The Industrial Disaster That Makes Chernobyl Look Like Kindergarten

until I think, I think you just revealed it. I did a little bit. If you know much about this particular disaster. No, no, not your call that disaster. Well, I'm I'm glad that you first of Jamie Loftus, co host of the Bechtel Cast. Yeah, the the actress and and creative visionary behind a one woman show that's going to be in Scotland soon. Boss whom is girl? Yeah, August Baby, come out, Scotland Heads, Scotland heads, check her out. Um. Yeah,

it's actually I'm I'm really glad that you guessed Chair Nobyle. Um, because I think a lot of people, having heard that intro, would have guest Chair Noble and Judging by the state of my Twitter mentions a month or so ago. I think about everybody I know was watching chair Noble. One it's because Jared's Jared was it Jared Harris? Um, it's because he's uh, sexy daddy, and people love sexy daddy's on TV. I know everybody loves a sexy dad. Sometimes

I adopt children just to be sexier. Yeah, don't take care of them, don't raise them, just adopt him. Well, that sounds extremely negligent, and um, honestly, off, I love it. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I haven't seen the chair Nobile TV show yet. I am going to watch it. I just haven't have time to get into it. Um. And a lot of people have begged me to do an episode on cher Nobile, and I expect I will one of these days because it's it's a really terrible disaster. There were a lot

of bastards, you know, behind it. Uh. But I think most people who watched the series but didn't do much outside reading on Chernobyl would be surprised to learn that the the immediate death toll from the disaster was quite a lot lower than I think. TV dramatizations might lead you to believe. UM, the explosion killed two people directly. UM. Another twenty nine died in the hospital in a few

days following the disaster. UM. And that's it as far as a direct death toll from like the actual meltdown itself, actually kind of no big deal. Well I wouldn't say that, um, but it is, it is. It is, like the long term health consequences are a little bit harder to pin down. Can I put you on record as Chernobyl n b D. Yeah, Chernobyl n b D in fact maybe good, maybe maybe great? Okay, yeah, uh no. As of like two thousand eleven, there have been a total of twenty eight deaths due to acute

radiation syndrome and another fifteen fatal cases of child thyroid cancer. UM. Now, because radiation lasts a very long time, the eventual death toll from Chernobyl decades from now will probably number into the thousands. Uh. In two thousand sixteen, the World Health Organization estimated the eventual death toll of Chernobyl at around four thousand people. UM. It's pretty serious disaster, very bad, Yeah, terrible tragedy. But today we're going to talk about a disaster.

The dwarfs chare Nobyl, a calamity many times deadlier than the worst nuclear disaster in human history, with longer lasting catastrophic impacts on the people who live around it. Today we are talking about the worst industrial disaster in the history of our species. Today we're talking about Bopaul India. You've heard of bow Paul, I have not. Oh good, I'm glad to hear this new disaster to mester m everybody. We all are. That's a disaster capitalism, baby, Oh, I

love it. Oh, I would get I would pay thirty dollars for a T shirt that says disaster capitalism and you think too hard about how it was made? Sophie, Can we get the T shirt? People on that? What do you? What do you? What do you do that to my dream? Sophie. But I'll do it and then I'll put it in the bechtelcast store. We'll sell it with another show. Yeah, just cash that check on somebody

else's account. So, uh. The question I want everybody to ask themselves sort of at the end of this episode and kind of be thinking about as we go through this story. Um, because this is something that I think about a lot, is why does every Western school kid learn the name Chernobyl, but nobody knows. Are very few people in the West have heard of bow paul Um. So let's keep that keep that one in your head as we go through this. Bopaul is a city the

capital of the Indian state of Madya Pradesh. Uh It's known as the City of Lakes and is famed for being one of the greenest cities in all of India. It's a little bit like India's Portland, um, you might say, at least geographically um. In the early nineteen eighties, it was home to more than a million people. Now in the middle of the last century, India was hit with a major food crisis due to an exploding population and farmland that had still not really recovered from the damage

done to it by centuries of British misrule. So India launched the Green Revolution in the early nineteen sixties with the goal of using science and technology to reform their

agricultural practices and increase their crop yields. In the late sixties, the government started reaching out to foreign companies, offering them incentives to bring jobs to India, and one of the companies they approached was a Union Carbide, an American chemical giant with a name that like sounds like they're going to do to say that sounds like bad writing anytime. That's it's like, can someone just tell the people naming these companies? I guess now that like now things aren't

quite as on the nose sinister now. It's just like every evil company ends with an L y. Yeah yeah, yeah, like murder Le murder Lee is only slightly less subtle than Union Carbide. Union Carbide. Yeah. That that also sounds like a really good name for cartoon villain Union Carbide. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. We meet him early in the movie and he's like, my name's Union and you're like, oh,

that sounds good. And he's like Union carbide and you're like, oh, ship ship kill us, just like all carbides do exactly. M hm. Now, Union Carbide one of their big, big They made a lot of different chemicals, but one of their big money makers was a pesticide called seven and it's spelled se v I N Are you kidding me? Yeah, that's such a sinister name for a pesticide, isn't it. I mean, I don't, I don't like, but it's just it's really gaudy. Yeah, yeah, seven, Like why, I don't

know why. That's maybe because of the movie Seven with Brad Pitt, but it just sounds so yeah like met Ball evil, like really can't be evil anyways, Yeah, yeah, can't be exaggerated evil. A pesticide called seven, a pesticide called seven now seven was popular in Latin American popular in Asia. Um and so since it was so popular in Asia, from like a balance sheet standpoint, having a manufacturing plant in India made a lot of sense for

Union Carbide. So the company worked out in an arrangement with the Indian government where the Indian government would hold a twenty two percent steak in the Union Carbide subsidiary company that was formed to manage the plant, Union Carbide

India Limited. There was a great excitement around the deal at first, and Union Carbide began to market their products using the slogan science helps build a new India, which is again so fucking sinister, Like god, yeah, it's just when people are so villainous they don't even care if they come off that way. That is they were, they were inadvertently foreshadowing. This just sounds like have you seen have you seen Paddington? To Robert no way of not

Paddington to about this. It's basically a rehashing of this. It sounds like, no, it's uh, this is more Caitlin Tonto's department. But in Paddington to Hugh, Hugh Grant plays this over the top villain who sounds like you would have a pesticide called seven and say and say like quick, like a quippy villain. Yeah. Yeah, Also an incredible dance number. Well that's good. That's good, Hugh Grant, you say yes, yes.

