Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
It must be foremost in everybody's mind that there's a probability of injury or accident round the corner. But these can be avoided if all are safety conscious and follow safety procedures strictly. Safety is our prime need. All chemicals like MIC, phosgene, etc., however hazardous they are, can be handled safely by knowing the correct procedure. Any carelessness in operation will endanger you, your colleagues, and everybody around you.
August 11th, 1985 began as a typical peaceful Sunday morning in Institute, West Virginia, a town of about 3,100 people located in the Chemical Valley region of Conawa County, 10 miles northwest of Charleston. The weather was lovely. There were people on the golf courses. Dogs were barking. Birds were chirping. All was right in the world.
until about 9:30 a.m. when the residents of Institute witnessed the yellow stream of gas pouring out of the Union Carbide Chemical Plant that was located on the outskirts of the city between the Conawa River and Interstate 64. A valve failure had allowed steam to collect in a metal jacket that held a chemical storage tank in place, causing three gaskets to blow, which released 500 gallons of the tank's contents into the atmosphere.
The gas formed a cloud that was 200 yards wide and it moved like a fog from Institute through the neighboring towns of Dunbar, Nitro, and St. Albans until it dissipated around noon. Nobody knew what to do. Everybody looked at me like they just panicked, you know. Everybody's taking off running. I just kind of looked which way the wind was blowing. Well, they ain't told us nothing, you know. I'd kind of like to get out of here. They won't let us out of here. I want to go home.
Roads and highways in the area had been shut down. Motorists were stranded in their cars, choking on the fumes. Speaking to the Associated Press, one driver described the smell as strong and bitter, kind of like gasoline. Barbara Cyrus, an Institute resident who was at home at the time of the leak, described being confused by the odor at first which had seeped into her house, telling the AP, quote, I thought maybe it was the cat litter.
But then I opened the door to pick up the paper, and it almost knocked me down. I knew it was coming from carbide. Barbara's husband Clifford echoed his wife's initial confusion. The timing of the warning siren, or whistle as Mr. Cyrus called it, became a matter of debate.
Most residents claimed to have smelled the odor long before any warning was sounded and were concerned that they had not been alerted as quickly as they should have been in order to protect themselves. A spokesperson for the Union Carbide Plant disagreed and assured the citizens of Institute that the emergency siren had been sounded the moment that the leak was discovered. However, the local volunteer fire chief admitted later that the alarm wasn't triggered until 36 minutes after plant operators became aware of the issue.
Regardless, Union Carbide claimed that there was never a real threat to the community in the first place. The gas cloud was comprised mostly of a chemical called Aldicarboxime, an ingredient used in farming pesticides. According to Union Carbide, Aldicarboxime is nothing more than an eye and lung irritant. There are no long-term effects associated with the chemical.
But six employees at the plant and 200 nearby residents did receive medical treatment for respiratory irritation and vomiting. On a scale of 1 to 5, said Carbide spokesman Dick Henderson, "Oxime is a 1 at the least toxic end of the scale. It tends to make you nauseous, that's what it does, only in very large quantities."
Aldecard oxy may be relatively harmless, but carbide's facility in West Virginia was the only plant of its kind in America that manufactured a particular type of gas that was anything but harmless. Methyl isocyanate, or MIC, is an extremely toxic substance also used in the production of pesticides. It contains phosgene, a colorless, almost odorless gas that killed an estimated 75,000 people in combat during World War I.
Exposure to high concentrations of MIC or phosgene induces, among other symptoms, coughing, blurred vision, nausea, vomiting, and ultimately death. Test results revealed that there was no MIC in the gas cloud that engulfed the town of Institute that day, but there was a reason why the citizens of Institute were concerned about the presence of MIC in their community and the delayed emergency response time by the company and local officials.
Just a few months earlier, the town of Institute and the rest of the world witnessed what could happen if people were exposed to leaked MIC. They witnessed the company who owned the chemical plant responsible for the leak avoid all responsibility and liability, and it just happened to be the same company that owned the plant in West Virginia. The town of Institute witnessed the classic battle between the economic interests of a region versus the health concerns of the public, a familiar battle in which money usually wins.
