Students and Professionals Concerned for Bhopal Meet in Cambridge, MA
Cambridge—The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB) hosted its 6th Annual North American Conference this past weekend to discuss ongoing health and environmental issues in Bhopal, India.
On December 3, 1984 a gas leak from Union Carbide India Limited, a U.S.-owned chemical manufacturing site, devastated the central Indian city of Bhopal. To this day acute and chronic toxic contamination from the disaster has left 25,000 dead, and over 500,000 affected. Dow Chemical Corporation (Midland, MI), who acquired Union Carbide in 2001, refuses to clean up the abandoned pesticide plant, which has caused a growing environmental and public health crisis.
30 concerned activists from throughout the U.S., and a couple from Europe, met on MIT’s campus to learn about the Bhopal disaster from field experts. They now aim to mobilize their own community members on the human rights issue.
Conference organizers Shana Ortman (San Francisco), Claire Rosenfeld (Olympia, WA), and Leonid Chindelevitch (Cambridge, MA) warn that “we all live in Bhopal.” Keynote speaker Gary Cohen, director of the Environmental Health Fund, echoed this reality when he said, “the same chemicals are in our veins.” In other words, toxic contamination occurs on a smaller scale all over the world and even in our own communities.
Only 10% of Bhopalis have access to uncontaminated water; toxins from the pesticide plant are spreading into the city’s water table, causing cancers, chronic diseases, and birth defects. ICJB would like the Obama administration

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