Toxic waste from 1984 Bhopal disaster to be burned

An Indian firm plans to burn toxic waste from the 1984 Bhopal disaster, the world’s worst industrial accident, despite environmentalists’ objections.

Bharuch Environ Infrastructure, said burning the waste posed no threat.

“We have the best waste disposal facility and it is child’s play for us,” Rajju Shroff, BEIL’s chairman, said today.

A 1984 leak of methyl isocyanate gas from a Bhopal pesticide plant run by a subsidiary of the US chemical company Union Carbide killed at least 10,000 people and affected about 550,000 others.

Survivors have since been fighting to get the site cleaned up, but say their efforts were slowed when Union Carbide was taken over by Michigan-based Dow Chemical Co. in 2001, seven years after Union Carbide sold its interest in the Bhopal plant.

Dow has maintained that it is not responsible for cleaning up the site, and the plant is now under the control of India’s Madhya Pradesh state, which has agreed to pay BEIL €162,168 to dispose of the waste.

Punjwani said 350 tons of waste would be transported from Bhopal to Ankleshwar, an industrial area in the western state of Gujarat, by July. It will then be burned at high temperatures over the course of a week.

Environmentalists objected to disposing of the waste in Ankleshwar, and said BEIL was not up to the task.

“Frankly, we doubt the ability of the company to be able to dispose of such waste,” said Rohit Prajapati, head of the Environment Protection Committee. “Let them take the waste to America and do what they want with it there.”

Tens of thousands of survivors have suffered the after effects of inhaling the noxious fumes in 1984.

In 1989, Union Carbide paid €346m in compensation to victims and said responsibility for the clean-up lay with officials.