Hundreds of tons of waste still languish on the old grounds of the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, nearly a quarter-century after a poison gas leak killed thousands and turned this ancient city into a notorious symbol of industrial disaster. Just beyond the factory wall is a blue-black open pit. Once the repository of chemical sludge from the pesticide plant, it is now a pond where slum children and dogs swim on hot afternoons. It has only heightened health risks for residents.
The old factory grounds, frozen in time, are an overgrown 11-acre forest of corroded tanks and pipes. The toxic remains have yet to be carted away. At least 3,000 people were killed on Dec. 3, 1984, after a tank inside the factory released 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas, killing those who inhaled it while they slept. Thousands more may have died later from the aftereffects, though the exact death toll remains unclear.
A guard on duty in the remains of the Union Carbide plant. No one has examined to what extent, over more than two decades, the toxic remains have seeped into the soil and water, except in desultory checks by a state environmental agency, which turned up pesticide residues in the neighborhood wells far exceeding permissible levels.
Fareeda Bi sitting with her two sons, Nawab, 8, in her lap, and Hassan, 12, in their home in the Arif Nagar slum near the factory. The boys have no muscle control and are barely able to stand. "There are more children like this in the neighborhood," she said, "who cannot walk, who cannot see." To compound the tragedy, there is no way to know to what extent the water is to blame. The government suspended long-term public health studies many years ago.