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Brief report on the conference
Bhopal Gas Tragedy and its effects on process safety
This conference was organized by the Department of
Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology,
Kanpur on the 20th anniversary of the disaster so that the
world does not forget about it and lessons learnt continue to
guide the industry to improve its safety performance. The
conference had three main aims:
1. To analyse the accident as it unfolded on the dreadful
night;
2. To discuss the progress made in chemical industry safety
since the accident by way of laws, education, research,
etc.;
3. To attempt to chart future direction towards achieving
the aim of zero accident.
The conference generated a tremendous interest world-
wide. Over 50% of the 140 delegates came from abroad
representing 25 countries: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Fin-
land, France, Germany, Holland, Hong Kong, Indonesia,
Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Norway, Poland, Qatar,
Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzer-
land, Taiwan, UK, USA. The tragedy had various aspects
and not just the technological ones. This was amply proved
by the vastly different back ground of the participants:
Academicians, accident investigators, consultants, doctors,
former Mayor of Bhopal, Government executives, industry
experts, insurance executives, journalists, lawyers, former
Chief of Police of Bhopal, researchers, safety law
enforcement people, etc. Out of over 120 papers received,
approximately 85 were accepted after review.
Dr Sanjay G. Dhande, Director, IIT, Kanpur inaugurated
the conference on December 1st, 2004 morning. He
encouraged the participants to work harder in making the
chemical industry very safe and promised to provide all
the support necessary towards that goal. The Chief Guest
was Mr D. S. Mathur, Director (Refineries), Hindustan
Petroleum Corporation Ltd, the over $16 billion company.
Referring to the large chemical plants that dot the country
and which scare people living nearby, he exhorted the
participants to work towards a goal of making the plants
such that, while continuing to produce the products on
which our life and living so much depends, they are neither
seen, nor heard, nor produce any kind of smell. Earlier,
0950-4230/$ - see front matter q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jlp.2005.07.029
Prof. Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Chemical Engineering
Department, IIT Kanpur, while welcoming the delegates,
stated how the department was the first one in Asia to
recognize the importance of process safety and offer a full
one-semester elective course to students. Prof. J. P. Gupta,
Conference Convenor, expressed a hope that this conference
would make the attendees resolve to do their utmost to make
the process industry safer and to improve its public image.
He thanked the Director Prof. Dhande, the Chef Guest Mr
Mathur and the Head of Department Prof. Sharma for their
encouraging statements at inauguration; the participants for
having come from all over the world to demonstrate their
solidarity with the still suffering victims of the Bhopal
tragedy; and all those who helped in organising the
conference.
The conference started with a Plenary Session on the
Bhopal Gas Tragedy. Mr T. R. Chauhan1 (India), ex-
operator, Carbide’s MIC plant in Bhopal, told of the
unfolding of the accident, the reduction in manpower and
training. His book ‘Bhopal—The Inside Story’, the only one
out of over a dozen books, written by a technical person
working at the company, is a must-read for anyone wanting
to know about the disaster. This book was distributed to the
participants. The then Bhopal Mayor, Dr R. K. Bisarya
(India) and the then Bhopal Police Chief, Mr Swaraj Puri
(India) narrated the sequence of horrible events that night
and how they valiantly fought to alleviate the sufferings of
the victims. Mr Puri was out all through the night with his
limited force of people to evacuate the victims and transport
them to the hospitals. He did not know the dangerous
properties of the gas that had been released so he breathed it
too and, to this day, continues to suffer with the after effects.
Ms Ingrid Eckerman (Sweden), of the erstwhile Inter-
national Medical Commission on Bhopal, analysed the
causes and consequences of the Bhopal gas leak and
described the epidemiological and clinical research. Her
analysis was very incisive and deep. Her new book ‘The
Bhopal Saga’, was put on display along with the process
safety related publications of the Center for Chemical
Process Safety, NY and the Institution of Chemical
Engineers, UK. Mr Sathyu Sarangi of the Sambhavna
Trust, Bhopal, is known globally for his continued efforts
Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 18 (2005) 197–199
www.elsevier.com/locate/jlp
1 Papers of authors whose names are in bold are included in this special
issue.
