Decades Later, Bhopal Toxic Waste Cleared

Bhopal: Around 40 years after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the entire 347 tons or the toxic waste of the defunct Union Carbide factory here has finally been incinerated.

The process of incineration of the last batch of 307 tons of toxic waste which began at eight pm on May five this year at the Industrial Waste Management Plant at Pithampur in Madhya Pradesh’s Dhar district has been completed at 1.05 am on Monday, officials said on Monday.

Thirty tons of toxic remains of the Bhopal gas tragedy were earlier disposed of at the same incineration facility at Pithampur in the three trial runs between February 27 to March 12 this year.

“The entire lot of the toxic remains of Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984 have now been disposed of, safely”, regional officer of Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board (MPPCB) Srinivas Dwivedy told this newspaper.

With this, the ghost of the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984 has finally been exorcised.

Around 337 tons of toxic wastes were shifted from Bhopal’s defunct Union Carbide factory to the incineration facility at Pithampur on January two this year for disposal.

In August 2015, ten tons of toxic waste of the Union Carbide factory were disposed of at the Pithampur incineration facility on trial basis, which was found successful.

However, the process of the waste disposal was then suspended following protests by the locals.

The disposal of the toxic remains of Bhopal’s defunct Union Carbide factory was done following a directive by the Jabalpur high court in Madhya Pradesh on February 28 this year.

A press release issued by MPPCB said 19 tons of soil from the Union Carbide factory premises will be incinerated at the Pithampur facility by July three.

The soil is suspected to be toxic.

This apart, the packaging materials in which the toxic wastes were carried in the containers from the defunct Union Carbide factory in Bhopal to the Industrial Waste Management Plant at Pithampur will be detoxified and treated before being buried in the landfilling sites, the officer said.

The process of burying the ash and residue, yielded from the incineration of the toxic waste, will be done at the landfilling sites scientifically by November-December this year, Mr. Dwivedy said.

The leakage of deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) in the Union Carbide factory in the intervening night of December two-three, 1984 here led to death of 5,479 persons, officially, and grave sickness to thousands of people.

Unofficially, the death toll figure was around 15,000.

According to the Madhya Pradesh government, the waste from the Union Carbide factory includes soil from the premises of the closed unit, reactor residue, Sevin (pesticide) residue, naphthol residue, and ‘semi processed’ residue.

Scientific evidence shows that the effect of Sevin and naphthol chemicals in the waste has already become ‘almost negligible’.