India’s Supreme Court will decide the fate of thousands of survivors
of the Bhopal disaster this week. After hearing new medical evidence and
petitions on behalf of the victims, the five judges must decide whether
to scrap the settlement reached between the former government of Rajiv Ghandi
and Union Carbide, the American chemicals giant whose factory released a
cloud of poisonous methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas over Bhopal six years ago.
Overturning the settlement of $470 million will free the current government
to pursue the original claim of $3.3 billion.
Late last month, the court finished hearing petitions from the Gas Affected
Women Workers Organisation (BGPMUS). The organisation argues that the settlement
was illegal because the victims were not consulted before the court reached
a decision. The organisation also questions the court’s figures for the
dead and injured. The court’s estimates, 3,000 dead, 30,000 permanent injuries,
20,000 temporary injuries and 150,000 minor injuries, are ‘a gross underestimate’,
says the organisation.
The extent of injury caused by exposure to the lethal cloud of MIC is
the key issue. Union Carbide argues that there was ‘no long-term health
effect of MIC other than pulmonary and ocular’, and even then the ‘number
of severe cases of pulmonary damage is small and there are no severe ocular
after effects’. The company had been based on the latest figures provided
by the Madhya Pradesh state government, then the settlement would have been
far less than $470 million. According to the state’s assessors, of the 357,000
claimants in August 1990, only 40 were classed as permanently injured and
150,000 were ‘without injury’.
Organisations supporting the victims, including BGPMUS, and the present
Indian government, contest both Union Carbide’s interpretation of the medical
data and the validity of the state’s scheme for categorising the severity
of injuries. The petitioners contend that edidemiological studies and experiments
on rats indicate that even low doses of MIC cause ‘long-term and multisystemic’
damage to the body. Six years after the disaster the medical data suggest
worsening ill health among people exposed to the gas.
This claim is supported by an affidavit from Charles MacKenzie, a professor
of pathology at Michigan State University. Working with Indian doctors,
MacKenzie and Neil Anderson, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine, hav been studying the effects of MIC since 1985. ‘There is concrete
evidence for MIC causing long-term effects rather than simple causing a
short-term pathology,’ says MacKenzie. MIC also affects many organs, not
just the eyes and lungs, he says. The team found injuries to kidneys, the
liver and the immune system. These effects do ‘not appear to be reversible’,
In the first three years after the disaster, the team found that there
had been a threefold increase in inflammation of the eyelids, a doubling
of new cases of cataracts and a loss of visual acuity among people who were
most exposed to the gas. Although the study focused on the effects on the
eye, the researchers concluded that ‘the eye could be considered a ‘sentinel
organ’ for more general phenomena’. These findings are confirmed in an unpublished
five-year study of a much larger group.
Studies by the Indian Council of Medical Research also contradict Union
Carbide’s interpretation of the data. The council surveyed 12,000 people
who were affected by the gas. In its annual report for 1990, the council
concluded that ‘a large number of cases continuing to be symptomatic even
at the end of five years, but there is (an) increasing trend of morbidities’.
Some 93 per cent of children affected by the gas were suffereing from damage
to their lungs and there were around 400 spontaneous abortions and infant
deaths each year in the disaster area – more than 10 times the number outside
The state government’s categorisation scheme has also come under fire.
Three doctors who presented evidence to the Supreme Court say that the scheme
was ‘illogical and irrational’. They argue that the results of the state’s
assessment have no scientific value because they were based on arbitrary
scoring, insufficient medical testing and an overreliance on medical records
which most of the survivors were in no position to produce. Jabar Khan,
the convenor of BGPMUS, wants to see a medical commission set up to completely
reassess individual injuries.
Satinath Sarangi who has spent the past five years helping the survivors
in Bhopal is convinced that health has deteriorated. ‘If only the judges
spent time in Bhopal, their decision would acquire a human dimension and
it would be simple,’ he said.