is 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.
Disaster struck the plant in 1984 when one of the tanks storing the deadly chemical methyl isocyanate broke through its concrete lining, releasing 27 tons of the toxic gas into the air.
About 3,500 people were killed instantly, with about 25,000 estimated to have died overall. Hundreds of thousands were poisoned, condemned to a future of cancer, stillbirths, abortions, lung and heart disease.
Groundwater testing near the site in the past found levels of chemicals known to cause cancer and birth defects to be 50 times higher than those accepted as safe by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Communities blame a range of health problems – including cerebral palsy, hearing and speech impairments and other disabilities – on the accident and groundwater contamination.
The order to clean up the debris was taken in December, after the 40th anniversary of the disaster, by the high court in Madhya Pradesh state, which set a deadline of one month.
“Are you waiting for another tragedy?” said Chief Justice Suresh Kumar Kait, according to a report in The Times of India.
