Editing Bhopal disaster (section)

===Corporate negligence===

This point of view argues that management (and to some extent, local government) underinvested in safety, which allowed for a dangerous working environment to develop. Factors cited include the filling of the MIC tanks beyond recommended levels, poor maintenance after the plant ceased MIC production at the end of 1984, allowing several safety systems to be inoperable due to poor maintenance, and switching off safety systems to save money— including the MIC tank refrigeration system which could have mitigated the disaster severity, and non-existent catastrophe management plans.<ref name="Eckerman2005" /><ref name="Eckerman2001" /> Other factors identified by government inquiries included undersized safety devices and the dependence on manual operations.<ref name="Eckerman2005" /> Specific plant management deficiencies that were identified include the lack of skilled operators, reduction of safety management, insufficient maintenance, and inadequate emergency action plans.<ref name="Eckerman2005" /><ref name="Eckerman2006"/>

====Underinvestment====

Underinvestment is cited as contributing to a dangerous environment. In attempts to reduce expenses, $1.25 million worth of cuts were placed upon the plant, which affected the factory's employees and their conditions.<ref name="really well informed" /> Kurzman argues that "cuts&nbsp;... meant less stringent quality control and thus looser safety rules. A pipe leaked? Don't replace it, employees said they were told&nbsp;... MIC workers needed more training? They could do with less. Promotions were halted, seriously affecting employee morale and driving some of the most skilled&nbsp;... elsewhere".{{sfnp|Kurzman|1987}} Workers were forced to use English manuals, even though only a few had a grasp of the language.{{sfnp|Chouhan|Jaising|2004|p={{page needed|date=October 2020}}}}{{sfnp|Cassels|1993}}

Subsequent research highlights a gradual deterioration of safety practices in regard to the MIC, which had become less relevant to plant operations. By 1984, only six of the original 12 operators were still working with MIC and the number of supervisory personnel had also been halved. No maintenance supervisor was placed on the night shift and instrument readings were taken every two hours, rather than the previous and required one-hour readings.{{sfnp|Chouhan|Jaising|2004|p={{page needed|date=October 2020}}}}{{sfnp|Kurzman|1987}} Workers made complaints about the cuts through their union but were ignored. One employee was fired after going on a 15-day hunger strike. Seventy percent of the plant's employees were fined before the disaster for refusing to deviate from the proper safety regulations under pressure from the management.{{sfnp|Chouhan|Jaising|2004|p={{page needed|date=October 2020}}}}{{sfnp|Kurzman|1987}}

In addition, some observers, such as those writing in the Trade Environmental Database (TED) Case Studies as part of the Mandala Project from [[American University]], have pointed to "serious communication problems and management gaps between Union Carbide and its Indian operation", characterised by "the parent {{sic|companies}} hands-off approach to its overseas operation" and "cross-cultural barriers".<ref name="TED">Mandala Project (1996), Trade Environmental Database (TED) Case Study 233. Volume 5, Number 1, January 1996 {{cite web |title=American University, Washington, D.C. |url=http://www1.american.edu/TED/bhopal.htm |access-date=6 October 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151101080203/http://www1.american.edu/TED/bhopal.htm |archive-date=1 November 2015  }}</ref>

