Nothing coincidental about it One of the writers probably read about the story that happened in your town and they wrote an article about a similar situation. I'm guessing the turnaround time for a writing of a new story is 3 days
Is there an episode about the Superfund in the US? The Love Canal, that river that caught fire in Ohio, basically the remnants of the industrial revolution. That could be couple episodes. If you don't have it already.
There was an internal company document that was leaked a couple years after the disaster that said that it was cheaper for Union Carbide to pay out the settlements than it would have been to maintain the safety standards that would have prevented it.
That's pretty much the go-to for a lot of pharma companies. There was one that released a drug whose side effects killed 50-60,000 people. When it came to trial, it became known that the company knew about the lethal side effects. They got a $5 billion fine, after making $12 billion from selling the drug.
@@glennjanot8128 the most criminal part is the drug was known to not even be an improved version of existing anti inflammatory medication on the market and was known to have far greater risks and they just said fuck it money talks
I was a kid around a Union Carbide plant in the late 70s. I can still remember the harsh smell of the chemicals to this day. There was a creek behind the plant that steamed all year round and had a rainbow sheen and tallow like foam. Safety was not a priority.
It's very recently (just within the last 40-50 years) that governments really started caring about environmental waste, sadly. While most weren't quite as callous as many Eastern bloc/communist governments were about not giving a shit about the environment, they didn't care nearly as much as they do nowadays.
Worst part was how government reacted to this. One of the darkest moments for our country. Almost zero media exposure and the story was managed fairly quickly.
@@adsasfasfasfsddddddd way worst sir. Most of Indians still don't know about it. It's mind boggling considering the number of people who immediately died. No one even measured long term implications on humans or environment. It's almost like a myth now. No video, no text. Its like a conspiracy theory, only you can meet people who experienced it.
I was a young kid when this took place, living in England. While it obviously made the news here, I was far too young to understand and appreciate the situation. This video informed me fully, but hearing that people are STILL dodging responsibility, and that the site is STILL causing severe problems to health and environment deeply saddens me.
This video glossed over much of the available information. There are many more detailed accounts, with eyewitness testimonies and former worker testimonies. This should not have been a Geographics video but an In To The Shadows video.
With the money that these companies make, you would think that someone would take the wheel of responsibility, and start to clean up this mess, rather than dodging political bullets. By this point, I believe the one company, or group, who did this would look more heroic than guilty.
My Grandfather was in Bhopal the night before the tragedy struck. He had been posted there by his company for a duration of 6 months, but his stay was cut short to two months as some requirements had changed. we count ourselves extremely lucky that he made it out before anything bad happened
Plainly Difficult did a video on it a while back. Give it a watch. He goes into a more technical analysis of the contributing factors and issues leading up to the disaster, as well as the cleanup efforts or lack thereof.
I remember when this happened. It still sickens me to think of the lack of responsibility that led to this and the lack of accountability that followed.
One detail I came across in another documentary: the workers at the plant were so complacent and untrained that their normal method of checking for leaks was to send the newer employees around and listen for them to start coughing, thus serving as an alarm system for the plant.
Not gonna lie this whole thing sounded like crews of dumb fucks being given responsibility they should have never gotten, points being from both your comment and this entire video. United Carbide should've just never gambled on having something like that in India.
You missed a very important point. Union Carbide employees refused to tell local hospitals etc how to treat the poisoning correctly as this would mean the poisoning had crossed the blood brain barrier which would make the company liable for a Much higher rate of compensation payout. Many more could have been saved. if not for this intentional and malicious act. Also that $470 million payout was done intentionally and with a caveat that no further payout would be considered. It preempted growing evidence that a considerably bigger payout was looming as evidence for the coverup regarding correct early treatment was being revealed.
Phosgene gas was first synthesized in the early 19th century. I also don't understand. How could knowing how to treat the poisoning affect legal liability?
India had phones and fax machines and doctors who went to medical school! I'm confused as to why they would have had to rely on Union Carbide to tell them anything other than what the chemicals were (perhaps). I don't recall what the other chemical was, but I have my doubts that it was something so proprietary that information on how to best treat the poisoning would have been unavailable. Doctors wouldn't need Union Carbide to tell them that it crossed the BBB. If patients displayed neurological symptoms, there is no mystery. People don't sue for hypothetical damages (well, I don't know anything about Indian law, but I kinda doubt it). They sue for actual damages. The health effects were documented, and many people were affected. Even more to the point: who brings a lawsuit with the expectation that the people they're gonna sue will tell them anything? In the US, that is what discovery is for. Again, I don't know anything about the legal system in India, but given its British colonial history, I suspect that their legal system is modelled on the British one (as ours is).
The whole point of settling a lawsuit is to, well, to SETTLE. That is, the parties agree that there isn't gonna be further action. Otherwise what's the point of settling? I am not defending Union Carbide here, I just don't understand what you're saying. And since you said it was left out of the video, I am curious.
The treating physicians SAW WITH THEIR OWN EYES (and instruments) what the effects are (nevermind whatever existing medical literature there was on these chemicals, which for one of them, at least, is *extensive*).
I did a research paper on the Bhopal disaster. What a horrifying chain of misteps that led to it. The ground at Bhopal to this day has something like 6 million times the safe level of mercury.
One of the best (and saddest) fictional books set against the Bhopal Tragedy is Animal's People by Indra Sinha. It's about a child who grew up after the accident with a twisted spine, and could therefore only walk on four legs like 'an animal.' Part of it is about the very human experiences that illustrated the extent of the tragedy and life afterwards for people facing cancers, deformities, and ptsd as a result of it. The other part is about how poverty and discrimination shape a person's personality (as in the case of the main character), as well as unrequited love and a sense of finding belonging when everyone literally looks down at you.
@@NearQuasarit would have been for sure worse if the second explosion happened (4 megatons) or about the size of 250 hiroshima blasts, which would destroy the three remaining reactors at chernobyl causing even more destruction, but if it wasnt for the liquidators almost the entirety of eastern or all of europe would have been dead or given cancer.
