December 2017 marked the 33 rd anniversary of the Bhopal gas leak incident. To date, it is still the world’s worst industrial incident. In the 1970s, the Indian government made policies that encouraged foreign investment in the local industrial sector. As a result of these policies, Union Carbide Corporation got the rights to build a pesticide processing plant in the country. The company was commissioned to produce Sevin, a common pesticide in Asia. Bhopal was chosen as the best site for the company based on its centrality and access to good infrastructure. The company was initially allowed only to formulate the pesticide from component chemicals such as methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas imported from the mother company in Virginia, United States of America. However, growing competition in the manufacturing sector necessitated the need for locally produced raw materials. This made the company implement backward integration, a more complex and hazardous process given the large population that lived in proximity to the industry ( Union Carbide Corporation, n.d.).
1984 had been a rough year for the company with the demand for Sevin dropping due to the drought that plunged the country. This translated to tonnes of unused raw materials (MIC) that were left stored in the company's underground tanks. The company was making losses, and the local managers were directed to prepare the company for the sale or dismantle the factory for shipment to another more profitable country. Whatever transpired on that fateful night is still not clear with the Indian government and Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) giving different accounts. While most of the over one million residents of Bhopal slept on December 2nd, 1984 at around midnight, an employee in the company on night duty noticed a gas leak. The pressures in one of the underground tanks had been rising steadily throughout the night triggering the safety alarms both inside and outside the facility. The one outside the facility was put off in line with the company policy of not alarming the residents over small leaks that they could handle. The company’s efforts to stop the leak were hampered by the long-standing lapse of protective measures at the company. Since the go-slow on production, the refrigerators that were tasked with the cooling of the underground tanks had been dismantled already. The vent gas scrubber, a safety device designed to neutralize the toxic gas from the MIC system, had been switched off and even investigations showed that it was inadequate to handle the amount of gas that leaked that day. Some reports claim the government was aware that the company was running despite inadequate security and protection measures but turned a blind eye to the situation. An estimated 3000 people lost lives that day, and millions more suffered the effects of the gas leak. Litigation against the company resulted in the company compensating the affected and funding hospitals to treat them ( Union Carbide Corporation, n.d.). In order to prevent the occurrence of such a disaster in the future, the department of labor occupational safety and health administration created the concept of process safety management. This is divided into fourteen aspects that are to be observed by anyone handling potentially hazardous material on large scale. The employers are mandated to outline the process of handling hazardous material by having written safety information describing the procedures, equipment, and technology. In addition, they are supposed to perform a hazard assessment outlining the potential sources of accidental releases and estimation of the health and safety effects of the exposure. They are also required to train and educate employees on emergency response procedures as comprehensively as possible in addition to establishing a quality assurance program that deals with procurement and maintenance to ensure the correct specifications are used every time. These among other many PSM rules are meant to protect us from the occurrence of such a disaster ever again.
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References
Union Carbide Corporation. (n.d.). Retrieved March 04, 2018, from http://www.bhopal.com/
