Better Dying Through Chemistry

Dec. 3 marked the twentieth anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, which

killed thousands of people in the Indian city of Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh. It was caused by the accidental release of forty tons of methyl isocyanate (MIC) from a Union Carbide pesticide plant located in the heart of the city. This event remains the worst industrial disaster in history, with significant injuries to at least 50,000 people.

The vapors killed more than 2,000 people outright and injured anywhere from 150,000 to 600,000 others, some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries.

Check out jwz's creepy print ad from 1962:

Union Carbide was "Building a New India", apparently by having a giant, disembodied hand dump blood onto the fields.

Thank god that we've learned to keep industry on a short leash to protect human health. Oh wait, I forgot what country and what year I was in:

According to Greenpeace, the Bush administration is attacking Reach ["Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals"] "vehemently, in one of the most aggressive foreign lobby efforts ever to influence a proposed piece of EU legislation."

Greenpeace cites a US Congressional report taking the environmentalists' viewpoint. This concluded that the Bush administration, "at the request of the US chemical industry, mounted a campaign to block the efforts of the European Union to regulate chemical companies".