Lessons learned? Chemical plant safety since Bhopal
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman-Professional Development |
| Discipline(s): |
Chemical, Biochemical, Biomolecular Engineering Engineering Ethics |
| Special Topic(s): |
Persons with Disabilities |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Reference - Article/Document |
| Media Type: |
Audio |
| Author(s): |
Ernie Hood |
| Description: | Excerpt from journal article: "t was 3 December 1984, a quiet night in Bhopal, India, until a cascade of catastrophic circumstances, system failures, and outright negligence at the Union Carbide pesticide plant led to the accidental release of approximately 40 metric tons of acutely toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC). The dense cloud of deadly vapor spread over the sleeping community. Estimates of immediate and long-term casualties vary; the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), an independent federal agency, cites more than 3,000 people dying within a few days and at least 100,000 injured. The event is widely acknowledged to be the worst industrial accident in history, leaving as many as 50,000 people partially or totally disabled as of 1994, according to the International Medical Commission on Bhopal. The incident also left a morass of civil and criminal litigation in its wake, as survivors continue their effort to recover what they consider to be appropriate compensation for their long-term pain and suffering. As the twentieth anniversary of the Bhopal incident arrives later this year, there inevitably will be a renewed focus on its impact on safety within the chemical industry worldwide. “Bhopal was a wake-up call for the industry,” says chemical engineer Sam Mannan, director of the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M University, echoing the opinion of many experts in the field. Although it seems clear that Bhopal has had a positive legacy in improved chemical plant safety, particularly in the United States, to this day there is no single, reliable, quantifiable method to answer a very simple, reasonable, and vitally important question: How safe are chemical plants today, and are they really any safer today than they were 20 years ago?" Citation: Environ Health Perspect. 2004 May; 112(6): A352–A359. |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | Bhopal disaster Bhopal case Bhopal ecosystems Persons with Disabilities |
| References: |
Personal exposure and long-term health effects in survivors of the union carbide disaster at bhopal. |
| Usage Tip | |
| Use of Resource: |
Could be used associated with a case study in engineering ethics or environmental chemistry. Useful photographs as well. Concluding paragraph: "Are chemical plants and the chemicals they produce and use safer today than they were 20 years ago, when Bhopal sounded its tragic wake-up call? No one can say for sure. Given the significant strides made over the past two decades, there is a strong temptation to answer that question at least tentatively in the affirmative. Attitudes have evolved, culture has progressed, technologies have matured, and a more cooperative, collaborative atmosphere has emerged. There is ample reason for optimism. But as long as issues such as managing chemical reactivity remain unresolved, it seems likely that the day when incidents are reduced to zero is still far away." |
| Difficulty: |
Medium |
| Interactivity Level: |
Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | May 2004 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1241982 |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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