This December marks the 25th anniversary of the leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. The leak exposed half a million people to toxic gases, killing as many as 10,000 within three days and taking another 20,000-25,000 lives since then. Tens of thousands more, perhaps 200,000, have suffered maiming after-effects. When the leak occurred, most of the safety systems were off, and a cascade of human errors, structural deficiencies in the plant and regulatory laxity allowed a reaction to speed up and release a lethal mix of gases, including phosgene, hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide, and monomethyl amine.
Ranjit Devraj at Inter Press Service writes:
US Congressmen Tell Dow to Clean Up Bhopal
A campaign in the United States led by two girl victims from Bhopal, highlighting lingering toxicity left behind by the 1984 gas disaster in their city, has paid off with a group of 27 members of the U.S. Congress asking Dow Chemicals to clean up the site.
Sarita and Sareen, both in their teens, were taken on a 42-day tour of the U.S., starting Apr. 21, by the Bhopal Group for Information and Action (BGIA) so they could meet and interact with officials, academics and politicians in New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco and other cities.
Rachna Dhingra, a member of the BGIA team, described the intervention of 27 Congressmen as a "big step" in getting Dow Chemicals to accept responsibility for cleaning up the disaster site in Bhopal, which it acquired from Union Carbide in 2001.
"In the U.S. we had meetings with the State and Justice Department officials, who took keen interest in the issue of extradition of Warren Anderson, chairman of Union Carbide at the time of the world's worst industrial disaster," Dhingra told IPS over telephone from Bhopal. ...
But the main agenda of the BGIA tour was to bring pressure to bear on Dow Chemicals to clean up the site where the pesticides factory stood - that remains saturated with toxic matter, forcing poor communities around it to drink contaminated water 25 years later, Dhingra said.
Satish Sarangi, who led the delegation, told IPS that the changed attitude was possibly the result of a more responsive administration under President Barack Obama. "Among those we met was Henry Waxman, Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, who had in 1984 chaired the congressional sub-committee on the Bhopal Gas Disaster and had promised a fresh hearing where Dow officials could be summoned." |
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The rescue begins below and continues in the jump.
Michelle's Snapping Peas put a smile on the face of A Siegel: "There is something tangibly rewarding when after have put your hands in warm soil, planting for your own table, to being able to harvest bounty from the soil. Along with millions, tens of millions of others, my own gardening experience is reflected in a larger plot and on a much bigger stage as First Lady Michelle Obama pursues organic gardening on the White House lawn with the assistance of many, including students from a DC elementary school. While there has been some 80 lbs harvested to date, some for White House meals but most for local food kitchens, yesterday The First Lady celebrated the end of the school year with Bancroft Elementary students with harvesting from the garden and eating an organic salad. And, they all literally had the fruits of their labors as "once kids finished their salads, they were rewarded with a cupcake topped with fresh garden berries."
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The Overnight News Digest is posted and includes the story, Supreme Court makes age bias suits harder to win: Justices, overturning a jury award won by a 54-year-old who was demoted, say workers bear the full burden of proof.
Kaid at NRDC took a new look at Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s leadership on the way on sustainability: "Today I want to give a particular shout out to Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a few months ago just a little-known Republican (!) Congressman from downstate Illinois. I have to confess that I didn't know what to think one way or another when the Obama team announced his appointment. But, from today's vantage point, wow. ... the secretary has been stumping for high-speed rail, jump-starting pulic transit, and touting bicycling for "less-carbon-intensive commuting." To top it off, he has appointed some of the best transportation policy minds in the country to his department, and that's all just in the first five months."
davidwalters began a new series: Daily Kos Nuclear Alternative Energy Round Up.
Nuclear Ecology Inevitable declared
patriceayme: "Coal is baseload energy in many countries, and poisons, earth, wind, ocean, and life. With present technology, we need to bring nuclear energy out of the closet, lest we want to destroy civilization. In the Arctic, mercury vapor in the air condenses, and poisons everything. It comes from burning coal. Burning coal produces billions of tons of various wastes. By comparison, the yearly High Level Waste from nuclear energy, worldwide, is 12,000 tons, and most of that is actually precious nuclear fuel, and could be reused in advanced nuclear reactors. The arguments against nuclear have to do NOT with principle, but with execution (that is, law and practice). In other words, clean nuclear is just a matter of deciding to have it. Not so with coal. Nuclear fission is part of a carbon free future, not because it's so pretty, but because there is nothing better, for now. Let those that think otherwise rise, and whine. Thanks logics, and truth, Obama, and now the Congress of the USA, have decided to spend around 20 billions towards nuclear."
oregonj thinks it is a good idea to Throw this Dem Overboard: He is holding the climate bill hostage: "One Congressman is now blocking the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN)is holding the bill hostage, trying to get more handouts to his Big Agricultural contributors. Chris Bowers at Open Left has this to say: For a few weeks now, House Agriculture Committee Chair Collin Peterson (Dfl-Minnesota) has been holding up the American Clean Energy and Security ACT (ACES). At first, he was only demanding a few billion dollars in handouts to agribusiness. However, his demands are now escalating, as he is building a broad coalition to weaken the bill as much as possible. BOTTOM LINE: If this obstructionist was unseated in 2010, it is doubtful that any Republican could do more damage on the climate than Peterson."
Via Bruce Nilles, Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, wrote about Dangerous Coal Ash Sites Kept Secret: "If you lived near a dump site where the hazardous waste was so toxic it could increase your cancer risk to as high as a staggering 1 in 50, wouldn’t you want to know about it? What if there was one near your child’s school, but you had no way of knowing about it because the list of the most dangerous sites was being kept secret? Well, it turns out there are dozens of such sites across the nation, and our government is refusing to tell us where they are."