And the career defining role. Yeah, that's that's good because his career needed some definition after that garbage he put out in the nineties. I see, I can. I can rarely tell the difference between uh, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. And that's my feminism as I understand it. Uh, if water rolls off of its back, it's Colin Firth. If you throw it in water and it floats, Okay, that's very helpful, thank you. So water bottle to test whether or not it's Colin Firth or Hugh Grant. So. Construction

of the Union Carbide plant started in nineteen sixty nine. Now, the plant's purpose would be to manufacture carborrell which was the active ingredient in the popular pesticide seven, and another chemical called alid carb for a pesticide named Timmock. Both bug poisons required large amounts of a regular poison to manufacture. The key ingredient was something called methyl isocyanate, which is an inspeakably deadly gas at like room temperatures uh m I see, as we will refer to it in most

of this episode. Is colorless and heavier than air. It functions similarly to fos gene gas, the deadliest poison gas of the First World War, and appropriately enough, phosgene gas is one of the byproducts of producing m I C. So they're making bug poison out of this unspeakably deadly uh poison gas critical ingredient. I am very curious about what their graphic design game is because this all sounds so sinister, and I'm wondering if it matches. You know.

There there are some ads I've seen. One of them was like a Latin American ad, and it's got like a smiling um like in the background, like a smiling Mexican farmer, and all white clothes with a bushel of fruits and vegetables. In his arm, and then in the foreground you've got the seven pesticide, which has been like anthropomorphized as a tiny person beating the ship out of bugs.

Oh my god, it's great. Okay, well, okay, didn't didn't disappoint. Yeah. Now, Initially, all the methyl ice so cianate used in the Bopaul plant was manufactured in the good old us of A. The site where the plant was constructed had only been zoned for light industry and commercial use, not for manufacturing tons and tons of poisonous chemical gas, as it was surrounded both by bodies of water and densely populated slums.

But by the late nineteen seventies, financial pressure from competition led Union Carbide to decide they should start manufacturing m I C in Bopaul. They called the process of refitting their plant to manufacture the raw materials and the final product backward integration. Now, Union Carbide instituted rigorous safety procedures in order to keep the plant and the citizens of Bopaul safe. There were two sirens allowed continuous one to warn members of the public and a quieter one to

announce problems to the factory workers. Within the plant itself, there were also a number of safety measures within the plant. A refrigeration unit to chill the m I C, thus condensing it into a liquid and rendering it much safer. Event gas scrubber to remove dangerous substances from the ands, industrial exhaust in a flare tower in order to burn off excess deadly gases. But the most important safety feature of the Union Carbide plant was a well trained workforce.

All plant operators were required to have a college degree in either a related scientific field or in engineering. They received six months of training to ensure that they had a working understanding of not just their own specific jobs, but the jobs of everyone else on their shift. This is critical in plants working with chemicals is dangerous as m I see. Workers obviously need to understand the whole plant so they could spot potential problems or mistakes before

a disaster occurs. Great. That sounds above board, leaps and bounds over there, enos very much better than the people are qualified to be doing their jobs. I like this. I actually I was looking up some of the advertising for this as well, and I found did you see the advertising campaign? That's just a gigantic white hand pouring a vial of chemicals onto. I swear to God, it's a gigantic white man's hand pouring chemicals onto India and build a new India, India. Union Carbide a hand in

things to come. Gigantic. I mean, she's a hand in things to come. Come on, people, it's just it's it's it's hideous. I mean, if you're if you're listening to this podcast and a Hollywood producer, there's your intro for the mini series based on Bopaul India. Just animate all of these horrifying ads and slogans. It's like, you know, there's there's another one with the huge white man's hand pouring chemicals onto a factory in India. What do you

supposed to mean? Oh, more jobs through science Hollywood, Netflix, you're just leaving money on the table if you don't produce this the Yeah, please check out the very menacing white man's hand advertising for Union Carbide. It is it is of fying. Wow, there's there's at least ten of them. He's holding a he's holding strawberries and wine, he's holding dirt in one, pouring chemicals in a lot uh one in his hands on fire, Oh cool, fingers of flame.

That pierce solid rock. What the fund is wrong with these people? Why would you why? This one is wild fingers a flame that pierced solid rock. Yes, through a dramatic new process known as jet piercing. Holes can now be burned straight through solid rock. The harder the rock, the more efficient the operation. A special combination of oxygen, fuel and water does the job, and does it just the fraction of the time of the old drill attack. So there's a yeah, there's a flaming hand just punching

through rock. Cool. Cool, Okay, Well these all sound like great ads that were dreamed up by coked up people who had like a gut level intuition that their company was going to do something horrible. And what year are we in right now? For We're in like the nineteen seventies at this point, Like things get up and running. We're full on in Like this is a Don Draper joint. Yeah yeah, firehand punching through rock, got it? Yeah? Yeah.

So you know, I just walked through all of the kind of the safety features of the ba POL plant and on paper that's how everything worked. But you know, as I talked about earlier, increasing financial pressures led Union carbide to start cutting costs, and the easiest place to

cut was basic safety procedures. In nineteen seventy six, the two trade unions that represented the plants workers sent out letters of complaint to their managers and the Indian Ministry of Labor, talking about unsafe levels of pollution within the plant. They received no response. The nineteen eighties started, and Union Carbides financial woes continued, conditions that the factory began to degrade further as wages were cut and standards for workers

started dropping. Union Carbides stopped require all of their employees to have degrees. Six months of training turned into eight weeks. In nineteen eighty one, things had gotten bad enough that fos gene gas spewed out of a badly maintained holding tank and into the face of a worker. He ripped off his mask in a panic and died horrifically three days later. His managers yeah terrible. His managers, of course, management of the plant blamed him because he'd removed his

mask after getting sprayed in the face with poison. UH. The union pointed out that the faulty valve had been responsible for the accident, and that the plant had not provided the worker with proper protective gear, so the mask would not have done much if he'd left it on his face. Plant management ignored this, of course, they does it sounds very inconvenient. Sounds very inconvenient for them. In January of nineteen eighty two, there was another false gene leak.