Something else that's really important to understand about the Bhopal plant is that Union Carbide was trying to cut costs before they even built that place. All of the pipes in the that were meant to transport the highly corrosive chemicals like MIC weren't made of stainless steel or some other corrosive resistant material, they were made of regular old steel to save money. The debris that was clogging the filters? That was corroded pipe that had turned into a metal mush. The factory was leaking from almost before it had finished construction.
Any source for that? Because this would make no sense. They wanted to make money and have the plant running 24/7. I only found reports that after the plant was put into Standby they stopped using stainless steel.
If I remember correctly, Union Carbide's affiliate was NOT a subsidiary. It was a separate entity, owned 49% by Union Carbide and 51% by the government of India.
For years afterwards Union Carbide employees were advised to have no indications of the company on them while travelling. The fear was that if your plane was hijacked you’d probably be the first to be shot to show the hijackers meant business if they knew you worked for UC. It sounds a bit strange now, but hijacking planes was still a thing. It was also feared that officials in some countries might take the opportunity to get some small revenge.
"Bhopal Nightmare" (2011), sixth episode of season 4 of the television docudrama series "Seconds from Disaster". In 2014, to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the disaster, historical-drama "Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain" was released, starring Martin Sheen as Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson, Kal Penn, and Mischa Barton.
1:35 - Chapter 1 - The baghdad of india 3:10 - Mid roll ads 4:25 - Chapter 2 - A poisonous fortune 7:35 - Chapter 3 - The apocalypse comes 11:40 - Chapter 4 - Runaway reactions 14:30 - Chapter 5 - A fatal mistake 16:20 - Chapter 6 - An injudicisous aftermath 18:55 - Chapter 7 - The tragedy continues PS: Is it just me or this is a followup to *The Bhopal Disaster: The Worst Industrial Catastrophe in History* from Into the Shadows ?
@@ticenits3426 They burned it off in the Chimney during production so maybe it is safe to burn. As the victims bodies break down the chemical just enters the water table. Even medical staff died just for touching the victims.
@@MICKEYISLOWD As far as I can tell it was probably the other way around. Methyl isocyanate is pretty well destroyed by water - hence the tank blowing up. Groundwater contamination around Bhopal is from basically everything else on site. Combustion of toxic gasses is generally well-managed as they can mix plenty of air and maintain consistent temperatures for a complete burn. By comparison a funereal pyre is a cold fire with plenty of low-temperature spots. Due to its low boiling point it is very likely that much of the absorbed MIC on skin or clothing was off-gassed before it could burn, increasing exposure of anyone downwind of the cremation.
If you want to know more, Megaprojects and In To The Shadows have both made their own videos on this topic. Both are other channels by Simon. And have different information and presentation styles.
I work at a chemical plant and the Bhopal accident was a recent topic of discussion in one of our safety meetings. I have watched a lot of stuff on the tragedy so i was able to tell the guys more than the short demonstration said
An utterly tragedy, I wonder how many lives could be saved by making safety meetings more interesting. I know this comes off as a joke, but I'm genuinely curious too.
When I was with the Marine Corps, we would say, "complacency kills". And that was literally true. We were totally complacent on one of my dismounted patrols and it cost the life of 1 Marine and dozens of Iraqis.
It was also caused by an American company (Union Carbide) owned by parent company Dow that were taking advantage of very cheap labour in a low wage situation with zero government regulation. I remember news in the UK covering this disaster and various people trying to cover up who was responsible. I am surprised that just for once it wasn't Monsanto
UC was known for its safety emphasis at the time of the Bhopal release. After the mass deaths, UC lost 12,000 employees in a very short time who were traumatized enough to leave UC.
I got to imagine it was made worse by an incident less than a year later in WV. While the death was merely a fraction of that of India's, it still nonetheless sent a message about the "safety culture" of the company
I remember Dad had owned 1000s of shares of Union Carbide stock for years and years leading up to this. He sold it all after this. I remember the look on his face when reading the paper about the deaths.
There is a former plant for the Union group not far from us in Vienna. It has been turned into an arts and music venue. Much better to have than on your doorstep than a chemical plant.
Amazing how often these horrible accidents come down to maintenance failures. Not even bad designs that were destined to fail, someone just wasn’t following the manual.
“An unexpectedly high level of danger.” Yes when dealing with volatile chemicals, it shocks me that there is even an inkling of danger. Completely unexpected.
This was a whole course in the undergraduate program in Science, Technology & Society at Stanford as a near perfect study in socio-technical systems and how transferring technical artifacts across contexts does not result in consistent, predictable ( and ethical) outcomes. A lot of what we think of as technology is culture and values, and incentives, rules and processes resulting from them. Every engineer should have to study this, even when working on systems of much lesser potential impact. It haunts me even as a builder of kind of trivial web apps. An analog might be Facebook engineers understanding how the mechanics of their algorithms/platform might gin up and enable ethnic cleansing and civil war e.g. in Ethiopia recently.
At this point youtube is hitting TV levels of advertising. I havnt watched TV in over a decade because I couldn't stand the ads there. I'm about to drop youtube too. Just need to find a new platform.
@Kaytalathegreat Ew. The interface is so bad, and the majority of the videos on the main page make it look like yet another far-right extremist platform. : |
@Zeppathy I admit, I haven't been on it much yet but some of my favourite youtubers are switching to it (no political stance that I know of) because of issues with youtube
This event is one of the reasons I had to take process saftey class for ChE along with the T2 Labs incident. 1st blind flangs are not enough, double block and bleed is the standard. 2nd i was taught the methyl isocyanide was an intermediate chemical that should have been produced on demand and not stored (ie: MIC is produced faster than it was used).... so the whole even shouldn't have even been possible.
I remember this incident as a young teen! I watched it on Television and I had a nightmare about this incident. I still think it's the worst human disaster ever.
