Bhopal Gas Tragedy: Background, Causes, and Effects

This report provides a detailed discussion about the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, including its background, causes, and effects. It highlights the lack of ethics and proper management in the company involved.

Business law and
ethics

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
TASK...............................................................................................................................................3
Background.................................................................................................................................3
The incident day..........................................................................................................................4
Main cause of the incident..........................................................................................................4
Effects of that Disaster................................................................................................................5
Ethical position............................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Business law is an important branch of law which deals with all the matters that
are being considered in an organisation. It implies that all the companies use to work in various
manner where they get an opportunity and areas of interest of working through their means. The
business law sets up all the rules and regulation that are impliedly being helpful for all the
companies and their working activities(Island, 2020). Business ethics also plays an important
role in the functioning of any company or business as all the companies has to follow various
norms and culture that considers the moral areas and support in the working. Ethics is an
important element for all the companies and thus they provides rules that are to be governed by
all the companies with cultural approach. In this report their will be detailed discussion about the
Bhopal gas tragedy.
TASK
Bhopal Gas Tragedy
Background
Bhopal gas tragedy was the worst disastrous incident that has affected the whole nation.
It has affected the nation widely and has created the worse impact on the country that thousands
of people lost their life in a minute and their were so many who were physically affected by the
impact. The incident happened on December 3, 1984 their was a dangerous leakage in the
factory of Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) which was a plant of pesticides making that was
situated in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh (Jayanthi, 2018).There arises an explosion of Methyl
isocyanate gas (MIC) which is being the most dangerous and toxic gas in the world. At the time
of explosion their resides almost 800,000 people in Bhopal and were 2000 people from that
explosion has died at that very moment and approx 300,00 were being physically disabled and
loss their so many senses.
The company Union carbide India Limited (UCIL) was established in 1969 and that
usually embarks for the production of a pesticide named Sevin which was also being known as
the substitute of MIC. This plant of UCIL was being established by the company Union Carbide
Commission (UCC). The company has almost 50.9% of subsidy and that plant of UCIL was
earlier being planned to be setted up in Bombay. But their was a set up of the UCIL factory in

Bhopal and later on the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh in 1969 has insisted to set the main
plant in Bhopal (Raza, and Singh, 2017). Thus all the workers and the labour class were being
employed in the factory for the regular making of the pesticide. The resources that are being used
for the composition of the pesticide Sevin has been came from united states of America and the
further composition was being done in the factory of Bhopal.
Alarm raised as Warning
There has been made several complaints by the workers and the employees being living in that
area about the leakage of the gases and also about the pollution that use to happen through the
factory. In 1981 two of the workers who went to clean the tanks were being affected by the
splash of phosgene and that they has faced the suffocation and removed their masks and inhaled
some of that gas which resulted that both of them died in that mean time. There was also a major
incident happened in 1982 that all the 24 workers who went for the cleaning purpose has been
splashed out by phosgene which resulted that all of them were hospitalized and some of them
died in few days.
Between the time period of 1983-1984 the company has faced so many leakage problems
in the factory like of mono methylamine, carbon tetrachloride, phosgene and methyl isocyanate.
The incident day
The company were having various tanks which are used in the making of pesticides in
that there were 3 tanks which are filled with methyl isocyanate and their were strict guidelines
that no tanks can be filled with more then 30 tonnes of chemicals and as the tanks named E611,
E610, E619 has covered the MIC (Singh and et. al., 2018). On that day the tanks were being
filled with 42 tonnes of MIC and that made a pressure in the tank and resulted in that the
pressure being increased with about 5 times then an average a tank holds.
Main cause of the incident
 There was a warning being made earlier by the environment pollution controller that the
vent scrubber has to be fixed but still the factory supervisors did not focused on that.
 While the workers were trying to clean the tanks their was the split of water in the tanks
which resulted that it got mixed with the MIC and the workers do not have trhe
knowledge that the chemical will react with the water and can create a major problem.

 The factory has the temperature sensors which provides the information about the
working of the chemicals and the controlling of the pressure on that mean time they were
not working properly and even after being informed they did not respond to that thing.
 The supervisors who have to be present on the factory for all the emergency was also
carelessly went back as their was no person to guide or supervise the happening.
 The workers and the team being made for the emergency was not being trained for the
disaster and has not being able to control the situation.
Effects of that Disaster
Due to the tragedy being happened in the Bhopal it has created a worse impact on the
people as their happened thousands of deaths due that leakage and many of them just died
sleeping the rest impact that has been led by that disaster was:
 There was the highest count of death rate in the Madhya Pradesh after that incident
happened by that gas leakage their was approx 3787 people affected through that gas
leakage.
 That explosion has even affected the life of the people in Bhopal for years as their were
many of the infants that use to die before birth and also people suffered from various
disorders and health issues in that zone the most common issue being seen in the people
were choking, neurological disorder, women were not able to conceive, weak eye sight,
dis balance immune system etc.
 When it comes to the environment the air and the soil is being affected in that area as this
has been seen that pesticides got mixed in the soil of that zone as their were about 359
tonnes of leakage being happened in the soil and that mix has made an implied risk in all
zone which resulted that no farming was being raised in that area (Saxena, 2019).
 Not only the humans but animals were also being affected by that hazard as all the
animals died and they were also facing various issue and were not being able to survive
in that area.
 The infants were facing and getting various diseases as they use to breast feed and that
created a huge problem in their respiratory tract too. As the lungs of the mothers were
already been filed with n harmful chemicals which made it tough for the new born to
survive in that condition.

Ethical position
As when all the ethical concern is been acknowledged their can be seen that all the
mistakes has been done by the company. The report which was been made to know the issues
and the reasons of the case UCC has came out with a result that their was the no proper
management in the companies working (Sinha, and Neeraj Jha, 2020).Their has not been given
a proper training to the staff and their were no proper supervision in that factory. When being
ought to see that the company use to follow various methods and areas that implies their has
been made that the company should follow all the ethics and norms and would have taken care of
all the chemicals which were being used. The company was well aware about the danger that has
been set and the consequences if any hazard happens still they had not taken any proper care is
lack of ethics and their moral values. And due to that careless act of the company many of the
innocents has lost their life for no reason.
CONCLUSION
In this report it is concluded that, Business ethics provides various morals and culture that
are needed to be followed by the company in order to run their business properly. Their should
be provided proper guidelines and culture to the companies in order of their working. Bhopal gas
tragedy was the dangerous event happened in the history. As their should be taken care of all the
guidelines and rules by the UCC their was lack of supervision and guidance by the company and
that resulted in taking the life of innocents and harming their life for years.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Island, T., 2020. A Toxic Hotspot on the River Periyar in Kerala: Corporate Crimes in God's
Own Country. Water Conflicts in India: A Million Revolts in the Making.
Jayanthi, K., 2018. On the Ecological Footprint: Media and Environment. A Handbook of
Journalism: Media in the Information Age.
Raza, G. and Singh, S., 2017. Current status of public understanding of science: Results of
Kumbh Mela survey studies. In Bridging the Communication Gap in Science and
Technology (pp. 133-145). Springer, Singapore.
Saxena, A., 2019. Ethics in science: Pedagogic issues and concerns. Springer Nature.
Singh and et. al., 2018. Integrated Sensors for Risk Assessment in Industries and Residential
Sectors: A Review. In Intelligent Communication, Control and Devices (pp. 411-417).
Springer, Singapore.
Sinha, A.K. and Neeraj Jha, K., 2020. Environmental laws and their compliance in road
projects. Journal of Legal Affairs and Dispute Resolution in Engineering and
Construction, 12(1), p.04519050.