I actually remember the story of the Bhopal accident appearing on the news when I was a child. I would've been about 9 1/2 years old at the time.
There's nothing but tragedy in today's story, an industrial accident in Bhopal, India where a Union Carbide plant producing two pesticides had a huge leak leading to more likely more than ten thousand immediate deaths.
There's not a huge amount of direct chemistry in today's video - in spite of a couple of chemical structures being shown - but there is something I want to say.
(Warning...heavy soapbox moment here...feel free to skip this if you don't want to hear Mr Dusch's very heavy handed opinion.)
We can never have enough corporate oversight by government inspectors.
There are people who will tell you that corporations can police themselves, that they will always take care of safety because it's their people who are in danger.
That's an absolute lie.
Corporations are concerned about profits over everything else. That's it. That's all.
Every corporation lobbying to cut regulations on their production control, every corporation arguing that safety constraints are hurting their business, every corporation trying to cut environmental laws because it hurts their business is putting your life at risk.
They don't care about your life or mine.
They care about profit.
(Oh, and happy fiftieth birthday to me today. I probably should have chosen something a little more happy and light-hearted for today's topic.)
No comments:
Post a Comment