Bayer Crop Science owns the facility in Institute, West Virginia. I used to park my car across the fence from it when I went to the college next door. The entire area around Charleston was known as the Chemical Valley due to the number of plants there. It's also home to Freedom Industries which poisoned the entire water supply for the region.
Wow, this is so tragic. I'd never heard of this story before. Thank you to Simon and the writer of this story so much for showcasing less commonly covered things like this. Educating people about tragedies like this is what the internet should be used for and is how we learn from our past mistakes instead of repeat them.
I grew up across the street from a Apple Farm and the owner use to have a spraying rig he pulled with a tractor. As little kids we would be out playing and all of the sudden you feel this mist that stunk. We thought nothing of this and neither did our parents. I found out years later when the Apple Orchard was sold that the EPA had to come in and do a major cleanup. According to the EPA there was Diazinon, Seven, and several other pesticides in the soil. They had to remove the top 30" of soil to make it safe. There is a housing development built there now.
Nothing is more expensive than cheap maintenance. And no one that had the knowledge about the risks spoke up loudly enough to avert disaster. Such a tragedy for all the poor people affected.
There was a severe amount of negligence both in leading up to the gas leak, and as the warning systems were indicating an issue. This issue was so horrible handled by the company and workers, it's something that should have been touched on more. While there were active warnings going on, it's reported that partway through, despite the massive warnings and the threat of extreme danger; the workers apparently stopped partway through for their tea break. Unsurprisingly, it resulted in the accident.
My elder brother was 6 months old when my parents along with my grandparents ran in the middle of night feeling uneasy 12000 died the same night and more than 20000 died after years to come and several are still suffering from consequences just because of negligence of arjun singh then chief minister of madhya pradesh
Phosgene?! That's the same chemical compound I heard with the recent East Palestine derailment incident in Ohio. They decided to do a controlled explosion on vinyl chloride which sent massivr amounts of phosgene gas into the air. The immediate area was contaminated and the poisonous rain caused so much damage. If I recall correctly, this could have been avoided if the rail company didn't slash the total amount of time needed to check and maintain the trains or traintracks. Also, why on earth would you not check the train manifest before deciding to do anything against a potentially hazardous chemical that you don't even know?
Probably also could have been stopped if they gave their employees better working conditions, it is up to the engineer to be well rested for their shift... Except they don't know when their shift starts they could be called any hour of the day with no warning and be told they are going to be in charge of a train in a couple of hours, for a whole day. Whether the engineer is actually well rested enough to safely drive to work let alone drive a train potentially loaded with hazardous materials for hours on end is not taken into account by the company and if they aren't well rested enough that's the engineers fault
It’s crazy that this was posted just as I learned of this disaster in my training to work as a contractor at mosaic phosphate mines. I climb smokestacks at the chemical plants and test emissions.
Yessss Simon and Co....get that sweet sweet watch time and put this schiesse on every channel you own to get it out there. It's amazing how many ppl don't know about this. And thanks for the content 🍻
Am i going mad, or have Simons recent videos been a LOT quieter than his previous videos? i've always had my volume at 18 on my PC, yet to be able to really hear these last few at a similar level it now needs to be at 50, checking his older videos ive not got the issue with those.
1:00 Here lies the problem. Large, corporate entities exist for the sole purpose of making ever increasing profits. They have no feelings, no conscience whatsoever. They will raise prices and cut costs as much as possible and at literally everyone else's expense, even at the expense of lives if they can get away with it. They don't deserve respect. We buy their goods and services so long as they are worthwhile, and it's up to us to make sure they suffer the consequences when they do something bad, otherwise they'll never stop.
One of my professors from India talked about this mid 2010s during one of his classes.The way he talked about it, it seemed that it was still a sensitive subject, he sounded abit frustrated and sad about it. Sad they never got proper justice for this horrible event.
I love your videos! Why not make more surrounding some nuclear accidents? Like: The Wood River Junction Criticality The SL-1 Reactor Accident The Sodium Reactor Experiment Accident The Tokaimura Criticality Incident and The Hanoi Electron Accelerator Accident Would love to see the human aspect of these tragedies.
I was wondering at first how I didn't recall hearing about this one but yet it seemed familiar somehow, but then I heard "Union Carbide" and I immediately remembered learning about it a while ago. I mainly remember how poorly the company handled the aftermath.
Thad fact that toward the end of your video you said 1985. That was the second deadliest year in modern day aviation. If you read this, I would love your take on this. I am subscribed to most of your content. I didn’t know about this one until now. Keep up the awesome commentary and historical facts!
Unbelievable. The lack of culpability, and the dire straights the victims are left in, is horrendous. What stuns me is that the facility is still standing and harming people. Why aren’t DOW being forced to clean their mess up. They would have taken the profits readily enough - they should cover the liabilities too.
Great production. I remember this accident very well. There was an accident in December 2007 at the Thyssen Krupp steel works in Turin, Italy. Sine we are neighbours of the Italians, we received a lot of news on this tragedy. Perhaps you might be interested to cover it one day. Thanks.
If I remember correctly, the maintenance work to install a section of pipe that would’ve prevented the water from getting to the MIC tanks would’ve cost like, $10 or some other insanely low amount.
Union Carbide was a dirty company. I had a friend back in highschool who's grandfather was fired from UC because he wouldn't dump waste into the Kanawha River in WV during the middle of the night during high water.
It's so infuriating when companies pull money from SAFETY FEATURES! Get rid of literally anything else that doesn't affect employees and their ability to work efficiently or safety things. That's it. No we don't need new sliding doors. We don't need extra office space. We don't need to repaint the UC sign every year.
It’s appalling that even this long after this entirely preventable disaster, no one will take responsibility and address the environmental and health disaster that’s still happening!! It was unexpected but touching that each religion’s burial practices were respected and honored.