The town of Institute witnessed the betrayal of a people by its own government, a government who chose to serve a corporate master rather than the public interest. The town of Institute witnessed it. The people of Bhopal, India lived it and are still living it to this day. This is the story of how a company's negligence and a government's unpreparedness led to the world's worst industrial disaster on this episode of Swindled. Swindled.
Support for Swindled comes from Rocket Money.
Most Americans think they spend about $62 per month on subscriptions. That's very specific, but get this, the real number is closer to $300. That is literally thousands of dollars a year, half of which we've probably forgotten about.
I know I'm guilty, but thankfully, I started using Rocket Money. They found a bunch of subscriptions I'd forgotten all about and then helped me cancel the ones I didn't want anymore. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. With Rocket Money, I have full control over my subscriptions and a clear view of my expenses.
I can see all of my subscriptions in one place. And if I see something I don't want, Rocket Money can help me cancel it with a few taps. Rocket Money will even try to negotiate lower bills for you by up to 20%. All you have to do is submit a picture of your bill and Rocket Money takes care of the rest. They'll deal with customer service for you. It's a dream.
Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's features. Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash swindled. That's rocketmoney.com slash swindled. rocketmoney.com slash swindled.
Just after midnight on December 3rd, 1984 in Bhopal, India, a cloud of toxic gas containing methyl isocyanate spilled from a pesticide plant owned by an American company named Union Carbide. The unsuspecting residents of the densely populated slums that surrounded the plant were awakened from their sleep gasping for air.
The people of Bhopal stumbled from their residences into the dark streets with burning eyes and burning throats to find a poisonous haze blanketing nearly two-thirds of the city. They watched as their neighbors vomited and frothed at the mouth. They watched as others sprinted in the opposite direction of the plant, dodging cows, dogs, and buffalo that had toppled over, and birds that had fallen lifelessly from the sky. They watched as mothers helplessly cradled their children in their arms while they choked to death.
When the cloud dissipated over two hours later and the sun began to rise and illuminate the streets of Bhopal,
Those that survived and had not been blinded surveyed the carnage that besieged them. The enormity of the tragedy of Bhopal, India is becoming more apparent this morning. Authorities now say the toxic gas that escaped from a Union Carbide plant on Monday has killed at least 1,600 people and they say another 50,000 people may suffer serious after effects such as blindness and sterility.
The Union Carbide insecticide plant has been closed, of course. Now, outside, vultures devour the carcasses of animals killed by the fumes. Reports from the scene poured into Union Carbide headquarters in Danbury, Connecticut. 1,600 dead. Piles of bodies lining the roads. Over 50,000 injured. Overflowing hospitals. Overworked doctors. And unorganized or non-existent emergency response teams.
And these were just the early details in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. There was no telling what was waiting to be discovered in the houses closest to the plant. The CEO of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, addressed the media. The tragedy of Bhopal is overwhelming to all of us at Union Carbide. And it goes without saying we have tremendous grief for those of the people involved in Bhopal.
The one thing I wish I could tell you today is what happened over there. And at this point, we simply don't know. What Carbide officials did know was that the situation at Bhopal was dire. The company began organizing supplies and teams of experts to send to India to assist in any way possible and to publicly demonstrate the corporation's level of concern. CEO Warren Anderson would be traveling with them.
Carbide contacted the United States Embassy to ensure that the trip they were planning was safe and that nobody from the company, specifically the CEO, was in danger of prosecution. This is U.S. Ambassador Gordon Strebe, who had helped arrange Carbide's trip to India. Both Union Carbide and I were concerned that...
there be no action taken against Mr. Anderson. We did not want to have Mr. Anderson come to India to make this gesture and to assess the situation and put himself at risk of being arrested or whatever.