Twenty four workers were hospitalized, but at least this time nobody died. Workers began to agitate for better safety precautions. In February of nineteen eighty two, and M I C leak injured another eighteen workers. In August of the same year, a chemical engineer suffered burns to thirty of his body from another m I C leak. Leaks continued to happen

every month or so, injuring workers at a steady pace. Now, if you were a responsible corporation, you might say, boy, the monthly poison gas leaks might be a sign that something is awry with our factory, and perhaps major changes should be made. But what if you were the type of company whose mascot is a gigantic Caucasian hand, what would you what would you do if that were that

were more your vibe? Well, uh, I think you would continue cutting costs uh and I think this is we're getting to one of the most fucked up crazy things of this whole story. So Union Carbide, to their credit, did make some concessions for the health and well being of their Indian employees. It provided them with twice yearly medical exams from the plant doctor, which sounds sounds great. They did some year in tests that sounds like some

bare minimum stuff that never happens. It was. It was a little less than bare minimum because while they were given blood and urine tests, workers were never actually given the results of their exams. UH. Union Carbide India management put out brochures advising employees that they could develop a resistance to poison by drinking six or seven glasses of milk per day and eating a lot of fish and eggs. What milk? What is the logic behind that? Is it?

It's just like I'm like a mommy thing like shut up and drink your milk and there's no way and you'll never die. By this, Union Carbide knows that the plant's not going to be there forever. They've got a couple of years more and they're gonna gradually kind of like pull all the assets out of it and shut it down, and they the unions are agitating for expensive work to make the plant safe and stop killing workers and stuff. So this was sort of a delaying tactic.

We're not going to give them any money or better medical care. Tell them to drink milk again, so over the top villainous. Yeah, it's really fucked up, Like you can pick you're someone in a gigantic like money thrown thing, like, just tell them to drink milk. I don't care, and drink milk. It's amazing. Did they provide the milk? Why would you do that? No, of course not hate it. Yeah,

it's awful. And at the same time, by the time we're through with this, you'll barely remember that because of how fucked up everything else is like this fucking story. By the end of two most of the original m I C operators had resigned workers from other union carbide plants without the proper training and experience to work with such a dangerous chemical, were brought in to manage the plant. They received fourteen days of training. That's clearly enough, jeez.

Due to fears of industrial espionage, these new workers did not have access to manuals that told them how to do their job. Only the manager could access the manual, which was of course printed in English, a language not spoken by the majority of the workers. Cool. Cool, I mean, I mean it seems fair to I love a good tale of oppressing the poor, especially when it's being done by evil, wet American like milk. Oppressing the poor does a body good. That'll be funny to the three or

four people who remember that old milk industry campaign. I do, I do remember it. Yeah, I'm still stuck on the milk thing. I mean, I just it's fucking wild. God, have someone punched that up. At least have someone punch up this villainy. It's it's coming in a little stale for me a little bit. Yeah. At this point, the union card by plant in Bopaul was already dangerously ill maintained, as I think we've established, But company management decided there

were still more costs to be cut. They started slashing worker training even more. According to a U. C. Davis paper by Ingrid Eckerman on working conditions in the plant quote, during the training period, technicians were treated as casual workers. After the training, they were only paid an hourly rate.

A technician who accepted a job at the m I C plant got a paper about receiving six months of training, but after five weeks he was asked to stop the training and to take charge as a full fledged plant operator. In the matter of promotions, individuals with little experience but with unquestioning loyalty to the bosses were invariably selected before others. A demand for extra safety precautions led to warnings that

appointments could be terminated in nineteen eight three. In nineteen eighty four, there were personnel reductions in order to cut costs. Workers were encouraged to take early retirement. Three hundred temporary workers were laid off and another hundred fifty permanent workers were put in a pool to be assigned to jobs as needed. The operating shifts were cut from twelve to six and maintenance shifts from six to two. So they

just cut out two thirds of the maintenance shifts. Like, we don't need that on this deadly poison, right, we don't need anyone checking our work. No, they're okay, So do we know? Like what what am I trying to say? I like, are are they dodging existing labor laws? Or are the labor laws in India at this time uh, sort of allowing this to happen, or is the company having to sort of like dodge around stuff. Both of those things are simultaneously true. So they are skirting some

laws and regulations, primarily about safety. Um, and they're able to get away with it because of their connections in the Indian government and because of the amount of money that that this all represents. So both of those things are true. Um. You know what else is true, Jamie? What's true? Robert? None of the sponsors of this show have contributed to an industrial disaster of the ski Can you be so sure, Robert? This is a terrible ad player.

These advertisers are not guilty of any major disaster that we're currently aware of. Of course, this is always subject to change, and it's entirely possible the next ad will

be a Coke Industries ad. And one of the things Coke Industry has gotten attacked for is that at their oil refining plants they were doing the same thing that Bow Paul was doing, where they were giving people screenings through levels of toxic chemicals in their blood, but not giving them the results of their blood tests, and so people died because they got sick. But Coke industries wanted to ring a little bit of extra productivity out of them before they went to get treated. Yeah, how fun.

How fun? So if if the AD is for coke industries, they have in fact contributed to industrial disasters on a significant scale. But you know, Dick pills, haven't Yeah, Dick pills. Do you do brain pills? We just turned down brain We don't do brain pills. I won't do brain pills. I'm fine with dick pills. I think that's ethical, but no brain pills. We turned down almost everything, which is why we're still poor. You know, I I don't. I don't have much of a conscience. I want so brain pills. Uh,

I think I love Dick pills. Dick pills, I would, yeah, I don't think we would want an offer for that. Yeah, we should get I hope that we get some you know, dick pill offers some really any any genitalia pills were to talk any any genital related products. Yeah, I want. I wanted to be like an intersectional, inclusive Uh scary pill. I mean speaking of the milk industries ads, I wish there were just a genitalia industry that we could we could plug for big genital. Yeah, just plug the concept

of genitalia that came straight down from Big Genital. You can't trust him. Yeah, b g all right, I think we put enough distance in between my terrible first segue and in the ads. Now it's time for products. We're back. We're talking about directions. Uh, but we don't need to keep talking about directions. No. That's the beautiful thing about a conversation about directions. It can end it at any time. It can end at any time, much like an direction unless you have Dick bills. Oh my own a little

loved that one. Good. I I did that one for all of the uncles and also Bob Dole, who was a big listener of this podcast, huge fan of the Yeah, he's got merch. Yeah, thank you, Bobby. All right, let's let's get back into the into the tail here so uh. Chemical accidents continue to pace throughout the early eighties. In October of nineteen eighty two, an operator was burned and two workers exposed to gases during an m I C leak.

