Forty years after one of the world’s worst industrial disasters that occurred at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal in 1984 around 340 metric tons of hazardous waste still lying in the factory premises began to be transported to incineration on Sunday morning following directives of the Madhya Pradesh High Court.
About half-a-dozen GPS enabled trucks with specially reinforced containers reached the Union Carbide/Dow Chemicals closed factory site in the Old Bhopal area on Sunday morning. Several labourers equipped with special PPE kits and officials of the Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC), environmental agencies and incineration experts were also present on the spot.
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It is planned to shift the waste to an incineration site, Ramki Enviro, located in Pithampur near Indore, around 230 km away from Bhopal, in Madhya Pradesh for incineration and, if possible, landfill.
On 3 December, the MP High Court set a deadline of four weeks to shift the toxic waste to the Pithampur incineration facility.
According to official figures, about 5,500 people were killed and five lakh were injured in the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, which occurred due to the leak of MIC (Methyl Isocyanate) gas from the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal on the intervening night of December 2 and 3, 1984. It is termed to be one of the world’s worst industrial disasters.
