Ethics of Engineering Presentation
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EthicsPaper.docxJeremy Tran, Allan Giron, MECT 4188
Aaron Villa, Ruben Rodriguez, Francois Zea La Rochelle Professor Bose
3/3/2022
Bhopal Disaster
On the night of December, the 2nd 1984 in Bhopal, India, poisonous gas leaked from a pesticide plant, spreading rapidly across the city. That first night according to some studies around 3,000 people died and would rise to 15,000 soon after. Those who survived continued to suffer and deal with the aftermath of the gas leak. After this horrible incident occurred, survivors continued to fight for some sort of compensation, health care, and most of all, justice for not only the lives that were lost, but those who continued to be affected. Along with the technical reasons as to why this gas leak occurred, this paper will analyze which certain ethical practices were broken and set a specific course of action that should have been implemented by those who were responsible for each life that was affected by the incident.
Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) is an American manufacturer of chemical and petrochemical products. One of their pesticide manufacturing plants is located Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh state, India. The plant has since been decommissioned due to a catastrophic incident that occurred in the late night of December 2nd through the early morning hours of December 3rd, 1984. The pesticide plant was the manufacture of the chemical Methyl isocyanate (MIC). The plant had storage tanks installed underneath the facility that could store tons of MIC at one time. The facility had a total of three of these storage tanks: E-619, E-611, and E-610. These are stored underground to keep the storage tanks cold in order to keep the MIC in liquid state as the boiling point of MIC is 39°C [5]. The storage tanks also had a refrigeration unit which was continually running to keep temperature level constant. A certain pressure was also maintained with Nitrogen gas.
Tank E-610 was the storage tank that leaked the night of December 2nd and early hours of December 3rd. The details surrounding the cause of that leak are stated by “Report on scientific studies on the factors related to Bhopal toxic gas leakage.” To sum up, the tank was neglected by staff, and they did not pay attention to the warnings until it was too late. Pressure inside the tank was lost over time and nothing was done to bring it back up to the required PSI. Water also managed to get into the storage tank, and the following theories stated: The water washing theory, the sabotage theory, the decomposition theory, and the nitrogen mix up theory [6]. Once the water reacts with the MIC, it builds pressure resulting in the leakage of approximately 40 tons of MIC into the atmosphere.
The result was a devastating loss of life; over 2,000-5,000 people died the morning of December 3rd. Hundreds of thousands were injured, and the total death toll reached over 25,000 people. Until this day, people suffer from birth defects and other health issues. The water in Bhopal is not safe to drink. No cleanup of the site has been attempted by the government or by UCC. Ethically, the company is in the wrong and the employees working during that night knowing something could have been done to prevent this from happening because the results were devastating for this community that are still dealing with the consequences to this day.
It seems that UCC held the responsibility of maintaining and caring for this pesticide plant. Although there was no immediate accountability for the victims of the Bhopal gas incident, UCIL blamed their parent company UCC for the accident. The lack of accountability for the events leading up to this disaster shows that the engineers did not complete their duty in the interest of public welfare both before and after the Bhopal Gas leak. Prior to the opening of the MIC Factory, UCC cut corners to build the Bhopal plant. Pesticide plants around the world are usually monitored by high-tech failsafe systems that automatically warn workers and the surrounding population of potential disaster. Budget restrictions for the plant were slim as only $20 million was allocated for the construction of the facility. $28 million was the original budget if they included the safety systems. These safety systems would have automated some of the operator tasks, leaving little margin for human error. Instead, the operators were forced to diagnose systems manually, be it a loss of pressure, a smell, or the burning of their eyes.
The company knew the risks associated with cutting corners but decided it was within their risk tolerance to proceed with construction and operation of the Bhopal MIC Facility [1]. The Bhopal incident could have been mitigated or prevented entirely if actions and systems were placed from a technical and ethical perspective that would have warned and deescalated the situation in the event of a huge gas leak. In addition to system failure however, operators and supervisors were being negligent to the gravity of the situation. They would take “tea breaks” while there were ongoing MIC leaks, and there were a few more instances that were less severe but could have prevented a larger catastrophe had they been dealt with properly. Their moral obligation to the public should have caused them to shut down the plant for maintenance, if not completely for the lack of funding which resulted in the decommissioning of the few existing safety measures that this facility had. The Gas Flare System would vent/ burn off excess MIC relieving pressure from the tank preventing an explosion, and safely combusting otherwise reactive and harmful gasses [2]. The moral obligation from UCC and UCIL was mediated by The Indian Supreme Court and Bhopal was given a settlement that resulted in the payout of approximately $470 million, for the Indian government to distribute among the affected families. The average payout for each family including those of the deceased was $2,200 as part of the relief fund. However, the behavior the corporation exhibited, which was a lack of responsibility, honesty, and negligence towards the well-being of the population in Bhopal should have resulted in a higher pay out. The payout was given on the assumption that about only 3000 people died and 102,000 faced permanent disabilities. At every turn, UCC has manipulated, obfuscated, and withheld scientific data from the victims.
