• Item #A970
  • ISBN: 0871567970
  • ISBN13: 978-0-871567-97-0
  • Copyright 1988
  • 210 pp.
  • Price: $10.00


The Bhopal Syndrome

Pesticides, environment, and health

By David Weir

Blurbs

Content Sample

From the Foreword:

In the early hours of December 3, 1984, the city of Bhopal, India was converted into a gas chamber, creating a holocaust unprecedented in the annals of man-made industrial disasters. Bhopal was expensive in human lives, in environmental damage and in economic and social costs. It was unnecessary and avoidable.

Tragically, Bhopal is being repeated, not just as explosions and infernos, and deadly clouds heard, felt, and seen the world over, but as "mini-Bhopals" - smaller industrial accidents that occur with disturbing frequency in chemical plants in both developed and undeveloped countries. Even more numerous and deadly are the "slow-motion Bhopals" - unseen and chronic poisoning from industrial pollution that causes irreversible pain, suffering and death.

Also evident at Bhopal and just as replicable, are the failures of both corporations and government bureaucracies to avert and control the incident; the scandalously inadequate emergency and medical responses; and the hopelessly inadequate post-event rehabilitation and compensation.

Like Auschwitz and Hiroshima, the catastrophe at Bhopal is a manifestation of something fundamentally wrong in our stewardship of the earth. Its ghosts will be with us forever, but we can begin in earnest to stop the "Bhopal Syndrome."

To do this we need a new awareness, increased knowledge, and most of all, the will to act locally and globally. We need actions that will go beyond mere "fire fighting" to directly confront and fundamentally rethink the present paradigms of development. We must move away from development strategies that are inherently violent, manipulative, and wasteful toward those that are humanized, and ecologically sound.

We need to change value systems of our industrial enterprises so that the health and safety of both people and the environment is paramount, superseding any technical or commercial considerations. We need to democratize technology to guarantee full disclosure about hazards. We need universal acceptance of the principles of "right to know" and "freedom of information" on health and safety issues.

Citizens groups are beginning to create this global conscience and will to act. The movement started with alarm about the almost total failure of industry, governments and international agencies to curb the proliferation of hazardous pesticides, like those produced at Bhopal.