Greenpeace activists term Carbide site Toxic

This story was a very well display in the Bhopal live edition of the Hindustan Times on November 20, 2002. Since Vinutha who is working with the Greenpeace movement for years and who happened to be a good friend called and told me that they are planning to dig up various sites around the Union Carbide factory to find if they were toxic and if I would be interested in covering the whole operation itself. I readily agreed and went to the Union Carbide factory only to land up with another story to my credit.

More than 100 Greenpeace activists, under the banner of International campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB), descended on the gas tragedy town of Bhopal and signposted three solar evaporation ponds located approximately 400 meters to the north of the Union Carbide India Ltd today. Solar evaporation ponds are repositories of factory waste which had been created by the Union Carbide and the Madhya Pradesh had covered them up after the gas disaster. Greenpeace activists, however, are claiming the sites are still exhibiting dangerous levels of toxicity.
The activists today declared all the ponds near the Carbide factory “poisoned and needing the Dow clean up”. Their signboards and life-size hoardings were in English, Hindi and Urdu fro the benefit of residents living in the vicinity.
The activusts alleged UCIL, had routinely dumped waste from the factory into these three ponds and the 500 odd families near by were open to harmful toxic effluents and other volatile materials. They also said one of ponds, contained toxic waste is inundated with monsoon water, and is regularly used by children for swimming, and also supplies drinking water for cattle.
The activists said the UCIL had never tried to warn people about the toxicity in these sites.
The Greenpeace Research Lab had taken samples twice from these ponds and tested them in 1999 and 2002. The 1999 test had contained traces of dichlorobenzene and a number of aliphatic compounds while the tests taken in 2002 contained chlorinated benzene and aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons.
The samples and tests also revealed the toxic waste from the three ponds had alkylated benzenes, phthalate esters, phenol and molecular sulphur.
The activists demanded that the State and the Center take the cleaning up process or in another moth they will be forced to get it they own toxic cleaners to remove the chemical waste.
What is surprising is that when the State government spokesperson was asked about the toxic waste he nodded in agreement and also said that they were short of funds to get them cleaned. While the pollution control board said that they have written to the center seeking help to remove the toxic waste as early as possible.

For other stories on the Union Carbide and Bhopal Gas tragedy please see the below links
http://shivselvan.blogspot.com/2009/02/bhopal-yet-to-recover-photo-story.html
http://shivselvan.blogspot.com/2009/02/it-pays-to-be-truthful.html
http://shivselvan.blogspot.com/2009/02/survivors-tale.html