In four there were numerous additional leaks of m I C, chlorine gas, fosgene gas, and other deadly poisons, often multiple poisons would leak out at the same time, which is you know, I love I love synergy, and the synergy of deadly poisons is you know, all synergy. I love chef salad of death and despair. Okay, make deadly poisons work together again. That's kind my election slogan. Yeah, there's so many, I mean, yeah, any any story about like

factory worker um abuse and neglect. It's just it's just the fucking worst. Yeah, it's a fucking nightmare. And this is the worst of those stories in the history of the human race. So yeah, And of course, as always, it's like because it's like, I don't know, I never I never learned about this, because even though I must have learned about like the Triangle factory fire nine million times,

I've heard about Chernobyl a million times. Um so much as a race from American education or maybe I'm just stupid, but I think, no, no, no, this one, this one is not in the textbooks that we tend to get. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure if you get like Ocean training, they talk about this motherfucker. But I intend to do By the way, oh good good, we need that for podcasting. There's a room full of poison behind you, So it's just poisonous takes thoughts um all that? No, I mean there's literal

poison as in the room behind you. Where because why we can't go out on the balcony. And that's why we can't go out on the balcony. It's full of poison. I forgot. Yeah, I always want to go. Wait, don't tell me that I gained so much joy from the poison room. Wait, where is the poison room in relation? It's it's it's just just there. Why is that a poison room? Anyway? Speaking of poison rooms, let's get back

to Bow Paul, India. So as we already talked about the first group to blow the whistle about the dangers of the Beau Paul Union carbide plant, where the plant workers themselves, as I already said, they were organized into two competing trade unions, which is an unusual state of affairs that existed primarily because it made life easier for

the plant management. After the leak in nineteen two, one of the trade unions printed six thousand posters and put them up all around the city of bow Pall warning denizens of the dangers at their door. One union leader went on a hunger strike at the entrance of the factory. According to Eckerman's paper quote, the result was that all political and trade union meetings inside the factory were banned. One you see staff member burnt the principal union's tent

in the ensuing scuffle. Several people were injured. The two trade union leaders were laid off. Meetings and processions were held throughout the city, as the plant staff regarded the plant as one of the safest ships in the modern industrial fleet. The demonstrations were considered to be a campaign by agitators wanting higher salaries and shorter working hours, not agitators. Not agitators wanting more money and a better quality of life. Yeah, and I guess again, so are what is the state

of unions in India at this point? I mean better than the state of unions in the US and two thousand nineteen, Oh good, Well, I mean that's saying practically nothing. But you know what, the world's got what three years left? Anyways, year and a half. I was thinking that in two years, I was like, I was thinking about, like, at this point, why would you follow your dreams? You know, like you might as well just like write it out I follow

my short term dreams of like having enough intoxicans. That's the only way, right, Like you just had to like, uh, if you if you don't have many kids, just live fast because you can't. Like, don't go back to school now, Yeah, don't go back to school. Yeah, don't. Don't read a book instead of going to school, invest in some really good bolt cutters, one of those like five pairs that won't conduct electricity, so you can snap through like the gates of a rich person's house, even if it's like

mind or electrified or something like that. You guys have the scariest advice in the entire world. I'm just saying, a better investment than school at this point is increasing your ability to do take vengeance. Every other conversation we have like you should buy a weapon. I mean, bolt cutters aren't inherently a weapon. They have a lot of you to bring a weapon on a bus to Phoenix. I was like, I'm not going to do that. Phoenix is a dangerous city. I find it to be dangerous.

It's filled with Arizonans, the deadliest people in America other than Floridians and Texans and Oklahoma's. Yeah, they were fast and Louisianans. They're a very high concentration of Hooters in Phoenix as well, because I went I went to a Hooters and then across the street there was Scottish Hooters, but it went by like some other names scooters, scooters. Oh you mean like the tilted kilt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a bunch of those in the Southwest. Yeah. We

had a lot in Texas to wild yep. So with the union's hobbled, Union Carbide management was free to lay off even more experienced workers and cut even more costs in how their plant was managed. One example, the best industry practices for storing methyl isocyanate m i C was to store it in fifty two gallon drums and have like a lot of small drums rather than one gigantic storage bat. This was considered safer because it reduced the

amount that could get out during an individual leak. But Union Carbide was like, all those fifty two gallon drums are gonna cost a shipload of money and it's going to take more time. Let's just put it in one gigantic container, even though that's way less safe and is explicitly what every expert on the chemical says, no, don't fucking do that. We're let's just do it anyway because

it will save us some bucks. So uh. Union carbides own technical manual for m I C warned that this was literally the most dangerous way to store the substance. While small drums of the gas do not require refrigeration, it is absolutely necessary for safe bulk storage. Unfortunately, the refrigeration unit designed to do this was, according to her later report by the Indian government's chief scientists, small and ineffective.

In late night, it was turned off entirely after plant managers talked with their bosses at the American headquarters of Union Carbide and determined it was unnecessary. The refrigeration unit was determined to be unnecessary because shutting it off would save money on electricity and allow them to reroute the free onto other parts of the plant and save even more money. Connecting this refrigeration unit added whole pennies to

the shareholder value of Union Carbides. This is like the equivalent of just like lighting Titanic lifeboats on fire, Yeah, just cause need more room. It's like lighting those lifeboats on fire as you like do shots with the captain to convince him to get as close to that iceberg as he can. Say. Yeah, like it's like you want to throw a beer, adding taking body shots off the cap ridiculous. So Union Carbides manual for m I C did not include any guidance as to what employees might

do in the event of a massive leak. Fairly little was known about the chemical, so the manual simply suggested dumping it into a spare storage tank. It noted there may be other situations not covered above. The situation will

determine the appropriate action. We will learn more and more as we gain actual experience, which is a great thing to hear in the manual for a deadly chemical producing By the time, my god, love it of it, this is there's no and and I'm imagining there's no like formal regulatory body that would say oversee something like this. Are they even pretending to have any sort of regular like regulation. They're definitely pretending. Okay, well, I'm like at

least show some some effort. Oh yeah, they fake it a little bit, not a whole lot, because again, like it's India and rules are a lot less strict there. Uh, but they do fake it to an extent. Um and I want to note because like I've spent a decent amount of time in India and I really love the country. Um. And there's a lot of very valid criticism about how loose a lot of the rules about worker health and safety are and have been going back decades. Totally fair

to hit them on that. There were also and are also a lot of people in the country who carry a lot about reforming that. And in the case of the ticking time bomb that was the Bopaul Union carbide plant, there was a heroic journalist in addition to those like a union workers who tried to blow the whistle. Uh. Now, this journalists name was Raj Kumar Kaswani and he wrote for a local Hindu weekly paper called the Septak Report.

