Remembering Bhopal: Importance of Chemical Safety
December 3 marks the 32nd anniversary of the Bhopal, India disaster: the world’s worst industrial accident. In the middle of the night, an accident at a Union Carbide plant released a toxic gas, methyl isocyanate. The impact on the surrounding community was immediate and deadly. Chaos ensued as people attempted to escape the lethal toxic cloud. Thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands of lives were forever changed. The effects from the toxic exposure included blindness, kidney and liver failure. Decades later, survivors and their offspring continue to experience health impacts from that deadly night. In response to the Bhopal disaster, the United States Congress took action and passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) of 1986. The late Senator Frank Lautenberg and Representative James Florio were the lead sponsors of this law, which was based, in part, on the 1983 NJ Worker and Community Right to Know Act. The purpose of EPCRA was to help communities plan for chemical emergencies by requiring industry to report on the storage, use and releases of hazardous chemicals to federal, state, and local governments. It requires state and local governments to use this information to prepare their community from potential [...]