Reassured by the communication and coordination with U.S. and Indian government officials, a few days after the disaster, the carbide team landed in Bhopal. We have organized a technical team which is being dispatched to India to cooperate with the authorities there. We have also sent to India a physician from this country who is the world's expert
on the treatment of individuals who have come in contact with the methyl isocyanate or MIC. And as soon as CEO Warren Anderson stepped foot off the plane, he was arrested. Culpable homicide not amounting to murder, causing mischief, criminal conspiracy. These were just a few of the charges levied against Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson by local authorities in Bhopal as a result of the gas leak.
Anderson was placed under house arrest and taken to a luxurious guest house owned by Carbide. While detained, Anderson used the telephone at the house to make multiple calls to the United States, presumably to the U.S. Embassy.
And six hours later, he was released and escorted by Bhopal's superintendent of police to the airport where a plane was waiting on him to take him back to America. Tonight, Warren Anderson is out on $2,000 bail. He does not know whether he will have to face trial, but he's glad to be free now. What I'd like to do, and I hope you can help me, is tell my wife I'm alive and well and hi, mom, like they do in the ballgame.
Anderson was freed tonight only after American embassy officials protested to the Indian government. American diplomats believe today's charges were a political move aimed at winning votes in India's national elections later this month. As a condition of his release, Warren Anderson signed documents agreeing to return to India in the future to appear in court if he were ever summoned.
Although his lawyers would later claim that Mr. Anderson did not even read what he was signing because he was willing to sign anything in exchange for his release. As for who made the call to release Anderson in the first place, nobody seems to know for sure, including Ambassador Strebe. Who made that decision? I cannot tell you. As far as I know, this was a decision on by the government of India at the federal level, at the central level.
Just as the legal details of the disaster began to muddy, the devastation caused by the disaster was becoming quite clear. Authorities had grossly underestimated the earlier reported death toll of 1,600. When rescue teams searched the shanty towns nearest to the chemical plant, they found body after body lying dead in their beds. Entire families had been wiped out, including the family that belonged to a boy named Sue Neal Verma. Sue Neal was 13 years old when the gas leak occurred.
He lived near the plant with his mom and dad and nine brothers and sisters. He coughed himself awake that night to find almost everyone in his house dead except for his sister Mamta and his five-month-old baby brother Sanjay. Sunil wrapped the baby in a blanket and handed him to his sister and together they fled from their home and ran towards safety, leaving the bodies of their deceased loved ones behind. Sunil lost consciousness at some point during their escape and fell to the ground.
Mamta, still holding baby Sanjay, looked behind her over her shoulder and saw her brother lying motionless in the street, so she began to run faster. Sunil's body was discovered the next day and it was placed atop a pile of bodies on the back of a truck, which were to be transported south to be dumped one by one into the Narmada River. A worker began to unload Sunil's body from the truck when he heard a weak voice from below exclaiming, "I am not dead."
The man looked down to find Sunil looking back at him, alive and well. Sunil was reunited with his sister and baby brother at a relative's house in Lucknow, a town about 400 miles away from Bhopal. The three siblings were soon suffering from abuse at the hands of their distant relatives, so Sunil removed his family from the situation and they returned to Bhopal.
Mamta and Sanjay were taken to an orphanage where they would spend the rest of their childhoods. But Sunil had other plans and decided to live on the streets. During his late teens and early 20s, Sunil became heavily involved in political activism. He spent his young adult life fighting for justice for his town, for his family. But in his mid-20s, like many survivors of Bhopal,
Sunil began suffering from multiple health issues, including what doctors had told him were symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia brought on by the trauma of losing his family as a child. Sunil struggled with the disease for the rest of his life, a life that he seemingly just wanted to end. He ate rat poison and lived. He set himself on fire, burning himself badly, but he woke up to see the next day.
One time he even ran into the jungle hoping to be torn apart by wild animals or starve to death, whichever came first. He walked out in one piece days later. Sunil was a survivor all the way to the end when he hanged himself in 2006. It is too early to call these people survivors. Some will die within six weeks as their livers, kidneys, and lungs deteriorate. Nothing can be done for them.
And there is also danger to those who escaped the poison gas. Dead animals litter Bhopal, raising the chance of disease. No one knows whether the food is contaminated. Water is trucked in from other towns. 100,000 people suffered either temporary or permanent eye damage. Some are blind. Some can see but must avoid sunlight. All are bewildered.
