Bhopal gas disaster: Four decades of a toxic legacy

Bhopal resident Sharda Yadav's life is confined to one room where she looks after her two sons, in their mid and late 20s, who are congenitally disabled, a disorder linked to exposure of their father to a deadly gas that leaked from Union Carbide's plant here 40 years ago.

Like Sharda Yadav, Abdul Saeed Khan, an ex-Union Carbide employee, is also living with his twin sons born with a congenital disability, which a senior doctor attributed to genetic mutations among victims of the world's biggest industrial disaster, which occurred when methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the US firm's pesticide plant.

According to the WHO, congenital disorders can be defined as structural or functional anomalies that occur during intrauterine life. Also called birth defects, congenital anomalies or malformations, these conditions develop prenatally and may be identified before or at birth, or later in life.

Children with such disorders may suffer from disabilities like cerebral palsy, intellectual developmental disabilities, Down’s syndrome and muscular dystrophy.

Sharda Yadav, mother of Vikas (27) and Aman (25), told PTI on Monday, 2 December, that her husband Sanjay is a gas tragedy survivor.

She said her first son Vikas was born with mental and physical disabilities. However, the family was hopeful her second son Aman would be born healthy, but their hopes were in vain. He, too, was born like his elder brother, she said.

"I have to do everything for them, from feeding to bathing them. Neither their hands nor legs work. My entire day is spent serving them. I cannot do anything else, nor can I go anywhere. We can't even sleep at night as my sons keep crying in pain," Sharda Yadav, sitting in a small dark room in JP Nagar locality, in the vicinity of Union Carbide factory, said with moist eyes.

Sharda Yadav is one among many parents in Bhopal whose children are still reeling under the impact of the gas disaster.

Abdul Khan, a former Union Carbide employee who was present in the factory during the gas leak in 1984, said he became a father of twins — Ahmed and Aqib — 17 years after marriage.

"Both my children suffer from intellectual disability. They are not normal. Doctors said this could be due to the impact of the gas," Khan said.

Another Bhopal woman, Kammo Bi, and her husband are also victims of the gas leak. Kammo Bi said her three children were born normal, but they remain unwell.

However, her grandchild has been born with a physical deformity, which have doctors attributed to the gas leak, she said.

Dr D.K. Satpathy, former head of the forensic department at Bhopal's Gandhi Medical College (GMC), says that the gas leak has caused long-term impact down the generations of those affected by the disaster due to genetic mutations at the cellular level.

For example, if two survivors of the gas tragedy get married, their child may be born with a deformity. Some may have brain defects, some cannot move their hands and legs.

Activist Rashida Bee, president of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmchari Sangh, an organisation of women survivors, runs a rehabilitation centre for such children. She said an institute run by her organisation admits children with deformities from one day old to 12 years old for various kinds of therapies. At present, there are 1,350 children in the centre, she says.

Between speech therapy, physiotherapy and educational needs, looking after the children can cost as much as Rs 1,600 per day; but some parents are so poor that they can't pay even Rs 16 for these facilities, she said.

Thousands of children born to gas-affected couples have died in absence of proper and timely treatment, Rashida Bee said.

Rachna Dhingra of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, another organisation of gas survivors, tells PTI that a hospital-based study was conducted in 2016–17, in which the health of children of gas affected parents were compared with kids of couples who were not victims of the industrial disaster.

The study found that there were seven times more defects in newborns of gas victims in comparison to non-victims, she says. The study had found 1,048 children with congenital deformities, Dhingra says.

On the intervening night of 2–3 December 1984, the highly toxic MIC gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant, killing 5,474 people and maiming more than 5 lakh others.