Brief report on the conference / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 18 (2005) 197–199198
made on behalf of the victims. He had reached Bhopal
the day after the disaster in 1984 leaving his PhD studies
in between, and has been in Bhopal ever since working
for the victims. His papers on the medical response and
the state of health and care of the victims of the disaster
were based on in-depth studies carried out by him and
his colleagues over the last many years. He also pointed
out the way forward to a meaningful treatment
comprising of yoga, traditional medicines which have
no side effects and modern medicines. The Sambhavna
Trust has successfully treated many hundreds of victims
that could not benefit from the allopathic medicines. His
work gets international support. Dr S. Muralidhar, Senior
Advocate, Supreme Court of India, is currently fighting,
and winning, the cases of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy
victims. He discussed the current status of the cases and
is hopeful of getting further relief to the victims. The
Supreme Court has ordered the distribution of remaining
compensation funds and provision of potable water to the
communities surrounding the Union Carbide plant that
are affected by the polluted water.
This Plenary Session was followed by an exhibition of
photographs of the Bhopal tragedy and aftermath by the
renowned photographer Mr Raghu Rai. These photos
graphically portray the deaths and suffering immediately
after the gas release as well as after many years. Ms.
Carolyn Merritt, Chair, US Chemical Safety and Hazard
Investigation Board, whose organisation, created by the US
Senate after the Bhopal accident, investigates the accidents
in the US, inaugurated the exhibition. She called on all the
stakeholders to work towards making the process industry
safer. The exhibition, open to public, attracted visitors from
the city as well as busloads of students from nearby schools.
Many of these photographs along with some other related
ones (not exhibited) were distributed with the conference
proceedings on a CD to all the participants. Photographs
have permission to be reproduced for use in professional
activities/display.
There were two sessions of Keynote lectures and 12
sessions of paper presentations held between post-lunch
period on 1st December till pre-lunch period on 3rd
December. These presentations have been summarized in
the next article. Reports on the conference and papers
presented are also available at the conference website
www.iitk.ac.in/che/jpg/bhopaliz.htm.
1. Concluding session
This being December 3rd was the exact 20th anniversary
of the tragedy. All the participants stood in silence for 1 min
to pay homage to the dead and to wish speedy recovery to
the suffering.
In this session, the Chairman of each of the 15 sessions
highlighted the important contributions/comments made by
the various speakers in their sessions. This is presented in the
next article. The general mood of the conference was well
summarized by Mr Dennis Hendershot (Rohm & Haas):
‘From the discussion in the Plenary Session .it has
become clear to me that the conference title really should be
‘International Conference on the 20th Anniversary of the
Beginning of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.’ This is an important
difference. The Bhopal tragedy is NOT over. Its effects on
people’s lives have continued through these 20 years,
continue today, and the tragedy will not be over in my
lifetime, and not in my children’s lifetime. Bhopal is not an
incident; it is a catastrophic and irreversible change to the
lives of people, a community, a country, a company and
industry, the world. And it is not over.
‘Thinking some more about the presentations, the Bhopal
tragedy did not begin 20 years ago. It began years before
[when] actions and events established the conditions that
ultimately caused the gas release on December 03, 1984.
Conditions leading to the incident were recognized, but not
corrected.
‘So what do we do to prevent future tragedies? We have
made great progress, but not enough. We need to continue to
work to establish a safety culture throughout the chemical
enterprise: in companies, education, government, commu-
nities—all stake holders. In companies, the culture must be
pervasive—from the Chairman of the Board to every
employee in every location, everywhere.Safety is a
journey, not a place, and progress will never be enough.
.We, in the process safety community must continue
current efforts and develop new ways to convince every-
body in the chemical enterprise that effective safety and
environmental performance is essential to the survival of the
industry.’