And in late night two he started receiving tips about the poor maintenance and constant leaks inside the Union carbide facility. Rush Kumar began to investigate and became convinced that an apocalyptic danger awaited the city of beau Pal. In September and October, he ran a series of articles with the most heartbreaking headlines imaginable. The first article was titled save

Please Save this City. The second article was titled Beau Paul on the Mouth of a Volcano, and the third was titled if you don't understand, you will be wiped out rash. Yeah, like that's you really can be more directed. A title no Buried leads with this guy. Yeah, he's setting the tone. I mean, I'm glad that he did, because especially it sounds like the union workers are already out here saying this is happen. And then it's just like if the company and the culture and the local

government care, you're going to die. Like seriously, not kidding, We're all about to fucking die. Please read, please, love God do something. Uh. As we all know from the last couple of years, especially nobody listened to roj Kumars. Uh. Yeah. By nine four m I C production at the Beau Paul plant was down to about a quarter of its height. Cost cutting features had reduced maintenance shifts to roughly a quarter of their necessary frequency and robbed the plant of

most of its highly trained staff. Mr Parik, a former project manager at the plant, reported the whole industrial culture of union carbide at Bow Paul went down the drain. The plant was losing money. Top management decided that saving money was more important than safety. Maintenance practices became poor and things generally got sloppy. The plant didn't seem to have a few sure, and a lot of skilled people

became depressed and left as a result. And this was the situation on December two when things started to go badly wrong at the plant. And how many people are working at this plant? Oh, not that many people. There's only six folks on staff. Yeah. The first sign of this was in pressure readings from the gas tanks that registered at five times the normal levels sum one day. The senior operator on duty said he did not consider this a problem. Another worker who saw the same readings

half an hour later, had the same reaction. He later recalled to the New York Times there was a continual problem with instruments. Instruments often didn't work, so they didn't they didn't see like it was showing elevated levels of gases, but it kind of always did because all of the instruments were garbage, so they just didn't think of it

as a problem. Now, it might have helped in this case if the Bopaul plant had enjoyed a complex computer monitoring system to check for things like gasses and This is where I and out the Union Carbide operated a second, almost identical chemical plant producing m I C in West Virginia. It was also known as the sister plant to the one in Bopaul, and that plant did in fact have a sophisticated computer monitoring system to quickly warn staff members

about leaks. Meanwhile, in India, Union Carbide preferred to rely on workers to notice leaks when their eyes started a water from all the poison in the air. Oh my god, yeah, I laughter about what's coming is like the like like the anxious reaction that comes because of the horrors. But like I wonder which country the company cared about. More impossible to say, no, need to bring race into this, Jamie, Yeah, no, no, no, I'm sorry. That was a reach and I and I

can't apologize enough. At am December, two workers in the methyl isocyanate structure on FET from the control room noticed that their eyes had started to water. One operator US named Singh spotted a liquid drip and a yellowish white gas. He went to the control room at PM and told his boss that they had another M I C leak. His boss and Mr Quareshi told him that he would

look into it after having his tea. Uh, this is literally Titanic, Robert not to not to, but it's like Iceberg right ahead, and he's like, okay, let me just finish my beer first. This is going to make Titanic look like a ski do crash. Well, Titanic in retrospect, like a lot of rich people died, and we can't you know, we can't fault We can't fault the ocean for claiming the rich. No, no, I'm I'm alright with

that actually, but sorry, not not not to say that yet. Anyway, no one looked into the league until after am, once management had finished with their tea. And while we can and should mock management for waiting until after tea to check in a poison gas leak, I should note here that it's likely none of them would have known what

to do if they had checked earlier. The positions of second and third shift maintenance supervisor had been eliminated several days before the disaster, so there was actually no one on duty whose job it was to fix this stuff. In fact, on the night of December second, there was not a single trained engineer at the Union Carbide plant in Bo Paul, so the people whose job it was to maintain the plant did not know how to maintain it.

They knew nothing about M I C or fostergene, the two deadly gases stored by the ton and enormous cylinders. The supervisor was initially convinced that no leak was possible because they'd stopped production for the night. The New York Times spoke to several of these workers. Quote. M. K. Jane, an operator on duty on the night of the accident, said that he did not understand large parts of the plant.

His three months of instrument training and two weeks of theoretical work taught him to operate only one of several methyl isocyanate systems. He said. If there was a problem in another M I C system, I don't know how to deal with it, said Mr Jane, a high school graduate. Raman Khan, the operator who washed the improperly sealed pipe a few hours before the accident, said, I was trained for one particular area and one particular job. I don't

know about other jobs. During training, they just said, these are the valves you were supposed to turn, This is the system in which you work. Here are the instruments and what they indicate that's it. Okay, Yeah, so the whole, the whole training was done away with. Yeah, basically. So in order to talk about how the disaster started and what happened next, I'm going to quote from a National Institute of Health article on what happened because it kind

of describes it mechanically. Quote. The vent gas scrubber, a safety device designed to neutralize toxic discharged from the m I C system, had been turned off three weeks prior. Apparently a faulty valve had allowed one ton of water for cleaning internal pipes to mix with forty tons of m I C. A thirty ton refrigeration unit that normally served as a safety component to cool the m I C storage tank had been drained of its coolant for

use in another part of the plant. Pressure and heat from the vigorous exothermic reaction in the tank contain you to build The gas flare. Safety system was out of action and had been for three months. At around one am December third, loud rumbling reverberated around the plant as a safety valve gave way, sending a plume of m I C gas into the early morning air. Jesus Christ now it didn't kill the workers at the plant. This

