Remembering the Bhopal Gas Disaster
A survivor’s son reflects on one of the deadliest environmental disasters and the American company that continues to evade justice decades later.
Between December 2 and December 3, 1984, toxic gases escaped from U.S.-owned Union Carbide’s pesticide plant, and into the nighttime air of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. Residents awoke struggling to breathe, their lungs and eyes on fire. Over 3,500 people died the first night of the leakage, and over the next decades, 20,000 more perished. The Guardian reported that over 150,000 people today still suffer from disorders the disaster caused. Union Carbide would have the world believe that they weren’t responsible for the disaster, that the whole thing was an act of corporate sabotage. The theory has since been discredited, but the company continues to maintain it. Courts to this day have never convicted Dow, which owns Union Carbide. Rashida Bi, a longtime activist, famously said to the press that survivors like herself were “the unlucky ones. The lucky ones are those who died that night.”