====Adequacy of equipment and regulations====

The factory was not well equipped to handle the gas created by the sudden addition of water to the MIC tank. The MIC tank alarms had not been working for four years and there was only one manual back-up system, compared to a four-stage system used in the United States.<ref name="Eckerman2005" /><ref name=Eckerman2001/>{{sfnp|Chouhan|Jaising|2004|p={{page needed|date=October 2020}}}}{{sfnp|Lepowski|1994}} The flare tower and several vent gas scrubbers had been out of service for five months before the disaster. Only one gas scrubber was operating: it could not treat such a large amount of MIC with [[sodium hydroxide]] (caustic soda), which would have brought the concentration down to a safe level.{{sfnp|Lepowski|1994}} The flare tower could only handle a quarter of the gas that leaked in 1984, and moreover it was out of order at the time of the accident.<ref name="Eckerman2005" /><ref name="Eckerman2001" />{{sfnp|Chouhan|Jaising|2004|p={{page needed|date=October 2020}}}}{{sfnp|Weir|1987}} To reduce energy costs, the refrigeration system was idle. The MIC was kept at 20 degrees Celsius, not the 4.5 degrees advised by the manual.<ref name="Eckerman2005" /><ref name="Eckerman2001" />{{sfnp|Chouhan|Jaising|2004|p={{page needed|date=October 2020}}}}{{sfnp|Lepowski|1994}} Even the steam boiler, intended to clean the pipes, was non-operational for unknown reasons.<ref name="Eckerman2005" /><ref name="Eckerman2001" />{{sfnp|Chouhan|Jaising|2004|p={{page needed|date=October 2020}}}}{{sfnp|Lepowski|1994}} Slip-blind plates that would have prevented water from pipes being cleaned from leaking into the MIC tanks if the valves had been faulty were not installed and their installation had been omitted from the cleaning checklist.<ref name="Eckerman2005" /><ref name="Eckerman2001" />{{sfnp|Chouhan|Jaising|2004|p={{page needed|date=October 2020}}}} As MIC is water-soluble, [[deluge gun]]s were in place to contain escaping gases from the stack. The water pressure was too weak for the guns to spray high enough to reach the gas which would have reduced the concentration of escaping gas significantly.<ref name="Eckerman2005" /><ref name="Eckerman2001" />{{sfnp|Chouhan|Jaising|2004|p={{page needed|date=October 2020}}}}{{sfnp|Lepowski|1994}} In addition to it, carbon steel valves were used at the factory, even though they were known to corrode when exposed to acid.{{sfnp|Kovel|2002}}

According to the operators, the MIC tank pressure gauge had been malfunctioning for roughly a week. Other tanks were used, rather than repairing the gauge. The build-up in temperature and pressure is believed to have affected the magnitude of the gas release.<ref name="Eckerman2005" /><ref name="Eckerman2001" />{{sfnp|Chouhan|Jaising|2004|p={{page needed|date=October 2020}}}}{{sfnp|Lepowski|1994}} UCC admitted in their own investigation report that most of the safety systems were not functioning on the night of 3 December 1984.<ref name="UCC1985">{{cite book |title=Bhopal Methyl Isocyanate Incident. Investigation Team Report |location=Danbury, CT |publisher=Union Carbide Corporation |year=1985}}</ref> The design of the MIC plant, following government guidelines, was "Indianized" by UCIL engineers to maximise the use of indigenous materials and products. Mumbai-based Humphreys and Glasgow Consultants Pvt. Ltd., were the main consultants, [[Larsen & Toubro]] fabricated the MIC storage tanks, and Taylor of India Ltd. provided the instrumentation.{{sfnp|D'Silva|2006}} In 1998, during civil action suits in India, it emerged that the plant was not prepared for problems. No action plans had been established to cope with accidents of this magnitude. This included not informing local authorities of the quantities or dangers of chemicals used and manufactured at Bhopal.<ref name="Eckerman2005" />{{sfnp|Kovel|2002}}<ref name="Eckerman2001">{{cite book |last=Eckerman |first=Ingrid |title=Chemical industry and public health. Bhopal as an example |year=2001 |publisher=Nordic School of Public Health |location=Gothenburg, Sweden |url=http://www.lakareformiljon.org/images/stories/dokument/2009/bhopal_gas_disaster.pdf |access-date=10 June 2010 |archive-date=30 October 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121030030142/http://www.lakareformiljon.org/images/stories/dokument/2009/bhopal_gas_disaster.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>{{sfnp|Chouhan|Jaising|2004|p={{page needed|date=October 2020}}}}