is not like Chernobyl. It's much worse because the gas, which was heavier than air, floated down to the slums surrounding the chemical plant and into the lungs of thousands upon thousands of sleeping citizens. The wind blew the poisonous gas as far and wide, covering an area of almost forty square kilometers. Hundreds choked to death in their sleep as their lungs literally liquefied and drowned them. Thousands more awoke, eyes, burning,

mouth's frothing, driven nearly mad by a choking terror. Few of us can imagine. Nearly four thousand people died on the first night, as many people as the World Health Organization estimates will die in total from the Chernobyl disaster over the next several decades. Jesus Christ. Yeah, kind of frustrating. We don't learn about this one. It's yeah, extremely telling that we don't learn about this one. That's oh my god, four so four thousand and and the poison acts in

a matter of hours. Yeah, jee Now, since m I C is twice as heavy as air, children were poisoned first and had the most trouble escaping the deadly gases, and as bad as the leak was, it should have been easy from most of the victims to escape. A wet cloth over the mouth would have acted as a crude gas mask long enough for virtually everyone affected to

climb to higher ground and get above the gas. But no one in Bopal knew these facts because Union Carbide had not bothered to spend the money to inform the citizens about what they might need to do if the giant poisoned gas plant in their city ever exploded. And that wouldn't have even cost anything like barely anything to print. Yeah, you'd had to print some stuff, and yeah, you just have to I guess yeah, by one a couple of

ads in a newspaper. So coral doctors were at first not even aware of what chemical people had been poisoned with, because Union Carbide had not bothered to have a little sit down with any of them either. According to an India Today report on the disaster, quote, the public siren was put on around one am, but only for a few minutes, and after that the muted siren took over. This was per Carbide procedure, which was evolved to avoid

alarming the public around the factory over tiny leaks. But in the present case, it was gross negligence that the continuous siren was put off. Although it was already known by then that M I C was escaping in huge quantities, it was not until two am, one hour later, that the public siren was sounded again on full blast to alert the already terrified, injured, and dying in the city. So that's cool. That just seems aggressive at that point, like, yeah,

people know something's up. Yeah, because they're dying by the hunter. Everyone they know just died. You don't need to turn on the siren now, asshole. So um, this is time for an AD plug. This is a really dark time for an AD plug. Maybe our darkest AD pivot of all time. I mean, this is just like devastating. This is so yeah, it's so crushing. Yeah, well, I mean I just I don't know. Every day I learned about something new that was just completely omitted from my education,

so I could learn misinformation about the founding fathers. And it makes me angry, but you know, but you know what really comforts me in these moments of anger, Products and services. Products and services. We're back on the fucking train. Baby. All right, now some ads, we're back. We're back, and things are not I think things are not going well. Things are not going great. The alarms have been sounded after four thousand people have died. Yeah, just you know,

four thousand people or so. Yeah. So in order to like kind of put together or provide a picture of exactly what was going on and what it was like to be at ground zero for this, I'm going to quote from an India Today report quote. The siren was heard by Sayed Khan as he ran away, leaving his family coughing and sputtering. By the time he returned in the morning, his father, mother, and two brothers were dead.

Only a sister survived. Sasa Khan of Jayaprakesh Nagar, who had fled in blind panic, leaving his wife and four daughters to the vapors, returned to find all but two girls dead. Chiv Narrang, a machine operator at the straw products factory, lost a three month old boy, but seven of his twelve neighbors, all of whom shared a four room l shaped hut, died. Among the dead were Nathu ram Ka, the owner of the hut, his wife and two children, Kuswa died because he couldn't leave his wife's side.

She had just delivered their second child a few hours earlier. Oh my god. Stories like that are repeated across the city of bow Pall to thousands upon thousands of people and families. Now, the bo Pall accident was the first time that doctors saw the effective M I C gas on human beings on at any kind of scale. Those who died the first day had lungs that were as much as three times their normal weight. The autopsy team suffered gas poisoning as they cut open bodies that were

essentially filled with chemical weaponry. An exact death toll for the immediate wake of the bow Pall disaster will never be known. Estimates rage as high as ten to fifteen thousand in the first few days, with another fifteen to twenty thousand premature deaths over the next twenty years. So at this point we're looking at thirty to forty thousand dead conservatively right now. Again, sometimes the death toll of chernobyl and uh just I mean uh morbid question from me,

um the four thousand people who die immediately? Does that have to do? Would like range with the closeness to the or or is there any like indication of why certain people survived and others didn't? Or these are the people who you know, mostly they're asleep. They live very close to where the leak happens, so the gas hits them first, and they just choked to death on their lungs. And a lot of people, yeah, got hit and got hurt, but like got away, many of whom were still hurt

enough that they died within a few days. Um. Others just suffered injuries that would kill them five, ten, fifteen years later. Um. Yeah. In the immediate wake of the disaster, Union Carbides set to work trying to avoid any blame for this calamity their incompetence and mismanagement had brought into the world. It first tried to shift the blame by blaming Union Carbide India, claiming that the plant had been

built and was operated wholly by the subsidiary corporation. They also floated theories that an unknown seek extremist group had attacked the plant had caused the disaster. Then they blamed angry employees, essentially trying to shift the blame to the union workers who tried to warn them about the plants issues back in nineteen. They tried to explain an unknown seek extreme misgray, like, just blame the sieks. Yeah, let's

just yeah, pretty frustrating, blame the union. So the first lawsuit against Union Carbide landed on December seventh, less than a week after the disaster. It was filed by an American attorney in the US Court. The first great piece of journalism on the disaster was published in January by The New York Times, based on dozens of interviews with plant workers, Union Carbide representatives, and members of the Indian government.

They were the first paper to report on much of what I talked about today, the cost cutting, elimination of trained personnel, shut down of basic safety equipment, and failure to warn the community. Quote when you questioned in recent days about the shortcomings disclosed in the inquiry by The Times, a spokesman at the Union Carbide corporate headquarters in Danbury characterized any suggestion of the accidents causes a speculation and

emphasized that Union Carbide would not contribute to that speculation. Cool. Cool, all. The spokesman went on to state responsibility for plant maintenance, hiring and training of employees, establishing levels of training and determining proper staffing levels rest with the plant management. M mmmmm, m oh, it's it's actually India's fault. It's actually India's fault.