Not sure if anyone mentioned this before but your videos are noticeably MUCH quieter than rest of youtube. I usually make a playlist from my subscribtions to listen to while I game and your videos are barely audible compared to others
The companies that cause life changing disasters never pay what they should. Companies are fined a small amount that doesn't really cut into their profits. Maybe if companies were fined one quarterly earnings or two they would wake up and be more caring. But high ranking politicians are getting monies from these companies so I doubt they'll ever be held accountable'
It’s disgusting that the survivors have such poor care and compensation. Those people should have gotten millions of dollars each. Not 2k! And the company should have to clean up their pollution! The fact that the American government wouldn’t extradite the owner is despicable. Every single executive and major owner should be in Bhopal contributing to disaster relief! It’s not like this is even the only story like this in India! There was a nuclear accident that happened the exact same way! The Indian people deserve more and they deserve better!
Can you use a de-esser on your voice recording? And compress it a bit more? The dynamic range across the whole video is really stressful to listen to in headphones.
One day I decided to check what happened in 1984, the year of my birth, and I discovered that. There are a few documentaries on the subject. I wonder if the same accident would have happened in the US or any « developed country ».
It would probably be much like what happened in south America where Texaco basically said screw it to any safety when drilling for oil. I forget what country but a significant portion of one of the countries is so contaminated that the water, plants, and people are/were dying from just being there. Then again we also have so many issues here with the repeated train derailments.
It happens it America often, we just don't talk about them. Usually because they're confined to Native American lands and our government refuses to do the right thing, ever
If you're curious do some research into Rocky Flats outside of Denver Colorado. They had a fire in 1957 causing radioactive contamination to spread all over Broomfield and Arvada.
Look up Loves Canal and Times Beach even Centralia for how the US government Handel's disasters in its back yard. None of them are of the scale of Bohpal but still. Even look at the recent Norfolk Southern derailment in Ohio. If you think the government is here to help you may you be the first fatality in its scraficial honor.
If we lived in a world where justice was more important than profit, Union Carbide would have had their corporate charters revoked worldwide and all assets forfeited to pay for damages. Corporate neglect in the interest of improving the bottom line is disgusting. We're too complacent about greed.
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Nothing coincidental about it One of the writers probably read about the story that happened in your town and they wrote an article about a similar situation. I'm guessing the turnaround time for a writing of a new story is 3 days
Is there an episode about the Superfund in the US? The Love Canal, that river that caught fire in Ohio, basically the remnants of the industrial revolution. That could be couple episodes. If you don't have it already.
@@3cav888😢😢
I am addicted to your narration. God i could Listen for hours
There was an internal company document that was leaked a couple years after the disaster that said that it was cheaper for Union Carbide to pay out the settlements than it would have been to maintain the safety standards that would have prevented it.
businessmen would murder billions if it meant upping their stock prices
That's pretty much the go-to for a lot of pharma companies. There was one that released a drug whose side effects killed 50-60,000 people. When it came to trial, it became known that the company knew about the lethal side effects. They got a $5 billion fine, after making $12 billion from selling the drug.
USA USA
That company needs to be fined a lot more.
@@glennjanot8128 the most criminal part is the drug was known to not even be an improved version of existing anti inflammatory medication on the market and was known to have far greater risks and they just said fuck it money talks
I was a kid around a Union Carbide plant in the late 70s. I can still remember the harsh smell of the chemicals to this day. There was a creek behind the plant that steamed all year round and had a rainbow sheen and tallow like foam. Safety was not a priority.
Good
@@simpleman5688 troll better
It's very recently (just within the last 40-50 years) that governments really started caring about environmental waste, sadly.
While most weren't quite as callous as many Eastern bloc/communist governments were about not giving a shit about the environment, they didn't care nearly as much as they do nowadays.
@@VeeTwoPointOh Gober Bhakt spotted.
How has your health been affected as you’ve gotten older? Hope you’re well.
The Bhopal accident is yet another example of why MAINTAINANCE and training is important for safety.
And regulations that are actually enforced.
And a sterling example of why business interests need to be held at gunpoint to keep them honest.
@@evanulven8249In India you have to hold the government and bureaucracy at gunpoint too, as corruption was endemic then, still is now.
Fukushima and Chernobyl top Bophal easily.
@@kaltaron1284 If you take that into account then what about the Texaco oil destruction of part of the amazon?
Worst part was how government reacted to this. One of the darkest moments for our country. Almost zero media exposure and the story was managed fairly quickly.
Yes very true
Rajiv sold us out to Reagene
@@adsasfasfasfsddddddd way worst sir. Most of Indians still don't know about it. It's mind boggling considering the number of people who immediately died. No one even measured long term implications on humans or environment. It's almost like a myth now. No video, no text. Its like a conspiracy theory, only you can meet people who experienced it.
But this happend in india…
@@adsasfasfasfsddddddd
WOLOLOLOLOLO
I was a young kid when this took place, living in England. While it obviously made the news here, I was far too young to understand and appreciate the situation. This video informed me fully, but hearing that people are STILL dodging responsibility, and that the site is STILL causing severe problems to health and environment deeply saddens me.
Might want to check a few more videos before you top up on righteous outrage...
This video glossed over much of the available information. There are many more detailed accounts, with eyewitness testimonies and former worker testimonies.
This should not have been a Geographics video but an In To The Shadows video.
@@LtRoastAhoe Your name is sean. Sthu before I stuff you in a locker
Check the movie Bhopal, a prayer for rain...Absolute gold ..
With the money that these companies make, you would think that someone would take the wheel of responsibility, and start to clean up this mess, rather than dodging political bullets. By this point, I believe the one company, or group, who did this would look more heroic than guilty.
My Grandfather was in Bhopal the night before the tragedy struck. He had been posted there by his company for a duration of 6 months, but his stay was cut short to two months as some requirements had changed. we count ourselves extremely lucky that he made it out before anything bad happened
I have never heard of this story before. Thanks for making this video, Simon. I love all of your channels.
I agree, i love his videos, always informative, and well said.
Plainly Difficult did a video on it a while back. Give it a watch. He goes into a more technical analysis of the contributing factors and issues leading up to the disaster, as well as the cleanup efforts or lack thereof.