Quiet troops were on guard but had little to do with the slum where so many died and from which so many fled. Most of those who stayed are too weak to leave, too weak even to be angry. This afternoon, Union Carbide's chief safety officer, Ron Van Minen, arrived to head the company's investigation into the leak. We have many of the same questions you all have.
But the plant is off limits to everyone and that includes company employees. The government is concerned that someone might tamper with the evidence. Early reports say the accident occurred at an hour when skilled supervisors were at home in bed.
Midnight Sunday, pressure and heat build up in an underground tank. Low-level maintenance workers have no idea what to do as 15 tons of toxic chemicals automatically begin moving into a second tank designed to neutralize the poison. It doesn't work fast enough. Pressure blasts the now vaporized chemical past a safety valve into the air.
The accident was revealed to have been caused by water being inadvertently introduced into a storage tank that contained almost 80,000 pounds of MIC.
The MIC reacted violently with the water, causing pressure to build inside of the tank before ultimately blowing a gasket, releasing a massive amount of toxic gas into the atmosphere. Union Carbide insisted that the facility was safe. The company claimed that the plant in India was held to the same safety standards required of every plant they owned, including the other plant that produced MIC and Institute West Virginia. They are the same.
The plant was designed and built by the engineers, designed by engineers from this country. The safety standards, the safety facilities were in keeping with anything that we would use or have in this country. Accidents happen, and it looked like carbide was going to accept at least a little bit of responsibility for its role.
At one point, Warren Anderson even broached the idea of compensating the victims. I think it's important, really, that we do everything we can to make sure that whatever can be worked out in terms of help, assistance, can be done as expeditiously as possible. I am confident that the victims can be fairly and equitably compensated without a material adverse effect on the financial condition of Union Carbide Corporation.
But as the extent of the damage became further revealed and the amount of potential compensation to the victims skyrocketed, the company pivoted and went into full-on defense mode. Despite what the company had publicly claimed in prior statements, according to Union Carbide, they merely provided guidance regarding the construction of the plant in Bhopal.
They claimed that all decisions related to the design and operation of the plant were made by their subsidiary company, Union Carbide India Limited, in which they owned just a little more than half the stock. Union Carbide also maintained that safety standards could not be enforced from its corporate headquarters, and the company pointed the finger at the local management of the plants as to who was responsible for upholding best practices.
We run safety not with some small group in Danbury running out to locations to make sure everything is safe, but safety is the responsibility of people who operate in our plants. And you can't, in a system of this nature, take that responsibility off their shoulders and delegate it to somebody else. And in the eyes of Union Carbide, the tragedy was no longer the result of an accident.
After initially blaming the event on Sikh terrorists, the company produced a report that concluded that the leak was the result of a deliberate act of sabotage by one of its own employees. A spokesperson for Union Carbide named Tom Sprick was adamant offering quote, "There is no question in the mind of Union Carbide that a disgruntled employee who introduced an unusually large amount of water into the tank of methyl isocyanate was responsible for causing the runaway reaction."
But what would motivate an employee of the plant to all of a sudden attempt to murder the entire village in which he lived? Union Carbide was confident that they knew why. We also know that this particular candidate had a motive in the sense that he had recently been transferred out of the MIC unit into a less prestigious unit in the plant. He, in fact, still bore a lot of resentment at the time that we interviewed him, which was over a year later. Are you buying that?
Yeah, neither did the people of Bhopal. Especially after a later study performed by the Delhi Science Forum revealed that Union Carbide had installed "obsolete and unreliable safety systems" at its plant in Bhopal. There were untrained personnel. There were unsafe storage practices. The scrubber unit, which neutralizes any toxic materials that leak, was deactivated. So was the flare tower, which is designed to burn off any escaping gases. And the reason for their deactivation?
