Musser still echoes Carbide's claims at the time, saying the accident was an "act of sabotage"- someone deliberately putting water in the tank. Regardless of how the water got into the MIC, the runaway reaction should have been contained. It wasn't, largely because Bhopal had far more limited emergency equipment than Carbide's US plant.
Crucially, Bhopal had no "knock-down" tank where the mass of chemicals that boiled out of the MIC tank might have settled. Then only gases would have escaped, which could have been burnt off by flare towers or by filtered out by a "scrubber".
But the Bhopal plant had only one flare, shut for repairs on the night of the accident. The US plant had a back-up. Bhopal's sole scrubber was overwhelmed by the mass of liquids and gases that boiled up it at a rate over 100 times what it was designed for.
So who was responsible for this design? Carbide's 1972 memo specified that the US headquarters would either perform all design work for the plant, or approve designs done elsewhere.
Also unlike the US plant, Bhopal's waste was poured into open lagoons to evaporate. Recent analyses of groundwater, soil and people near the plant have found high levels of heavy metals such as mercury and toxic organochlorine chemicals.
Earlier analyses by Indian agencies concluded there was no local contamination. Yet company memos from 1989, 1990 and 1995 show that Carbide's officials knew by 1989 that the Indian analyses were suspect and that there might be contamination, says Satinath Sarangi of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action. When questioned by New Scientist, Musser did not confirm or deny that there was contamination but ins
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Contact: Claire Bowles
claire.bowles@rbi.co.uk
44-207-331-2751
New Scientist
4-Dec-2002