====Safety audits====
Safety audits were done every year in the US and European UCC plants, but only every two years in other parts of the world.<ref name="Eckerman2005" /><ref name="varadarajan1985" /> Before a "Business Confidential" safety audit by UCC in May 1982, the senior officials of the corporation were well aware of "a total of 61 hazards, 30 of them major and 11 minor in the dangerous phosgene/methyl isocyanate units" in Bhopal.<ref name="Eckerman2005" /><ref>{{cite book |title=The Bhopal Gas Tragedy 1984- ? A report from the Sambhavna Trust, Bhopal, India |year=1998 |publisher=Bhopal People's Health and Documentation clinic}}</ref> In the 1982 audit, it was indicated that worker performance was below standards.<ref name="Eckerman2005" /><ref name="tradeunion1985" /> Ten major concerns were listed.<ref name="Eckerman2005" /> UCIL prepared an action plan, but UCC never sent a follow-up team to Bhopal. Many of the items in the 1982 report were temporarily fixed, but by 1984, conditions had again deteriorated.<ref name="tradeunion1985" /> In September 1984, an internal UCC report on the West Virginia plant in the United States revealed a number of defects and malfunctions. It warned that "a runaway reaction could occur in the MIC unit storage tanks, and that the planned response would not be timely or effective enough to prevent catastrophic failure of the tanks". This report was never forwarded to the Bhopal plant, although the main design was the same.<ref name="Lapierre">{{cite book |title=It Was Five Past Midnight in Bhopal |vauthors=Lapierre D, Moro J |year=2001 |publisher=Full Circle Publishing |location=New Delhi}}</ref>

====Impossibility of the "negligence"====

According to the "Corporate Negligence" argument, workers had been cleaning out pipes with water nearby. This water was diverted due to a combination of improper maintenance, leaking and clogging, and eventually ended up in the MIC storage tank. Indian scientists also suggested that additional water might have been introduced as a "back-flow" from a defectively designed vent-gas scrubber. None of these theoretical routes of entry were ever successfully demonstrated during tests by the [[Central Bureau of Investigation]] (CBI) and UCIL engineers.<ref name="varadarajan1985" />{{sfnp|Chouhan|Jaising|2004|p={{page needed|date=October 2020}}}}<ref name="tradeunion1985">{{cite report |title=The Report of the ICFTU-ICEF Mission to study the causes and Effects of the Methyl Isocyanate Gas Leak at the Union Carbide Pesticide Plant in Bhopal, India, on December 2nd/3rd 1984 |url=http://www.bhopal.net/oldsite/documentlibrary/unionreport1985.html |archive-date=15 July 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090715082437/http://www.bhopal.net/oldsite/documentlibrary/unionreport1985.html |location=Geneva, Switzerland |publisher=International Confederation of Free Trade Unions; International Federation of Chemical, Energy, and General Workers Unions}}</ref><ref name="UCCreport1985">{{cite book |title=Bhopal Methyl Isocyanate Incident |year=1985 |publisher=Union Carbide Corporation |location=Danbury, CT}}</ref>

A Union Carbide commissioned analysis conducted by [[Arthur D. Little]] claims that the Negligence argument was impossible for several tangible reasons:<ref name="Kalelkar1988" />
# The pipes being used by the nearby workers were only {{convert|1/2|in}} in diameter and were physically incapable of producing enough hydraulic pressure to raise the water more than {{convert|10|ft}} that would have been necessary to enable the water to "backflow" into the MIC tank.
# A key intermediate valve would have had to be open for the Negligence argument to apply. This valve was "tagged" closed, meaning that it had been inspected and found to be closed. While it is possible for open valves to clog over time, the only way a closed valve allows penetration is if there is leakage, and 1985 tests carried out by the government of India found this valve to be non-leaking.
# In order for water to have reached the MIC tank from the pipe-cleaning area, it would have had to flow through a significant network of pipes ranging from {{convert|6|to|8|in}} in diameter, before rising {{convert|10|ft|m|order=flip}} and flowing into the MIC tank. Had this occurred, most of the water that was in those pipes at the time the tank had its critical reaction would have remained in those pipes, as there was no drain for them. Investigation by the Indian government in 1985 revealed that the pipes were bone dry.