@@SkunkApe407 thank you
Its already been done on one of the other Simon channels. It's a rehash
@@TheLoxxxton it’s not a rehash, it’s been written in a different way for a different audience.
I remember when this happened. It still sickens me to think of the lack of responsibility that led to this and the lack of accountability that followed.
One detail I came across in another documentary: the workers at the plant were so complacent and untrained that their normal method of checking for leaks was to send the newer employees around and listen for them to start coughing, thus serving as an alarm system for the plant.
Wtf
Not gonna lie this whole thing sounded like crews of dumb fucks being given responsibility they should have never gotten, points being from both your comment and this entire video. United Carbide should've just never gambled on having something like that in India.
You missed a very important point.
Union Carbide employees refused to tell local hospitals etc how to treat the poisoning correctly as this would mean the poisoning had crossed the blood brain barrier which would make the company liable for a Much higher rate of compensation payout. Many more could have been saved. if not for this intentional and malicious act.
Also that $470 million payout was done intentionally and with a caveat that no further payout would be considered. It preempted growing evidence that a considerably bigger payout was looming as evidence for the coverup regarding correct early treatment was being revealed.
Pretty shocking isn't it.
Phosgene gas was first synthesized in the early 19th century.
I also don't understand. How could knowing how to treat the poisoning affect legal liability?
India had phones and fax machines and doctors who went to medical school! I'm confused as to why they would have had to rely on Union Carbide to tell them anything other than what the chemicals were (perhaps). I don't recall what the other chemical was, but I have my doubts that it was something so proprietary that information on how to best treat the poisoning would have been unavailable.
Doctors wouldn't need Union Carbide to tell them that it crossed the BBB. If patients displayed neurological symptoms, there is no mystery. People don't sue for hypothetical damages (well, I don't know anything about Indian law, but I kinda doubt it). They sue for actual damages. The health effects were documented, and many people were affected.
Even more to the point: who brings a lawsuit with the expectation that the people they're gonna sue will tell them anything? In the US, that is what discovery is for. Again, I don't know anything about the legal system in India, but given its British colonial history, I suspect that their legal system is modelled on the British one (as ours is).
The whole point of settling a lawsuit is to, well, to SETTLE. That is, the parties agree that there isn't gonna be further action. Otherwise what's the point of settling?
I am not defending Union Carbide here, I just don't understand what you're saying. And since you said it was left out of the video, I am curious.
The treating physicians SAW WITH THEIR OWN EYES (and instruments) what the effects are (nevermind whatever existing medical literature there was on these chemicals, which for one of them, at least, is *extensive*).
I did a research paper on the Bhopal disaster. What a horrifying chain of misteps that led to it. The ground at Bhopal to this day has something like 6 million times the safe level of mercury.
One of the best (and saddest) fictional books set against the Bhopal Tragedy is Animal's People by Indra Sinha. It's about a child who grew up after the accident with a twisted spine, and could therefore only walk on four legs like 'an animal.' Part of it is about the very human experiences that illustrated the extent of the tragedy and life afterwards for people facing cancers, deformities, and ptsd as a result of it. The other part is about how poverty and discrimination shape a person's personality (as in the case of the main character), as well as unrequited love and a sense of finding belonging when everyone literally looks down at you.
As a chemical process technician for over 12 years, Bhopal always features in safety training videos.
i've been hoping you'll cover this! it is criminally under acknowledged
Bhopal is the chemical safety equivalent of Chernobyl
Bhopal was far worse in terms of direct effects.
@@NearQuasari think they are about the same,both killed over 10k+ people and chernobyl gave 50k+ people living in the eastern aide of europe cancer.
@@NearQuasarit would have been for sure worse if the second explosion happened (4 megatons) or about the size of 250 hiroshima blasts, which would destroy the three remaining reactors at chernobyl causing even more destruction, but if it wasnt for the liquidators almost the entirety of eastern or all of europe would have been dead or given cancer.
I'm old enough to remember this. The pictures on the news of the bodies contorted in their death throes will never leave my mind
Uncanny how this was posted 3 days after a chocolate factory in my area literally exploded
Where did this happen?
US government protected union carbide
@@L3VIFPSGoogle says West Reading... that's if he isn't lying, cause that was 2days ago lol
I hope nobody was badly hurt 😢
Where?
Something else that's really important to understand about the Bhopal plant is that Union Carbide was trying to cut costs before they even built that place.
All of the pipes in the that were meant to transport the highly corrosive chemicals like MIC weren't made of stainless steel or some other corrosive resistant material, they were made of regular old steel to save money. The debris that was clogging the filters? That was corroded pipe that had turned into a metal mush.
The factory was leaking from almost before it had finished construction.
Any source for that? Because this would make no sense. They wanted to make money and have the plant running 24/7. I only found reports that after the plant was put into Standby they stopped using stainless steel.
@@nils9853 You are completely correct. This is what I get for listening to a second hand account instead of reading the reports myself.
If I remember correctly, Union Carbide's affiliate was NOT a subsidiary. It was a separate entity, owned 49% by Union Carbide and 51% by the government of India.
I heard 15% instead of 51%, and that explains so much of the government's search to find a scapegoat, which made less sense at 15%.
The factory was majority owned by Union Carbide Corporation of the United States at 50.9 %, with the Indian government holding the other 49.1%.
What Paul said. Anyone that says UC didn't hold a majority stake is a UC shill
For years afterwards Union Carbide employees were advised to have no indications of the company on them while travelling. The fear was that if your plane was hijacked you’d probably be the first to be shot to show the hijackers meant business if they knew you worked for UC. It sounds a bit strange now, but hijacking planes was still a thing. It was also feared that officials in some countries might take the opportunity to get some small revenge.
Damn
Sounds like total nonsense
"Bhopal Nightmare" (2011), sixth episode of season 4 of the television docudrama series "Seconds from Disaster".
In 2014, to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the disaster, historical-drama "Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain" was released, starring Martin Sheen as Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson, Kal Penn, and Mischa Barton.