Let's let's code now. The time spoke with VP GO call the ce CEO of the Union Carbide India to try and parse out just how independent the so called subsidiary really was during his interview. They noted quote at perhaps a dozen points during a two hour interview, he read his answers into a tape recorder, saying he would inform the parent corporations Danbury headquarters of what he had said. He also made notes of some of his comments and said he would send him to Danbury for approval by

Union Carbide lawyers. That doesn't sound totally independent investing. I know, it sounds totally above board. It sounds like standard practice. And yeah, it seems seems God it's legit and cool. Cannot talk about it. No, it's just so fucked up. This will not be our dark Yeah, rip roaring funnest episode. The things that you tell us, Robert, it's upset. Yeah,

it's not great. And then we're just supposed to go home after that, you know, go home maybe you get some bolt cutters, and then they only advice you have for coping is to buy bolt cutters. Everybody could use a pair of bolt cutters. That's all I'm saying. That's all I and Werner Herzog. Now. The New York Times further notes that Union Carbide had several direct representatives on the board of Union Carbide India, including an e v

P of the American company. Mr. Gokal confirmed that the Union Carbide Board of directors reviewed reports regularly from operations in their Indian subsidiary and made numerous safety decisions, such as the decision to shut down the refrigerator to save power and free on Yeah. In March of nineteen eighty five, the Indian government passed the Gas Leak Disaster Act, making the Indian government the only representative of victims in and

outside of India. Eventually, the government reached a settlement with Union Carbide. The company took moral responsibility and paid four hundred and seventy million dollars to the Indian government. Now, this was instantly controversial. For one thing, it was based on the idea that only three thousand people had died and a hundred and two thousand people had been permanently disabled. The real figure in both cases was, of course, several

times that high. The n I H notes quote upon announcing the settlement, shares of U c C rose two dollars per share, or seven percent in value. Had compensation in Bopaul been paid at the same rate that the Asbestos as victims were being awarded in U S courts by defendants, including U c C, which Mind Asbestos from nineteen sixty three to nineteen eighty five, the liability would have been greater than the ten billion the company was

worth and insured for in nineteen eighty four. By the end of October two thousand three, according to the Beau Paul Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Department, compensation had been awarded to five thousand, eight hundred people for injuries received in fifteen thousand, three d and ten survivors. Of those killed. The average amount to families of the dead was two dollars.

That doesn't even cover like funeral costs. But sure, and when and when things like that happened, especially, you're just like this is just like PR for them. It's not you know, it's just PR. Yeah, it's just just FTPR expense of Like, no, I think it's taken care of. Yeah, the fact that Union Carbi did not care about what had happened became even clearer UH in the immediate wake

or in the weeks following the disaster. See when you killed ten thousand or so people in the space of a handful of days, it tends to be bad for business. The BUPA plant had already been slated for decommissioning. They were slowly winding down production and removing equipment, but there were still thousands upon thousands of tons of toxic waste and equally toxic pesticide ingredients to be dealt with. Prior to this disaster, Union Carbide had dumped its waist into

twenty one unlined pits on the site. Now, this is fucked up by modern standards, but it should be said this was the standard practice in the US back then too. So unlike what their failure to install a computer monitoring system. We can't put that one down to Union Carbide valuing Indian lives less than American ones. However, industry wid industry wide stupidity yea UH. In nineteen seventy seven, though the company built three proper solar of operation ponds and started

piping waste directly in. These ponds had a liner, but it was thin and it broke immediately, which allowed the waste to seep into the ground and eventually into the groundwater. Farmers complained that the runoff was killing their cows and their crops, and then when the disaster hit, Union Carbide abandoned the factory and all of the poison inside it. There are literally pictures of giant sacks of toxic chemicals that they left lying out, unguarded and exposed to the elements.

Many of those sacks are still lying around the factory to this day. The tanks and vats filled with deadly poison weren't emptied until nineteen eighty nine. Sixty of the tons of the worst waste was finally locked up in two thousand five. The vast majority. Yeah so my head, my heart, okay, yeah, uh so after this happens is the area in fact people aren't allowed to live there or people living Oh of course not no, no, nothing, That everything was just as bad, and that people were

moving in. Yeah. The next sort of these huge bags of toxic waste, almost nothing was cleaned up the factory remained. The poison seeped into the groundwater, and as you might expect, leaving all this poison around in the middle of a densely populated city has had some long term negative consequences. Yeah, shockingly, I know. That's that one really threw me for a loop to In two thousand eighteen, Atlantic writer A poor Va Manda Villi wrote a great article about this called

the World's worst industrial disaster is Still Unfolding. She traveled to on a negar, a neighborhood directly across from the old chemical a plant. I'd like to read you the introduction from her article, as it does a superb job of humanizing the long term impact of all this poison. Please do From the wooden bed outside her two room house, money Be, the grand dam of Anna Nagar, has a

wide lens on the devastation. Money Be's bed is less than two feet from a massive pit that you sec filled with toxic sludge, close enough to witness the damage the Ganda Pani dirty water has wrought. Right next door is fifteen year old Faiza, who didn't speak for the first five years of her life and still has heart palpitations, dizzy spells, and headaches. The young woman who grew up two doors down Taba suum now has a toddler who doesn't eat much or speak or cry and has seizures.

Down the street is Obie, a spindley legged thirteen year old with black pustules all over his body, so painful and grotesque that he rarely leaves the house. Across the street from him is twelve year old Tasib, who was intellectually disabled. And then there's Najma the street sweet young woman who lost her mother to tongue cancer and now sits in front of her house all day, smiling and

occasionally shouting out guttural gibberous to passer by. And then there is the house where one has fused bones in her legs and another has a hole in her heart. And are they still? Are they still? They're living? They're still living in the area Yep yep slum and its slums that are around there. This is not where either. It's a big city. There's a lot of nice parts of Beau Paul. The slums where poor people can afford to live, many of them are directly around and surrounding

the plant right, And the plant is still operational. Or is it just there? It's just there, It's nobody's cleaned it up there and toxic waste like a fucking like like an abandoned amusement park that's killing people. Yep, that sounds like a horror movie. I would an abandoned amusement park that's killing people. Yeah, I didn't see that movie. It's like a state in King book. Yeah, absolutely, Okay.

