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#industrial-disaster
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Asbestos: The Industry That Knew It Was Killing People
Asbestos was, for most of the twentieth century, one of the most useful materials on earth — a naturally occurring mineral that could be spun into fireproof cloth, packed into insulation, mixed into cement, and woven through the fabric of modern industry, prized for its resistance to heat, fire, and wear. It was called the 'magic mineral,' and it was everywhere: in the walls and ceilings of homes and schools, in the insulation of ships and power plants, in brake linings and pipe lagging and floor tiles, handled by millions of workers and surrounding billions of people. It was also lethal. Inhaled asbestos fibers lodge in the lungs and, often decades later, cause asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma — a cancer of the lining of the lungs and abdomen that is almost exclusively caused by asbestos and is almost always fatal. None of this was a sudden discovery. The dangers of asbestos were documented in medical literature as early as the 1920s and 1930s, and the major companies of the asbestos industry came to understand, through their own workers and their own research, that the material was sickening and killing people. They did not warn. Instead, as internal documents brought to light decades later in litigation would prove, leading firms concealed the evidence, suppressed unfavorable studies, kept workers ignorant of the risks they faced, and continued to sell asbestos for as long as they profitably could. The result was one of the longest and deadliest corporate cover-ups in history, a slow-motion industrial epidemic that has killed millions and is killing people still. This is the story of the industry that knew.
Bhopal
At approximately 11:30 p.m. on Sunday, December 2, 1984, water entered Tank 610 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. The tank contained 42 tonnes of liquefied methyl isocyanate, an intermediate chemical used in the production of the pesticide Sevin. The water-MIC reaction was exothermic. The tank's pressure rose, then its temperature, then both ran away. The refrigeration system that should have kept the tank below 5°C had been disabled to save electricity. The vent gas scrubber that should have neutralized any escaping MIC was offline for maintenance. The flare tower that should have burned residual gas was disconnected. At approximately 12:30 a.m. on December 3, the tank's emergency relief valve opened and approximately 30 tonnes of methyl isocyanate vapor was released into the air above central Bhopal. The wind carried it south-east, across the slum districts of Jaiprakash Nagar, Kazi Camp, and Chola. By dawn, between 3,800 and 8,000 people were dead. The Indian government's final official count was eventually placed at 3,787 directly killed in the first 72 hours and a further ~15,000-25,000 over the following decades from exposure-attributable illness. Approximately 558,125 people received compensation as gas-exposure victims under the 1989 settlement. It remains the worst industrial disaster in history.
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