Bhopal haunts us with lessons left half learnt

The shock of that gas leak 40 years ago should've ended industrial disasters in India and fended off air pollution as a threat. We should go the EU way on environmental regulation

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In the night of 2-3 December 1984, 40 tonnes of deadly methyl-isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal. Forty years on, it is widely considered the world's worst industrial disaster. Up to half a million people were affected by the leak. Some 3,000 of them may have died by a very conservative estimate. Tens of thousands were disabled—several thousand suffered permanent injuries to the eyes and lungs. A study of its long-term health effects (1985-1994) by the Bhopal Gas Disaster Research Centre of the Indian Council for Medical Research concluded: "The results show that the toxic gas exposees, for long after the exposure, continued to suffer from multisystem involvement but predominantly from respiratory, eye and gastro-intestinal disorders." Four decades later, it seems as if India has been sleep-walking through this grim anniversary year after year, although, given its horror, we should have long acted upon the lessons drawn. The biggest of these today is our need to open a conversatio