There was a general desire to stay involved with the
developments at Bhopal and not to simply disband as often
happens after a conference is over. The participants wished
to help the victims in various ways and to ensure that the
tragedy is not forgotten. Hence, a group was formed to carry
on the mandate and a ‘Conference Statement’ was drafted.
The same is available in JLPPI vol. 18 issue 3, pp 192–193
and also on the conference website noted above. It has
numerous points of interest to all the stakeholders:
Governments, Industry, Communities, Universities and the
Media.
2. Post conference tour of Bhopal
A group of 35 participants from 12 countries travelled to
Bhopal on the night of December 3 to visit the Union
Carbide plant to see for themselves the disaster it had
caused. Two former workers of the plant, Mr Kamal Pareek
and Mr T. R. Chouhan guided them through the site giving
details of plant operation and the toll that severe cost cutting
had started to take much before the disaster. They also
narrated the unfolding of the disaster that fateful night. The
visitors were bewildered that Union Carbide could be so
Brief report on the conference / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 18 (2005) 197–199 199
careless with regards to the safety of the personnel and the
community nearby, and also so unresponsive to clean up the
site. They met Dr Sathpathy who had carried out numerous
autopsies on the immediate victims and those who
continued to die years later of the complications caused
by inhaling the MIC gas on the night of the disaster. He
talked about the medico legal case. The visitors saw the
viscera of aborted fetuses with unbelievable genetic
mutations caused by the gas inhaled by their mothers.
3. Post-conference developments
There have been several interesting developments. The
local press had carried numerous write-ups on the
conference and interviews with several of the participants.
There were detailed reports about the conference in the
Chemical Weekly (Bombay), Chemical and Engineering
News (C&EN, Washington DC), Chemical Industry Digest
(Bombay), Preventique (France), Schadenspiegel (Munich
Re magazine, German and English Editions). There were
references to it in testimony to the US Senate Committee
and in articles in Hydrocarbon Processing, Hydrocarbon
Asia, Christian Science Monitor, US EPA bulletin, etc.
Some articles are available at the website noted above.
Some of the participants have given detailed presentations
to their colleagues/students along with the photos provided
on the conference CD. Thus, the conference has generated
renewed interest in the tragedy hoping that the still suffering
victims will see light at the end of the tunnel and all the
stakeholders will work to make the chemical industry safer.
Incidentally, Union Carbide’s spokesman Mr Sprick
claimed that more than $2 million were spent by their
Indian subsidiary UCIL on cleanup at the site (C&EN
January 24, 2005, p 29) However, Union Carbide has not
responded to a ‘Letter to Editor’ (C&EN February 14, 2005,
page 4) asking for details of the cleanup done. Many in
Bhopal called it an exercise in cover-up rather than cleanup.
Acknowledgements
The Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd, Oil &
Natural Gas Commission, Bharat Petroleum Corporation
Ltd and Senes Ltd financially supported the conference. It
was endorsed by a large number of professional organiz-
ations: Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers, Mary Kay
O’Connor Process Safety Center, Institution of Chemical
Engineers (UK), American Institute of Chemical Engineers,
Center for Chemical Process Safety, European Safety
Management Group, Chemical Safety and Hazard Investi-
gation Board, US. Environment Protection Agency,
National Safety Council (UP Chapter), American Chemistry
Council, European Process Safety Centre, Singapore Loss
Prevention Association and Health and Safety Executive.
Prof. Sam Mannan, Director, Mary Kay O’Connor
Process Safety Center (USA) was very enthusiastic about
and supportive of the conference from the very beginning.
The administration of IIT Kanpur, numerous colleagues and
dozens of graduate students at IIT Kanpur lent their full
support and worked tirelessly to make the conference a
success.
Ms L. Morris and her colleagues at Elsevier have been
most cooperative in bringing this special issue of JLPPI.
J.P. Gupta*
Conference Coordinator and Guest Editor
Department of Chemical Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology,
Kanpur 208 016, India
E-mail address: [email protected]
* Tel.: C91 512 2597629; fax: C91 512 2590104.