This is such a travesty of injustice, both economic & environmental. Thank you for shedding more light on it!
1:35 - Chapter 1 - The baghdad of india
3:10 - Mid roll ads
4:25 - Chapter 2 - A poisonous fortune
7:35 - Chapter 3 - The apocalypse comes
11:40 - Chapter 4 - Runaway reactions
14:30 - Chapter 5 - A fatal mistake
16:20 - Chapter 6 - An injudicisous aftermath
18:55 - Chapter 7 - The tragedy continues
PS: Is it just me or this is a followup to *The Bhopal Disaster: The Worst Industrial Catastrophe in History* from Into the Shadows ?
I thought i recognised it
It Is a follow up.
@@Sh_rib you did
Something about how they respected each person's religious burial practices was really touching. (Sadly, I was expecting a mass grave situation 😔)
To be fair, he said they still had to do that
@@ticenits3426 remember that the gas stays in the body and clothing of the deceased, burying or burning them ASAP helps with the containment.
@@ticenits3426 They burned it off in the Chimney during production so maybe it is safe to burn. As the victims bodies break down the chemical just enters the water table. Even medical staff died just for touching the victims.
@@MICKEYISLOWD As far as I can tell it was probably the other way around. Methyl isocyanate is pretty well destroyed by water - hence the tank blowing up. Groundwater contamination around Bhopal is from basically everything else on site.
Combustion of toxic gasses is generally well-managed as they can mix plenty of air and maintain consistent temperatures for a complete burn. By comparison a funereal pyre is a cold fire with plenty of low-temperature spots. Due to its low boiling point it is very likely that much of the absorbed MIC on skin or clothing was off-gassed before it could burn, increasing exposure of anyone downwind of the cremation.
Yeah I agree Indian people value religion. Hindus versus Muslims and Christians.
If you want to know more, Megaprojects and In To The Shadows have both made their own videos on this topic. Both are other channels by Simon. And have different information and presentation styles.
Appreciate it I thought for sure he'd talked about this before
Looking forward to the Brain Blaze version in a lighter tone.
@@docnightfall Not if Kevin writes about it.
Thank you for doing this story. It needs to be told more.
Thanks for finally bringing this one out!
I've been talking about it for years, but nobody's ever heard about it.
I kind of need to know now why you're apparently always talking about this,and why you have been for years.Were you personally affected somehow?
@Jeffrey Droog No. Not personally. I read about it in the late 90's.
@Gregory Jones Well,it certainly is something worth talking about.
brilliantly explained - thank you Squarespace
I work at a chemical plant and the Bhopal accident was a recent topic of discussion in one of our safety meetings. I have watched a lot of stuff on the tragedy so i was able to tell the guys more than the short demonstration said
An utterly tragedy, I wonder how many lives could be saved by making safety meetings more interesting. I know this comes off as a joke, but I'm genuinely curious too.
When I was with the Marine Corps, we would say, "complacency kills". And that was literally true. We were totally complacent on one of my dismounted patrols and it cost the life of 1 Marine and dozens of Iraqis.
Thank you for your service, Keiran.
What's your favorite crayon flavor?
We said the same in naval aviation
Looks like I gotta be that guy for the sake of TH-cam trolls everywhere: Bro lyin' for clout
Attention to details!
It was also caused by an American company (Union Carbide) owned by parent company Dow that were taking advantage of very cheap labour in a low wage situation with zero government regulation. I remember news in the UK covering this disaster and various people trying to cover up who was responsible.
I am surprised that just for once it wasn't Monsanto
Simon is actually good to listen to without the constant rambling, "yeah, yeah, yeah," "yo, yo, yo," and the loud exhaling out his nose
UC was known for its safety emphasis at the time of the Bhopal release. After the mass deaths, UC lost 12,000 employees in a very short time who were traumatized enough to leave UC.
I got to imagine it was made worse by an incident less than a year later in WV. While the death was merely a fraction of that of India's, it still nonetheless sent a message about the "safety culture" of the company
I remember Dad had owned 1000s of shares of Union Carbide stock for years and years leading up to this. He sold it all after this. I remember the look on his face when reading the paper about the deaths.
Yeah I’m sure he thought “this event is going to make my stock worthless, better sell immediately”
@@scottmeredith3359 I don't remember you being there.
There is a former plant for the Union group not far from us in Vienna. It has been turned into an arts and music venue. Much better to have than on your doorstep than a chemical plant.
Amazing how often these horrible accidents come down to maintenance failures. Not even bad designs that were destined to fail, someone just wasn’t following the manual.
“An unexpectedly high level of danger.” Yes when dealing with volatile chemicals, it shocks me that there is even an inkling of danger. Completely unexpected.
There's an expected level of danger associated with that, and there are levels of danger higher than the expectation.
I knew you would have done a video on this!
I just started watching the series on Netflix about this but decided I needed more background info.
Its time to care for the children of the board of directors and ceos of these companies. They need thank you cards mailed to their homes
This was a whole course in the undergraduate program in Science, Technology & Society at Stanford as a near perfect study in socio-technical systems and how transferring technical artifacts across contexts does not result in consistent, predictable ( and ethical) outcomes. A lot of what we think of as technology is culture and values, and incentives, rules and processes resulting from them. Every engineer should have to study this, even when working on systems of much lesser potential impact. It haunts me even as a builder of kind of trivial web apps. An analog might be Facebook engineers understanding how the mechanics of their algorithms/platform might gin up and enable ethnic cleansing and civil war e.g. in Ethiopia recently.
The show that came from this was REALLY well done
Me: *listens through SquareSpace ad*
Simon: and now back to today's video
TH-cam: now is a perfect time for two non-skipable ads
At this point youtube is hitting TV levels of advertising. I havnt watched TV in over a decade because I couldn't stand the ads there. I'm about to drop youtube too. Just need to find a new platform.
