THE company that built and owned the Bhopal chemical plant in India cut crucial corners in its design, documents just released in the US suggest.
The accident at Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal in 1984 killed 8000 people immediately and injured at least 150,000. It remains the worst industrial disaster on record, and the victims are still dying. The company paid $470 million compensation to a trust in 1989. The survivors say they received around $500 each and claim the clean-up efforts were inadequate.
Dow Chemical, which took over Union Carbide, still insists that Carbide’s Indian subsidiary was…
