Asia-Pacific

Anguish lingers 25 yrs after India gas leak

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-12-03 15:01

Local activists shout slogans during a torch rally to mark the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster in Bhopal December 2, 2009. [Agencies]

Dow Chemicals, which now owns Union Carbide, denies any responsibility saying it bought the company a decade after Union Carbide had settled its liabilities to the Indian government in 1989 by paying $470 million for the victims.

"Any efforts by activists and non-governmental organisations to try to attach responsibility or liability for the site clean-up to Union Carbide and Dow are misdirected," Tomm F. Sprick, Director of Union Carbide Information Center, told Reuters by email.

"Regarding any site contamination ... we have no first-hand knowledge of what chemicals, if any, may remain at the site and what impact, if any, they may be having on area groundwater."

Sprick added that the Indian government took control of the site in 1998 and assumed all accountability, including clean-up activities, for the site.

A security guard walks in front of the Union Carbide Corp, now part of Dow Chemical Co, pesticide plant in Bhopal December 1, 2009, which in December 1984 developed a toxic gas leak resulting in thousands of people dying in the aftermath, in what is called one of the world's worst industrial disasters. [Agencies]