Summary of Bhopal Gas Tragedy

Paper on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy (1984):

On 3rd December 1984, India witnessed one of the most catastrophic industrial tragedies which killed or injured over 100000 people. This disturbance took place in Bhopal’s Union Carbide plant when methyl isocynate (MIC) leaked into the atmosphere. This was due to negligence and risks of operational hazard, faulty job design, maintenance flaws, lack of training and economy measures that jeopardize safety.

The corporate negligence: the management and local government have underinvested in safety, which gave rise to a hazardous work environment. Components such as filling the methyl isocynate tanks past the prescribed levels, due to poor upkeep the security frameworks systems were inoperable, ceasing the safety system to cut down cost. The refrigeration systems were ceased, when this incident occurred, which could have alleviated the disaster severity and non-existent catastrophe management plans. The government identified some other factors such as petite safety appliances and use of hand-operated machineries. Some plant management flaws that are insufficient experienced operators, poor maintenance, cutting down the safety management and insufficient predicament action procedure.

Insufficient amount of investment could contribute to the environment. In case of Bhopal Gas Tragedy many attempts were made to reduce the expenses i.e. lenient quality control resulting less safety rules which affected the factory workers and conditions. Moreover promotions were halted and use of English manuals was mandatory for workers, where a small portion of workers could read them. There was also seen gradual declining of safety operation in regards to MIC, which were less applicable to plant operations. By 1984, there were only 6 operators out of twelve and half the number of supervisory personnel were working with MIC. There were no maintenance manager on the night shift and instrument readings were extended from an hour to two staffs who complained were either ignored or fired after going on hunger strikes or asked for fine. There was some serious communication gad among the workers and the management.

The industrial facility was not legitimate prepared to control the gas when a sudden expansion of water into the MIC tank. Moreover the tank alerts were out of service for around four years and there was just a solitary manual move down framework contrasted with four-stage framework in US. In addition the vent gas scrubbers and flare tower had not been working for five month, there was only one gas scrubber working at the time of the incident which could not control the concentration. The flare tower only controlled a quarter of it in 1984. The refrigeration system was idle to reduce the energy cost. The MIC was kept at 20 degrees Celsius when it was intended to keep at 4.5 degrees. The steam evaporator which plans to clean the channels was non-functional for undefined reasons. Slip blind plates, were not installed and their installations were omitted, which would prevent the water from leaking into the tanks. Moreover the MIC tanks were used without repairing the pressure gauge. In 1988, the plant appeared not to be prepared for any problems. There were no a back-up plans to adapt to occurrences of this extent. The administration did not illuminate the neighborhood powers about the amounts or perils of chemicals manufactured and used at the production line.

Safety audits were done once every two years when they were supposed to be done every year. In May 1982, before the “Business Confidential” safety audit took place, the senior official were aware of a total 61 hazard were thirty out of them were major and eleven were minor in the perilous phosgene/methyl isocyanate units. This demonstrated that the standards of workers performance were below average. UCIL prepared an action plan but UCC never sent a follow up team to Bhopal. Many of the reported items in 1982 were fixed temporarily which deteriorated by 1984. An internal UCC report revealed the no. of defects and malfunctions in September 1984 which cautioned a runaway response event in the MIC unit stockpiling tanks and the arranged activity would not be successful to keep the crushed disappointment of the tanks. In spite of the fact that this report was never sent to the Bhopal plant.

And when this incident had occurred and it was time to compensate the affected families, there