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The effects of the British empire in India
Bhopal disaster
Bhopal disaster
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The Bhopal disaster took place in India in 1984 at the UCC plant, more than 40 tons of methyl isocyanate escaped out of a faulty valve killing over 3800 people instantly in the town of Bhopal. It caused many thousands more to suffer greatly, and die from significant morbidity, and premature death. The significance of it all has been very catastrophic, it is considered to be the worst “man” made disaster. The company tried to divert attention away from its self to avoid accountability. However ultimately they reached an agreement through the courts through mediation and reached an amount of $470 million dollars in damages; this was a very small amount considering the true cost of it all. The reason for this major catastrophe had all started with the plant being built in a light industrial commercial zone, not a hazardous materials zone. Trying to push the envelope, and make more money the plant took on greater responsibility and more of a project. The plant was originally approved only for formulation of pesticides from component chemicals, like MIC imported from th...
party in the past placed hazardous wastes there. ( The seller of a foundry was
dangers in the nuclear plant because the bosses just ignored it. The bosses and workers are not
Patricia Mullins and Leta Farley, two of the employees injured in the blast, filed a $60 million lawsuit against multiple companies whom they blamed for the explosion, including Appalachian Heating LLC, ThompsonGas Propane Partners LLC, Ferrellgas Inc., BP America Inc., Little General Store, Inc. and Godfather’s Pizza Inc. In addition to this lawsuit, the numerous safety recommendations made by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board were adopted. The recommendations include the improvement of training requirements for technicians and the improvement of emergency response actions from on-scene technicians and 911 operators.
Regina:The Early Years. (2014). Cyclone of 1912. Regina: The Early Years 1880 -1950. Retrieved March 7, 2014, from http://scaa.usask.ca/gallery/regina/central/cyclone.html
This is not the first time that BP is at fault. They have had criminal convictions in places such as Endicott Bay in Alaska, Texas City and Prudhoe Bay. Jeanne Pascal was a part of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and was assigned to watch over BP. Pascal was watching over companies such as BP that were facing debarment. Under her watch, BP was charged with four federal crimes. Over the past twelve years, Pascal’s seen BP patterns as misconducts. She attempted to warn the government about BP’s safety and environmental issues that would most likely lead to another disaster. While she was watching over BP, the company misinformed and misled her about things that resulted to the felonies that they have committed. Sensing that some things were not right about the company, she presented a case of their unsafe working environments.
Chernobyl, one word that still strikes pain and fear in the hearts of many, even after 28 years is still causing serious damage. It was largest nuclear disaster ever, Chernobyl was “. . . about 400 times more potent than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II . . .” (Walmsley “26 years on: helping Chernobyl's children”). The disaster was not immediately seen as a large threat, and this is why so many lives were taken or destroyed.
On April 17, 2013, the community of West, Texas, suffered a devastating and heartbreaking event in the evening hours. After a fire broke out inside the West Fertilizer plant, a massive explosion leveled the facility, caused millions of dollars in damage to surrounding buildings, and took the lives of over a dozen people. Sadly, the majority of those killed were volunteer firefighters who had responded to the fire and were unable to retreat to a safe distance before the explosion. Nearly 200 injuries were also reported to have been treated at local hospitals (Wood, 2013). The explosion was said to be caused by the combination of the fire and large stores of ammonium nitrate fertilizer at the plant.
On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia was lost due to structural failure in the left wing. On take-off, it was reported that a piece of foam insulation surrounding the shuttle fleet's 15-story external fuel tanks fell off of Columbia's tank and struck the shuttle's left wing. Extremely hot gas entered the front of Columbia's left wing just 16 seconds after the orbiter penetrated the hottest part of Earth's atmosphere on re-entry. The shuttle was equipped with hundreds of temperature sensors positioned at strategic locations. The salvaged flight recorded revealed that temperatures started to rise in the left wing leading edge a full minute before any trouble on the shuttle was noted. With a damaged left wing, Columbia started to drag left. The ships' flight control computers fought a losing battle trying to keep Columbia's nose pointed forward.
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection is still calculating the exact amount of how much of the chemicals were spilled. Freedom Industries is a service provider of specialty industrial chemicals for mining, steel, and cement. The company was founded in 1986 by Gary Southern and Carl L. Kennedy and is also a producer of freeze conditioning agents, water treatment polymers, dust control palliatives and other chemicals (Freedom Industries, 2005). The chemical that was released into the water supply is known as methylcyclohexane (MCHM) and not much is known about the potential health risks of exposure to the chemical. (The Associated Press, 2014).
On the 26th of April, 1986 unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power station was taken off the electrical grid to perform an experiment in which the reactor would be run at low power. The Chernobyl power station, which is located in the present day Ukraine and is approximately 12 miles south of the border with Belarus, did not react as designed and unit 4 proceeded to spiral out of control. The unconstrained fission reaction which followed resulted in a steam explosion that poured radioactive material into the atmosphere. To this day Chernobyl is the largest and farthest reaching nuclear disaster in human history.
It was clear that the governments in America would not issue a permit to Union Carbide plant under such circumstances, which lacked severe environmental standards and permitted slum dwellers to live near the plant and so on. Such actions were the ones that led to more deaths. Before the major gas leakage from the MCI unit on December 3, 1984, some people were killed because of phosgene gas leakage. However, no one took it seriously, despite the media report. One of the reasons that people ignore this was because people didnt know the potential danger of the chemical plant.
Accidents are an inevitable part of life. Children learn this at an early age by bumping their head, scraping their knees, or falling off the swings. They learn that sometimes painful experiences just happen, seemingly without cause or reason. These children carry these lessons into adulthood, and then project their tolerance for accidents onto their families and occupation. The chemical industry, while one of the safest industries, has the potential for catastrophic accidents. Through experience and renewed focus on the conservation of life, the chemical industry has improved its safety considerably. In 2005, chemical industry fatality rate (the number of fatalities per year per total number of people in the applicable population) was the third lowest when compared to industries such as agriculture, coal mining, and construction1. However, accidents still occur, sometimes with regrettable repercussions. In 2005, Formosa Plastics Corporation in Point Comfort, Texas experienced an accident with severe consequences.
Closure of a major transportation hub as a result of the release of the hazardous material
"Pesticides." Issues & Controversies On File: n. pag. Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 18 July 2005. Web. 20 May 2011. .
It was believed that it would be cheaper for PG&E to dispose of the chemicals illegally since the company officials were more concerned with the profits than about people's lives. The hiding of this critical information had tragic consequences for the people involved. PG&E must have realized that they were guilty since they settled the case for $330 million in private arbitration. All in all, it probably ended up costing PG&E more money than it would have if they had properly lined the water pools and taken care of things the correct way in the beginning.