According to the study, it was to cut costs, to save money, nothing more. Even worse, there was ample warning that the conditions at its plant in India posed danger. In 1981, a plant operator named Mohammad Ashraf Khan was killed after being exposed to leaking phosgene. Less than a year later, another phosgene leak hospitalized 16 workers for several days.
and there was no way Union Carbide could deny knowledge of the latter event because senior executives from the company were visiting the plant on the day that it occurred. In 1982, Carbide's own safety team warned that leaks were imminent at the Bhopal plant due to equipment failure, operation problems, or maintenance problems. Union Carbide officials read the report and didn't bother addressing the issues at its Indian plant.
But it did look out for its fellow Americans. New documents show that a Union Carbide safety team warned of problems handling methyl isocyanate three months before the deadly leak in Bhopal, India. But the warnings were about carbide's plant in Institute, West Virginia. Corrective action was taken at Institute, but the plant in Bhopal wasn't told about any of this. The people of Bhopal were furious.
Protesters took to the streets, clutching pictures of lost loved ones and burning effigies in the image of Warren Anderson, who they were demanding returned to India to stand trial. The Indian government basically ignored the pleas of its people. They issued a warrant for Anderson's arrest in 1992 and again in 2009, but the government of India never really pressured the American government for his extradition.
fearing that prosecuting an American businessman would result in decreased foreign investment. In other words, as a developing country, India did not want to bite the hen that was feeding it. But Indian activists were never going to give up. This is Satyanath Sarangi, a prominent activist in Bhopal. I don't think that it will be easy for the government to drop these charges.
because Union Carbide and Anderson are now being seen as the hazards that multinationals pose on the lives and health of people in India. And there is a growing opposition to these kinds of hazardous multinational investments. So the government will face very strong and widespread opposition if it even contemplates dropping these charges.
So I do believe that there would come a time when Anderson would have to be extradited and the corporation would have to face trial. Warren Anderson never returned to India. In fact, he hardly ever left his house again. Anderson retired in 1986 and attempted to live the rest of his life as far out of the public view as possible. A few years after the incident in Bhopal, Anderson told the New York Times, quote,
You wake up in the morning thinking, can it have occurred? And then you know it has. And you know it's something you're going to have to struggle with for a long time. And according to his wife Lillian, it has been a struggle. In 2009, she told the Associated Press,
This is 25 years of unfair treatment before CEOs were paid what they're paid today. The Andersons' pleas for privacy fell on deaf ears. Activists from Greenpeace, the American environmentalism organization, tracked down Warren Anderson at his home in 2010. His wife, Lillian, answered the door.
Could you please turn that thing off? Is there really no way that Mr. Adelson can talk to us? It's just that he's now going to be in all the British papers. No, he's over 80 years old. It's a long time ago. And he may get a story all adorable. So, uh, we have a family party tonight, uncatered. How would you... But we are talking about thousands of people that died. Does he not feel responsible at all? The facts are on record. If you did your homework...
Activists caught up with Lillian again as she was leaving the house in her car. Mrs. Anderson?
Is it Mrs. Anderson? Why are you and your husband in hiding? We're not in hiding. We don't know anything more than the stories that you people publish. We object to your bothering our neighbours at 8.30 in the morning. That's a private road.
Unpunished and unscathed,
Warren Anderson died at a nursing home in Vero Beach, Florida in 2014. He was 92 years old. Support for Swindled comes from SimpliSafe. If you're like me, you're constantly thinking about the safety of the people and things you value most. After my neighbor was robbed at knife point, I knew I needed to secure my home with the best. My research led me to SimpliSafe.com.
I've trusted SimpliSafe to protect my home for five years now, and the level of security and customer care has been incredible. I sleep better every night knowing SimpliSafe's 24-7 monitoring agents are standing by to protect me if someone tries to break in and to send emergency help when I need it most.
I want you to have the same peace of mind that I and so many listeners experience every day, which is why I've partnered with SimpliSafe to offer listeners 20% off a system. Just visit simplisafe.com slash swindled. What I love most about SimpliSafe is that it just keeps getting better. With exclusive live guard protection, SimpliSafe agents can act within five seconds of receiving your alarm and can even see and speak to intruders inside your home, warning them that the police are on their way.
