Word: mics
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Plant safety procedures were inadequate to deal with a large-scale leak of the deadly methyl isocyanate, or MIC, despite the fact that the dangers such a leak would pose were known. Nor had any precautions been taken to protect people living near the plant site. Although a safety survey conducted by experts from Union Carbide headquarters in 1982 identified major hazards that could lead to serious incidents, no procedures were developed for alerting or evacuating the population that would be affected by an accident...
Some important safety systems were not working at the time of the accident. Refrigeration units designed to keep the highly reactive MIC cool so that it could not vaporize had been shut down before the accident. Other equipment, including devices designed to vent and burn off excess gases, was so inadequate, investigators hinted, that it would have been ineffective even if it had been operating at the time of the accident...
...government of India. A settlement, however, will not resolve the complex issue of relations between multinational corporations and Third World countries. The investigation in India has determined that Union Carbide never fully advised either the national government or the district administration of the dangers involved in producing and storing MIC. At the same time, it is not clear whether local officials did enough to guarantee the safety of the Bhopal plant...
Among the biggest stockpilers of MIC in Europe is France. In the southern countryside of Béziers, La Littorale, SA, a Union Carbide affiliate, stores some 20 tons of the chemical, which it imports from the U.S. because the French government prohibits the manufacture of MIC. La Littorale officials proudly point to the facility's extensive security features. The air in the plant is automatically monitored, and should any gas escape from a drum an alarm would call in a crack emergency team. If large enough, the leak would also trigger a water system to deluge and wash...
...tragic wake of Bhopal, safety reviews are under way in most of the U.S., the world's biggest producer and user of MIC and other pesticides. Nearly a billion tons of pesticides and herbicides, comprising 225 different chemicals, was produced in the U.S. last year, and an additional 79 million lbs. was imported. MIC is stored or used at plants in New York, West Virginia, Texas, Alabama and Georgia. Those insecticides not dependent on the compound, like malathion, are also construct ed of toxic molecules. Dow Chemical Co., one of the nation's largest producers of agricultural...