@@Zeppathy rumble seems to be the new youtube
@Kaytalathegreat Ew. The interface is so bad, and the majority of the videos on the main page make it look like yet another far-right extremist platform. : |
@Zeppathy I admit, I haven't been on it much yet but some of my favourite youtubers are switching to it (no political stance that I know of) because of issues with youtube
Adblock and AdGuard are your friends.
Glad this finally got a video. See also Bayer Crop Science incident in WV
This event is one of the reasons I had to take process saftey class for ChE along with the T2 Labs incident. 1st blind flangs are not enough, double block and bleed is the standard. 2nd i was taught the methyl isocyanide was an intermediate chemical that should have been produced on demand and not stored (ie: MIC is produced faster than it was used).... so the whole even shouldn't have even been possible.
Thank you for covering this. Love from India
I remember this incident as a young teen! I watched it on Television and I had a nightmare about this incident. I still think it's the worst human disaster ever.
And yet people are still baffled as to why aliens won't make contact with us.
Bayer Crop Science owns the facility in Institute, West Virginia. I used to park my car across the fence from it when I went to the college next door. The entire area around Charleston was known as the Chemical Valley due to the number of plants there. It's also home to Freedom Industries which poisoned the entire water supply for the region.
Excellent documentary.
Big Corp greed is one of the greatest threats to humanity
This is a great video. More than anything else, it really puts Bhopal in context not just as victims but also people with their own lives and culture.
decades in and bhopal still is suffering the consequences of this :(
Good.
How bad is it?
I am from Bhopal, can you pls elaborate what kind of sufferings ?
Wow, this is so tragic. I'd never heard of this story before. Thank you to Simon and the writer of this story so much for showcasing less commonly covered things like this. Educating people about tragedies like this is what the internet should be used for and is how we learn from our past mistakes instead of repeat them.
I grew up across the street from a Apple Farm and the owner use to have a spraying rig he pulled with a tractor. As little kids we would be out playing and all of the sudden you feel this mist that stunk. We thought nothing of this and neither did our parents. I found out years later when the Apple Orchard was sold that the EPA had to come in and do a major cleanup. According to the EPA there was Diazinon, Seven, and several other pesticides in the soil. They had to remove the top 30" of soil to make it safe. There is a housing development built there now.
Apple is bad for your health yeah, stay away from the iPhone
You should get checked
"All of the sudden"
Damn, those pesticides really affected your cognitive function.
Nothing is more expensive than cheap maintenance. And no one that had the knowledge about the risks spoke up loudly enough to avert disaster. Such a tragedy for all the poor people affected.
There was a severe amount of negligence both in leading up to the gas leak, and as the warning systems were indicating an issue. This issue was so horrible handled by the company and workers, it's something that should have been touched on more. While there were active warnings going on, it's reported that partway through, despite the massive warnings and the threat of extreme danger; the workers apparently stopped partway through for their tea break. Unsurprisingly, it resulted in the accident.
My elder brother was 6 months old when my parents along with my grandparents ran in the middle of night feeling uneasy 12000 died the same night and more than 20000 died after years to come and several are still suffering from consequences just because of negligence of arjun singh then chief minister of madhya pradesh
Phosgene?! That's the same chemical compound I heard with the recent East Palestine derailment incident in Ohio. They decided to do a controlled explosion on vinyl chloride which sent massivr amounts of phosgene gas into the air. The immediate area was contaminated and the poisonous rain caused so much damage. If I recall correctly, this could have been avoided if the rail company didn't slash the total amount of time needed to check and maintain the trains or traintracks. Also, why on earth would you not check the train manifest before deciding to do anything against a potentially hazardous chemical that you don't even know?
Probably also could have been stopped if they gave their employees better working conditions, it is up to the engineer to be well rested for their shift... Except they don't know when their shift starts they could be called any hour of the day with no warning and be told they are going to be in charge of a train in a couple of hours, for a whole day. Whether the engineer is actually well rested enough to safely drive to work let alone drive a train potentially loaded with hazardous materials for hours on end is not taken into account by the company and if they aren't well rested enough that's the engineers fault
Controlled burning
It’s crazy that this was posted just as I learned of this disaster in my training to work as a contractor at mosaic phosphate mines. I climb smokestacks at the chemical plants and test emissions.
Yessss Simon and Co....get that sweet sweet watch time and put this schiesse on every channel you own to get it out there. It's amazing how many ppl don't know about this. And thanks for the content 🍻
Its about the 3rd time it's been on one of Simons channels. Your welcome
@@TheLoxxxton I know, that's why I said it.....he might as well put it on all of them! Your welcome for me explaining my comment to you 👍
I remember when this happened, wasn't really covered very well by the media here in the US.
Oh my god I came from older videos and your beard jumpscared me it has become massive.
That’s because he’s been using beard oil he highly recommends it Beard blaze for all your beard needs
Please increase the volume of your audio. The ads come blaring through when you have the audio level high enough to hear you well.
Thankfully this event showed everyone that regulations are awesome and every company willingly embraces them and doesn't chase short term profits.
I detect sacarsm in this comment...
Thanks
Am i going mad, or have Simons recent videos been a LOT quieter than his previous videos? i've always had my volume at 18 on my PC, yet to be able to really hear these last few at a similar level it now needs to be at 50, checking his older videos ive not got the issue with those.
My volume at 100 and i still stuggle to hear these videos. I was about to have my laptop checked.
1:00 Here lies the problem. Large, corporate entities exist for the sole purpose of making ever increasing profits. They have no feelings, no conscience whatsoever. They will raise prices and cut costs as much as possible and at literally everyone else's expense, even at the expense of lives if they can get away with it. They don't deserve respect. We buy their goods and services so long as they are worthwhile, and it's up to us to make sure they suffer the consequences when they do something bad, otherwise they'll never stop.
You should do an episode on Agbogbloshie, Ghana, the rich world’s digital dumping ground.
i've been away for a while... I come back and you're slowly turning into a wizard.
One of my professors from India talked about this mid 2010s during one of his classes.The way he talked about it, it seemed that it was still a sensitive subject, he sounded abit frustrated and sad about it. Sad they never got proper justice for this horrible event.