As a SimpliSafe user, it's no surprise that SimpliSafe has been named Best Home Security Systems by U.S. News & World Report for five years running and the Best Customer Service in Home Security by Newsweek.
I'm a huge proponent of SimpliSafe, and I'm very happy with my security system. And you will be too. Protect your home this summer with 20% off any new SimpliSafe system when you sign up for fast protect monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash swindled. That's simplisafe.com slash swindled. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.
The protests in Bhopal continued for decades and still continue to this day. They wanted medical care and rehabilitation. As a result of the gas leak, over 500,000 people of the entire population of 800,000 that lived in Bhopal at the time suffer from respiratory problems, blindness, and cancer, among other health issues. The women regularly give birth to physically and mentally disabled children. The protesters wanted adequate compensation.
According to official records, 3,787 people died almost instantly in the tragedy. Activists dispute that number and estimate that the true total could be as high as 5,000 people, and that doesn't even consider the devastation inflicted on the local flora and fauna. After a back-and-forth legal battle in which the U.S. courts ultimately ruled that the case must be tried in an Indian court,
The government of India sued Dow Chemical, who had purchased Union Carbide in 1989, for $3 billion. On February 24th, 1989, the Indian government settled with Dow for only $470 million, about 15% of its original demand, resulting in an average award of less than $500 for each survivor. According to Dow Chemical, the settlement freed the company from any further liability related to the tragedy.
and they claimed that the settled amount was more than fair. After the settlement, a spokesperson for Dow Chemical named Kathy Hunt commented, Again, this is activist Satinath Saragi.
So that is like an encouragement to corporations to kill and maim ordinary people and get away by just paying a pittance. So in all respects it's a disaster, it's an extremely ominous precedent and not just Bhopal people but people nowhere in India would be safe if that is allowed to stay and lies unchallenged.
Bowing to the pressure from the surviving victims, the Indian government sought to reopen the case against Dow Chemical in 2010, agreeing with protesters that the initial settlement was based on a severe underestimate of 5,000 deaths. The true number of deaths related to the Bhopal disaster and its after-effects had grown to over 22,000. Also in 2010, the Indian government agreed to provide a lifelong pension of 1,000 rupees per month to the widows of the disaster.
By 2016, the pension had stopped, forcing many of the widows to resort to begging on the street for money. The government of India claims that the pension had ended because it was only supposed to last for five years. Seven local managers of the Indian plant, who were now in their 70s, were eventually prosecuted by the Indian government and convicted of death by negligence for their role in the Bhopal gas tragedy.
They were each sentenced to two years imprisonment and fined a little more than $2,000 US dollars. The people of Bhopal found the convictions to be of little consolation for not being able to hold Union Carbide or Dow Chemical accountable for their negligence. It was little consolation for not being able to prosecute Warren Anderson. I think the real tragedy is that A, that justice has still not been done, that the individuals and agencies responsible for the
Meanwhile, in a different country who was also in bed with killer corporations,
The only other chemical plant in the world still producing MIC in the Institute West Virginia was shut down immediately after the Bhopal disaster in order to upgrade its safety equipment and procedures. The story from the intro of this episode about the gas cloud that engulfed the city happened less than a year later.
The Plant Institute was eventually sold to Bayer Crop Science, who continued to manufacture the deadly MIC. Even with the catastrophic failure of a tank, with the emergency preparedness and
Things that we have going for us that they didn't have in Bhopal, India. Our houses are better built. They're better sealed. There's more of a chance to shelter in place. We have automobiles we can get away from it. Things like that. Computers to tell us where this stuff's going. No, I don't think we could have a Bhopal. Do I think we could hurt a lot of people? Yeah, but not a Bhopal. In 2008, an explosion at the West Virginia plant sent metal projectiles weighing hundreds of pounds in all directions. Two employees were killed and eight others were injured.
