Ground water near abandoned Carbide plant contaminated

Three organisations make this disturbing revelation

`This water is being used by over 25,000 people'

`MP Pollution Control Board had been suppressing information'

BHOPAL: Three organisations working for the victims of the 1984 UnionCarbide gas disaster here came up with a disturbing revelation onMonday. They said quarterly monitoring reports on ground water qualityfrom October 1996 to July 2007 show that the Madhya Pradesh PollutionControl Board had been suppressing information about the presence ofhighly toxic chemicals and heavy metals in the ground water near theabandoned Carbide plant. This water was being used by over 25,000people. The revelation was made at a press conference by RachnaDhingra and Satinath Sarangi of the Bhopal Group for Information andAction, Rashida Bi of Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery KarmachariSangh and Syed M. Irfan of Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush SangharshMorcha.They told media persons that reports obtained by the organisationsthrough the Right to Information Act show the ground water near theCarbide factory to be contaminated with such chemicals as Trichlorobenzene, Lindane, Benzene Hexachloride, Heptachlor and heavymetals, including Mercury, Nickel and Cadmium. These are known to damage the liver, kidney, brain, reproductive, immune and othersystems as well as cause cancers and birth defects.
The organisations said not only had the Pollution Control Boardsuppressed this vital information for as long as five years, it haddeliberately stopped testing samples for certain chemicals once theproblem had been identified. Thus after Trichlorobenzene was found tobe in eight times higher concentration than the limits prescribed bythe World Health Organisation in November 2005, none of the samplescollected in the eight quarters in 2006 and 2007 was tested for thischemical. The three organisations accused the Pollution Control Boardof scientific dishonesty and cast doubts on the veracity of its testresults. They said several chemicals such as Lindane, Dieldrin, BHCandSevin which were identified in the ground water samples in 2006 wereall found to be "not detectable" in 2007. "Such deliberate suppressionis also evident in the fact that ground water sampling points wheresamples tested positive in 2006 were not included in the 2007 qualitymonitoring," they added.