Bhopal being poisoned all over again

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/sep/27/bhopa...

"Twenty-five years after the Bhopal gas leak killed thousands, there has been no cleanup of the site – and Indians continue to die horribly."


"We all know what the world's worst industrial disaster was: the gas leak from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal in central India. On the night of 2 December 1984, the creaky pesticides plant, which was lacking a number of basic safeguards, released a cloud of methyl isocyanate, phosgene and other gases over a densely populated city. This poison gas killed thousands of people – some immediately, many others in the years that followed. The death toll so far appears to be around 25,000. Hundreds of thousands of others were harmed, in many cases permanently. The 25th anniversary falls in just over two months."

One more excerpt:
"You might have imagined that after the global outrage this disaster caused, and the way in which Bhopal has become shorthand for corporate malfeasance and insouciance, that the site of this great crime would have been cleaned up and sorted out as quickly as possible. That the plant, which was closed after the gas leak, would either have been demolished and removed or cleaned up and turned into a memorial for the victims. You'd be wrong.

As the Bhopal Medical Appeal reminds us, the plant has instead simply been abandoned. Hundreds of tonnes of deadly chemicals have been left there – in open pits or just piled on the ground – to leach into the water supply, where they continue to poison people to this day, causing cancer and foetal malformations, among other horrible effects. The chemicals include deadly pesticides and their even deadlier precursors.

After drinking half a glass of water that the people of the city drink every day, the author Dominique Lapierre reported that "my mouth, my throat, my tongue instantly got on fire, while my arms and legs suffered an immediate skin rash. This was the simple manifestation of what men, women and children have to endure daily, some 18 years after the tragedy." Seven years on, nothing has changed. There has been no cleanup, no attempt to prevent the leakage from the site that takes place during every monsoon."




Why has this been ignored for so many years?
The contamination continues bringing deaths, illnesses and nature's catastrophe.