India clears toxic waste from Bhopal gas leak site, 40 years after disaster

Authorities say incinerating poison is environmentally safe as activists raise alarm over potential water contamination.

Indian authorities say they have moved hundreds of tonnes of hazardous waste remaining more than 40 years after the world’s deadliest industrial disaster struck the city of Bhopal.

The waste from the site of the 1984 disaster, which killed more than 25,000 people and left at least half a million people with severe health issues, was sent to a disposal facility where it will take three to nine months to incinerate, officials said on Thursday.

In the early hours of December 3, 1984, methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide factory owned by American Union Carbide Corporation, poisoning more than half a million people in Bhopal, the capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

More than 40 years later, on Thursday morning, a convoy of trucks transported 337 metric tonnes of that poison to a waste disposal plant in Madhya Pradesh’s industrial town of Pithampur, 230km (142 miles) from Bhopal.

Swatantra Kumar Singh, director of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Department, told Reuters news agency the waste would be disposed of in an environmentally safe manner that would not harm the local ecosystem.

The federal pollution control agency had carried out a trial run for the waste disposal process in 2015 with 10 metric tonnes of poison, finding that levels of resulting emissions were in line with national standards, the state government said in a statement.

However, activists claim the solid waste would be buried in landfills after incineration, contaminating the water and creating an environmental problem.

“Why is the polluter Union Carbide and Dow Chemical not being compelled to clean