The explosion happened 80 feet away from a 14,000-pound tank of MIC, a near avoidance of catastrophe. As a result of the explosion and a near repeat of Bhopal, Bayer CropScience announced that it would reduce its production of MIC
Some residents applauded the noose and agreed that it was a step in the right direction. There's still the potential of a Bhopal to happen, so I guess it's baby steps and I'm glad that they're taking them and so hopefully they'll continue in this step to transition out of the use of such chemicals. It might get a little bit safer, but I mean, it's still the fact that they got chemicals over there and, you know, then you never know what kind of chemicals is let out.
Others pointed to the fact that the town's economy is built on the back of the chemical industry and that the inherent danger of their next-door neighbors has always been a part of life in the chemical valley. Regardless of the amount of MIC, there is going to be a risk of having some there. And if you don't have any...
there, then you're not going to have a saleable product that provides jobs for many families. We've always lived with the plant. The plant has been pretty good in contributing to the community, contributing to the fire department. So the chemical plant is going to be there. So we learned to coexist. 30 years have passed since the corporate disaster in Bhopal, but the tragedy has been everlasting.
The survivors are poor and sick. There has never been a proper epidemiological study performed on the area to determine the exact causative agent of what doctors are now calling the Bhopal gas disease, allowing for many of the survivors' ailments to be dismissed as common symptoms of poverty and lack of hygiene. The tragedy is everlasting because proper environmental remediation has never been performed.
More than 400 tons of industrial waste remain at the old Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. A stalemate between government agencies and Dow Chemical as to whose responsibility it is to clean it up has allowed the waste to sit undisturbed for three decades. The groundwater of 14 communities in Bhopal is completely contaminated, which has led to chronic health problems and birth defects.
Clean drinking water is delivered to these communities by a truck that is immediately swarmed by hordes of people as soon as it pulls into town. As the mob of villagers position themselves around the vehicle to obtain whatever ration of water is available, children will crawl underneath the truck in hopes to catch any droplets of water that might trickle down. To make matters worse, in 2009, Bo Paul suffered from a legendary drought, making water even more scarce.
The communities would experience days, almost weeks without a drop of water, leading to desperation and competition among neighbors. There's a story about a family being hacked to death with axes by their fellow villagers for being the first to discover a pipe with flowing water. The struggle continues for the people of Bhopal, yet they have remained resilient in the face of almost insurmountable challenges. Every year on the anniversary of the disaster,
Protestors take to the streets with the familiar demands of justice and accountability in healthcare and culpability, and they will continue to do so until every last one of them succumbs to the diseases inflicted on them by greedy and negligent corporations. The battle on Bhopal is ongoing, it's still not over. And that in this battle, it's a very skewed battle where on one side you have
some of the poorest people in the city who have very little resources, whose health is down, who have enough economic hardships to bother about, and yet they continue to fight, yet they continue to win. And that we want to tell these companies that
not just us, but our children and their children will continue to battle so long as there is injustice, so long as these corporations put profit before human survival. Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen.
For more information about the show, check out swindledpodcast.com and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Swindled Podcasts, where we just posted an album of pictures from the Bhopal gas tragedy. It's pretty devastating. You've been warned. All the music in this episode was provided by Ethan Helfrich, a.k.a. Rest You Sleeping Giant. He has a new album coming out on April 24th titled Celestial Orchestra.
It'll be available on all streaming platforms, CD, and my favorite, cassette tape. You can pre-order the album right now for $5 at restyousleepinggiant.bandcamp.com and listen to his other stuff while you're there. It's all amazing. Go support him. And if you want to support us, you can do so at patreon.com slash swindled.
For $5 a month, you'll receive early access to new episodes and exclusive access to bonus episodes, like the one that's coming out in April about everyone's favorite TV chef and hostess, Martha Stewart. I'm sure everyone remembers her little stint in prison for insider trading. Yeah, we're going to get into the details of that. There's also free merch giveaways, store discounts, and more. Go check it out. Patreon.com slash swindled. Thanks for listening.
Thanks to SimpliSafe for sponsoring the show. Protect your home this summer with 20% off any new SimpliSafe system when you sign up for Fast Protect Monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash swindled. That's simplisafe.com slash swindled. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.
