The convoy is equipped with “the most important safety protocol ever observed in the field of industrial waste movement” in India, described Swatantra Kumar Singh, director of the local disaster management department, to the daily Times of India. These toxic materials must be incinerated, indicated the same source.
In December, after the 40th anniversary of the tragedy, the Madhya Pradesh state high court ordered the operation, granting a one-month deadline to do so. “Are you expecting another tragedy? ” had launched the first magistrate of the court, Suresh Kumar Kait, to the authorities, criticizing the “inertia” of the authorities responsible for the decontamination, according to the Times of India and the daily Indian Express.
25,000 deaths in the years that followed
Local residents claim that the leak of a highly toxic gas from a factory of the American group Union Carbide in December 1984 in Bhopal contaminated the water table and was responsible for a high number of illnesses. On the night of December 2 to 3, 1984, 27 tons of methyl isocyanate, a substance used to produce pesticides, escaped from a tank at the factory.
Some 3,500 people died in the first three days of the disaster. Some 25,000 people died in the years that followed, according to estimates.
Analyzes of groundwater near the site revealed the presence of chemical substances – carcinogenic and responsible for birth defects – 50 times higher than the thresholds tolerated by the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
World