The current data suggests that forty four communities in India at least have had their groundwater corrupted by toxic levels of solvents from the old Union Carbide Factory or plant. Canadian researchers are in the process of conducting a long term study and mortality, birth defects, fertility can to are

another ailments caused by the old plant. The study, which has involved upwards of a hundred thousand people to day, suggests that folks who were exposed to the gas or to the water near the plant have ten times the rate of cancer compared to other groups. So on a long term basis, the kids who grow up in the slums around the plant and drink the water have the same cancer risk as people who were actually gassed on the night of the disaster. Dal Chemical Company bought Union

Carbide in two thousand one. They merged with DuPont in two thousand seventeen. To that does sound safe, sounds like everything's going to be fine today. Dow claims that the responsibility for cleaning up the mess Union Carbide left behind lies with Union Carbide India, which is now called ever Ready Industries India. Ever Ready, for their part, blames Union Carbide and their owner Dal Chemical. Dow also regularly suggests that the state of Madhya Pradesh should be responsible for

cleaning up the site. The state claims they can't afford to do that and has convinced the federal government to name Dow in a curative petition demanding one point two billion as restitution for the original inadequate settlement. On their website, DOUST touts the old Union Carbide line that a disgruntled employee caused the accident. They steadfastly refused to admit any responsibility. Quote that acquired shares of Union Carbide in two thousand one, seven years after U c I I became ever Ready

Industries India Limited. Union Carbide had no assets in India at the time of the transaction with Dow down ever owned or operated the U c I L plant. Site activists, on the other hand, argue that when dowbot Union Carbide, they assumed all of the company's liabilities as well as his assets. It's unlikely that any satisfactory resolution to the case will be reached as long as Dow slash DuPont continues to have enough money for all of the lawyers.

A recent Greenpeace report estimated it would cost thirty million dollars to clean up the remaining waste at the old Union Carbide plant over a period of four years. Last year, Dow DuPont made eight five billion dollars in profits. Cool, well, I mean once if thousand involved, it seems to be like an outstanding thing. I'm wanting to watch a NASCAR race. All of a sudden, I'm like, really DuPont, Oh my god, yeah, big names, big names. Yeah, good good NASCAR suit that

DuPont company. Oh yeah, good lord. Well good to know that, you know, a hundred years later, you know, Union Carbide alive, alive and well unlike all of their casualties. Well like thirty years later. Well no, sorry, I was looking at the company was founded in Yeah, they've been around a minute. Yeah, yeah, and I was wondering too. This is again he had another morbid exercise. But uh, if you google Union carbide, I'm like, how much money do they spend trying to

push those results out of the first Google page? And they managed to get the bill pall disaster is not mentioned at all until uh six results down. Cool. Yeah, so if you're wondering, are they still evil? Yes, well that's great. Well how you feeling a out this all, Jamie?

I feel absolutely, I honestly feel sick to my stomach. Uh, this is I mean, I want to do more reading about this um and the fact that yeah, just that I can't believe that there's I mean not to you know, it's kind of false equivalence, but like, why have I seen so many documentaries about the Triangle Factory fire and

nothing about like it's just it's upsetting. I mean, Triangle shirtwaist is an important one to understand for like the history of the labor movement in the US, But I think Bo Paul is just as critical because it talks about what's still going on to this day. You know, the you can tie like that horrible garment factory fire in Bangladesh that killed all those people some of the same kinds of things going on in terms of like cost cutting, and just like they don't care as much

about those people, so less is done to protect them. Um, that's just kind of what happens. Well, I feel absolutely sick. How do you feel? Uh, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna pour some more coffee in a little bit. I should have we I don't know if we've mentioned this on Mike Get You've been wearing a fuzzy bathrobe this whole time? Yeah there, Robert, do you remember that time you told me about one of the most horrifying things I've ever heard about in my one human life whilst

wearing a fuzzy bathrobe? I mean I read about it whilst wearing a fuzzy bathrobe. I'm glad that you're comfortable. I we we we live in a system in which nightmares are allowed to occur on a daily basis because it's cheaper than trying to prevent them, and in a system that's sociopathic. There are two logical responses products and services, Well those are those are logical for other reasons. But the two logical responses are make yourself comfortable and buy

bolt cutters. I'm actually gonna do it. Someday. There's gonna I'm gonna. Okay, well, yeah, no, I I feel I feel terrible, but I love your robe, and I'm going to get some cutters. You can get, you know, decent ones for cheap. It's just the really nice ones won't trigger the alarms or set off the electronics and stuff. So like if you're depending on you know, how the collapse happens. Yeah, I'm just saying, are they small? They are? They like pocket size? I can't say I've ever used any.

You can get ones that are small enough to fit in a small backpack that aren't huge. Yeah. Yeah, they have a variety of sizes of bolt cutter's fun. Yeah, I might rhinestone handle. I might. I want to. I want to kind of shrim mine up and personalize it. The revolution should involved rhinestone bolt cutters. I feel strongly about that. I I think that, Yeah, that would be

a real, real iconic thing to do. Mhmm yeah. So uh, everyone listening at home, revolt in your own ways definitely consider it a pair of bolt cutters and a fuzzy bathrobe. Um god' sorry about this one. Gang. This was this was a this was extremely heavy. Yeah, it's a lot. Yes, you want to plug your plugables, Jamie. I mean it feels just wrong at this point, but yeah, but everything does. But yeah, I guess we we only have two years

to live, so I may as well. Um. Sure, you can listen to the Bechdel Cast with Caitlin and Durante and my podcast about the portrayal of women in movies every Thursday. Uh, you can go see my show Boss Home is Girl in Scotland and in London all summer long. And all that info is on my website Jamie loftus is Innocent dot com and Jamie want his help on Twitter. That's all beautiful. Well, I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at I right okay, sometimes tweeting about

bolt cutters. You can find this podcast on the internet, along with all of its sources at behind the Bastards dot com. You can find us on the Graham and the tweets at at Bastards pot. You can buy t shirts, cups, um gloves that you can use to along with your new bolt cutters at Publis dot com. Um. Uh, we don't have branded bolt cutters there yet, but I'll talk with Sophie about that. We'll see what we can do. M she's not, she's brilliant to the beautiful, beautiful, Well

until next week, stay angry and buy bolt cutters. I love about