Bhopal still drinks poison: CSE study

A quarter century after the world’s worst chemical disaster in the country left thousands dead and lakhs affected, Old Bhopal wonders whether the water it drinks is still toxic or not.

Releasing findings of a study done last month, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) today said that water inside the 80-acre site of Union Carbide, and in a radius of up to three kilometres outside, contains pesticide far higher than the acceptable limit for human beings.

The Madhya Pradesh State Pollution Control Board dismissed the findings as another attempt to keep alive the issue of the Carbide gas leak.

According to CSE director Sunita Narain and deputy director Chandra A Bhooshan, 12 samples of water collected for the study had different levels of pesticides in them. Of the eight soil samples it tested, one was from the chemical waste in the plant’s storage shed, while the others were from various parts of the factory, which the state government plans to open to tourists soon. Bhopal gas relief minister Babu Lal Gaud a few weeks ago announced that the site would be opened to public as “the place is no longer contaminated”.

Narain said there was evidence that the chemicals from Union Carbide leak on the night of December 3, 1984 continue to poison the people through the water they drink. While piped water is being supplied in most areas, people are heavily dependent on borewells too.

Some of the samples that CSE examined from a public tubewell in Shiv Nagar, three kilometres away from the Carbide plant, had pesticide concentration of 0.0193 ppm, 38.6 times higher than Indian standard of human intake. At New Arif Nagar, 400 metres from the plant, groundwater pesticide was 0.0297 ppm, 59.3 times higher than normal. About 11 groundwater samples alone were collected from colonies outside the factory, which revealed high contamination of chlorinated benzene compounds and organochlorine pesticides.

Narain said that it pointed to the fact that chemicals were not confined to the Carbide plant but had spread to the entire 80-acre premises. “There is an urgent need to decontaminate the site,” she said. But who will bear the cost of it? Narain pointed at Dow Chemicals, which, she said, bought over Union Carbide but refused liability. She pointed out how Dow Chemicals had taken up a $2-billion remediation bill of Union Carbide in US. “India should ask the company to apply the same standards here.”

Pollution Board scientist R K Srivastava mocked at the CSE findings, saying these were attempts at keeping the matter alive to serve the interest of NGOs. “We have been testing water every three months under court orders. When we can’t find any pesticides, how can they? What is the guarantee that the samples are not fixed?” he said, adding that 25 years of rain had decomposed and washed away all the chemicals.

PCB’s record has been inconsistent. It did not find pollution till 2004 and Gaud, then in the Opposition, accused the Congress government of suppressing data. In 2006 the water was found contaminated, but strangely disappeared again in 2007.

Nityanand Jayaraman, a Bhopal activist of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, said, “I challenge the PCB to do open sampling.”

CSE’s Chandra Bhooshan said they collected samples with permission from Minister of Environment Jairam Ramesh and in the presence of the Central Pollution Control Board. He explained the absence of some of the chemicals in official tests saying that they were not included in the list of approved chemicals and were not expected to be found. Said Jayaraman, “One of the two — PCB or CSE — is wrong. I think I know who is.”