# The Bhopal gas disaster
**भोपाल गैस त्रासदी**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/bhopal-1984/
- Chapter: [The Republic and its states](https://indianepics.online/chapter/republic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1984 CE
- Where: Union Carbide plant, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh (23.281, 77.411)
- Tags: science, political

## Summary

On the night of 2-3 December 1984 methyl isocyanate leaks from Union Carbide's pesticide plant; thousands die in the crowded settlements around it.

2-3 दिसंबर 1984 की रात यूनियन कार्बाइड के कीटनाशक संयंत्र से मिथाइल आइसोसाइनेट गैस रिसी; आसपास की घनी बस्तियों में हज़ारों लोग मारे गए।

## Account

About 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate escaped from a storage tank and drifted over the settlements around the plant and into the old city. The Madhya Pradesh government puts the deaths from the gas at 3,787; independent estimates run far higher, and hundreds of thousands of people were injured.

In 1989 the Supreme Court approved a settlement of 470 million dollars between the Government of India and Union Carbide, criticised then and since as too small. In January 2025 the 337 tonnes of waste stored at the plant were moved to an incinerator at Pithampur, but the contaminated soil and groundwater around the site, which campaigners say hold far more poison, were not part of that removal.

## Sources

- Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Department, Government of Madhya Pradesh — https://bgtrrdmp.mp.gov.in/
- Broughton, The Bhopal disaster and its aftermath: a review, Environmental Health 4 (2005) — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1142333/
- Reuters, Toxic waste from India's 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy site moved for disposal after 40 years (2 January 2025) — https://www.reuters.com/world/india/toxic-waste-indias-1984-bhopal-gas-tragedy-site-moved-disposal-after-40-years-2025-01-02/

## Image

Bhopal-Union Carbide 2. Original uploader was Simone.lippi at it.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABhopal-Union_Carbide_2.jpg

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