Imagine having lost a loved one for the sake of a disposable polystyrene cup. This is the position many families in the Indian town of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, now find themselves in after a deadly toxic gas leak at a local plastics factory left 15 dead and hundreds injured on May 7th of this year. […]
Today we are deeply saddened to report that it has happened once again. In the early hours of this morning, tragedy struck for communities on the outskirts of the south Indian city of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, when deadly styrene gas leaked from a nearby plastics plant owned by Korean company LG Chem. Initial reports suggest […]
We wish to thank Adrian Finn for bringing to our attention the following two letters concerning Bhopal that were submitted to The Chemical Engineer in the December/January issue, the second of which he submitted himself. The letters serve as a reminder that Bhopal remains a landmark event that has not been forgotten among the chemical […]
A different kind of “911” happened in 1984. September 11, 1984 was the date that Union Carbide management received the results of an “Operational Safety/Health Survey” completed at the Institute Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) Unit in West Virginia (now Bayer CropScience). Factory blueprints from that existing process were used to construct the pesticide factory where the […]
Author of ‘Rethinking Bhopal’, Kenneth Bloch, is a process safety professional who has taken a very deep interest in the Bhopal Disaster story. Rethinking Bhopal is a meticulously researched account of history’s worst single-incident industrial disaster. It contextualises the process facts of the Bhopal plant, comparing them to accepted norms, and presents them in a […]