The Bhopal disaster is like Thanos, collecting stones by appearing on every one of Simon's channels
Hey Simon you should do a video on the PEPCON facility in Henderson Nevada in 1988 It’s a real blast.
Rimshot
I'd love to see a video on that too.
The cost cutting measures really explain a lot and it's an aspect of this accident that I didn't know before so thanks for the facts
If you're wondering I learned about it from Rosenburg
This is why businesses must be well regulated!
I love your videos!
Why not make more surrounding some nuclear accidents?
Like:
The Wood River Junction Criticality
The SL-1 Reactor Accident
The Sodium Reactor Experiment Accident
The Tokaimura Criticality Incident
and
The Hanoi Electron Accelerator Accident
Would love to see the human aspect of these tragedies.
I was wondering at first how I didn't recall hearing about this one but yet it seemed familiar somehow, but then I heard "Union Carbide" and I immediately remembered learning about it a while ago. I mainly remember how poorly the company handled the aftermath.
thank you for re doing this one
If companies started to be held responsible for things like this, maybe things would change. Not likely to happen though.
Well if politicians didn't have their hands out for bribes, they wouldn't happen either.
Thad fact that toward the end of your video you said 1985. That was the second deadliest year in modern day aviation. If you read this, I would love your take on this. I am subscribed to most of your content. I didn’t know about this one until now. Keep up the awesome commentary and historical facts!
Unbelievable. The lack of culpability, and the dire straights the victims are left in, is horrendous. What stuns me is that the facility is still standing and harming people. Why aren’t DOW being forced to clean their mess up. They would have taken the profits readily enough - they should cover the liabilities too.
Maybe because the Indian Government owned/owns a majority of the facility?
Every time I see/hear/watch something about this story, there is always ANOTHER thing that I learn about that wasn’t working or maintained properly
Great production. I remember this accident very well. There was an accident in December 2007 at the Thyssen Krupp steel works in Turin, Italy. Sine we are neighbours of the Italians, we received a lot of news on this tragedy. Perhaps you might be interested to cover it one day. Thanks.
If I remember correctly, the maintenance work to install a section of pipe that would’ve prevented the water from getting to the MIC tanks would’ve cost like, $10 or some other insanely low amount.
Union Carbide was a dirty company. I had a friend back in highschool who's grandfather was fired from UC because he wouldn't dump waste into the Kanawha River in WV during the middle of the night during high water.
It's so infuriating when companies pull money from SAFETY FEATURES! Get rid of literally anything else that doesn't affect employees and their ability to work efficiently or safety things. That's it. No we don't need new sliding doors. We don't need extra office space. We don't need to repaint the UC sign every year.
Behind the Bastards also did an episode on this. If you though Chernobyl was bad, just wait til you hear about this one.
Its time to care for the children of the board of directors and ceos of these companies. They need thank you cards mailed to their homes
Literally never heard of this before this vid mad how much ive learned from simons channels
This feels more like a Fascinating Horror episode. Love that channel.
FH did a video on this not too long ago, so you might be remembering it. That's another excellent channel .
One of the channels I love/hate watching.
It’s appalling that even this long after this entirely preventable disaster, no one will take responsibility and address the environmental and health disaster that’s still happening!!
It was unexpected but touching that each religion’s burial practices were respected and honored.
Tragic. I remember when it happened.
Incredibly sad.
Not sure if anyone mentioned this before but your videos are noticeably MUCH quieter than rest of youtube.
I usually make a playlist from my subscribtions to listen to while I game and your videos are barely audible compared to others
Oh good it's not just me.
Yeah I normally listen to a playlist over bluetooth while driving and I can’t hear the dialogue even with all the volume controls on max
Seen this from your other channel, Into the Shadows, last month
The companies that cause life changing disasters never pay what they should. Companies are fined a small amount that doesn't really cut into their profits. Maybe if companies were fined one quarterly earnings or two they would wake up and be more caring. But high ranking politicians are getting monies from these companies so I doubt they'll ever be held accountable'
It’s disgusting that the survivors have such poor care and compensation. Those people should have gotten millions of dollars each. Not 2k! And the company should have to clean up their pollution!
The fact that the American government wouldn’t extradite the owner is despicable. Every single executive and major owner should be in Bhopal contributing to disaster relief!
It’s not like this is even the only story like this in India! There was a nuclear accident that happened the exact same way! The Indian people deserve more and they deserve better!
Just note, there is no such thing as an “accident.” There are always several decisions made leading up to an event. Usually 5-7.
Can you use a de-esser on your voice recording? And compress it a bit more? The dynamic range across the whole video is really stressful to listen to in headphones.
One day I decided to check what happened in 1984, the year of my birth, and I discovered that. There are a few documentaries on the subject.
I wonder if the same accident would have happened in the US or any « developed country ».
It would probably be much like what happened in south America where Texaco basically said screw it to any safety when drilling for oil. I forget what country but a significant portion of one of the countries is so contaminated that the water, plants, and people are/were dying from just being there. Then again we also have so many issues here with the repeated train derailments.
It happens it America often, we just don't talk about them. Usually because they're confined to Native American lands and our government refuses to do the right thing, ever
If you're curious do some research into Rocky Flats outside of Denver Colorado. They had a fire in 1957 causing radioactive contamination to spread all over Broomfield and Arvada.
Look up Loves Canal and Times Beach even Centralia for how the US government Handel's disasters in its back yard. None of them are of the scale of Bohpal but still. Even look at the recent Norfolk Southern derailment in Ohio.
If you think the government is here to help you may you be the first fatality in its scraficial honor.
Thanks for this!
If we lived in a world where justice was more important than profit, Union Carbide would have had their corporate charters revoked worldwide and all assets forfeited to pay for damages. Corporate neglect in the interest of improving the bottom line is disgusting. We're too complacent about greed.
What country is that? I cant name any country that puts people before corporate profits.
Just woke up in California. Rainy weather and a new Simon Video. (: 🎉