To this day, UCC has not disclosed what exactly was in the cloud of gas that enveloped Bhopal that night. There is clear evidence of some of the cloud’s content, such as Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN). HCN is created from degraded MIC when it is exposed to temperatures at or above 200 degrees Fahrenheit. The tragedy in Bhopal is a testament to how bad industrialization can go wrong without developing adequate safety measures on the technical side, and with a strict system of requirements for the construction and maintenance of chemical factories. Public safety should come first, as future professional engineers, our responsibility to put others before ourselves will allow us to respond to disaster before it happens.
Hold Paramount defines a “professional” as one that “has extensive tertiary training and/or education, practices an art that requires significant intellectual development, provides an important service to the public, is certified or licensed by the state, has an organization that practices self-regulation and controls entrance to the field, is given special powers by the state in return for a commitment to the public good, [and] belongs to an organization that has a code of ethics.” These seven attributes help determine what makes a profession “professional.” Licensed professionals are given certain powers by the state they reside in to do certain actions. Engineers are permitted to seal engineering plans and specifications [4]. In Texas, aspiring professional engineers are required to first take the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam and Practice of Engineering Exam in their respective discipline, in addition to the Texas Ethics of Engineering Exam [3]. This ensures that a prospective engineer has the proper training and knowledge in order to be licensed professional engineers in their respective state of practice.
As UCC created an Indian Subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), and all engineering construction was done in India, UCC engineers were not accountable to the same standards they would be held to in the United States. Even though UCC “created a ‘design review process’,” meaning that American engineers will review design plans from the States before they are carried out in India, UCC wouldn’t have to abide by the engineering standards in the States [1]. As UCC had many plants around the world, the Indian plant was not held to the same standard. For example, the UCC plant in France had “safety devices [that] were automatically controlled through computer systems with manual back-up devices.” The plant in Bhopal only had manual controls.
The first course of action that should be taken is the standardization of plant design across all company assets. The UCC’s “incessant cost-cutting in Bhopal” was one of the main causes for not including the same level of safety design as the plant in France [1]. Two casualties happened a few years before the disaster because of the lack of safety measures at the Bhopal plant. “A leak of phosgene killed one worker” at the plant and “severely injured two others,” and another leak hospitalized “twenty five workers.” The inclusion of safety devices at the Bhopal plant that were available at the French plant would have prevented these casualties [1]. The second course of action that should be taken is a more robust design review process. Although UCC had a process in place, no ethical review was done. For example, the MIC storage tanks were not properly maintained, and no safety precautions were in place. As MIC is a “highly toxic and explosive” compound, it is imperative that the design of the storage tanks was properly done. Standard plant practice has “intermediate batch tanks to hold production from a single shift for a day” so a quality assurance analysis can be done on the product. Additionally, an “online analyser” and alarm system could also be implemented. The plant in Bhopal had no such design for the storage tank, so MIC would flow directly into the main storage tank without being analyzed. Without an alarm system, the operator cannot be informed of any emergencies regarding the storage tanks. If the plant were in the United States, the design plans that were built in India would not have passed quality assurance. As the engineers that designed the plant were not held to the same standards as they would be in America, they cut costs at the expense of human lives.
In the previous section, different aspects and ethical issues occurred in the events prior and during the Bhopal gas leak were analyzed to help determine a certain course of action. To ensure success, every point noted will have to be evaluated and prove that these would have made a difference regarding the public’s safety. Starting in the early stages of this chemical plant, it is crucial to not only hire the best and most qualified employees, but proper training is also needed for the success of the plant. For example, as stated by the Texas Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors, one benefit of hiring professional licensed engineers ensures “a level of technical competence above and beyond an engineering degree.” This organization also states that being a licensed professional, one will have an increased level of responsibility and authority. This concludes that with the correct recruiting, the plant could be operated safely with well qualified employees. It is also important to see why a company would not hire qualified employees, the main reason being to reduce cost [3]. The total inspection of the chemical plant before operation is just as important. A plant cannot be expected to operate adequately if it has not passed standard safety precautions. Even with qualified employees, what are they to do if the safety precautions do not work? UCC was held responsible for the Bhopal gas plant disaster.
After having gone years without an inspection, the night of December 2nd and early morning of December 3rd experienced an MIC leak and being near a massive residential area with a population of about 800,000 people, countless lives were affected. Many of the people living near the plant heard the commotion at the plant from a warning siren, and the residents started coming outside where they were unknowingly exposed, and that by morning, people and animals were found dead. As the plant began to rupture and leak, workers began to leave the plant, and later in the morning after the leak had already reached the nearby residents, there was not enough of a notice or warning by the plant officials to the public, only saying “somethings leaked and broke somewhere, but there is no problem now” and the residents nearby returned to their homes, some of which didn’t have doors or windows. Additional measures the UCC could have done to prevent this tragedy is advice for yearly checks on the plant that things are working, and heeding employee grievances regarding hardware malfunctioning. Had the plant staff been aware that all the equipment was recording accurately, they would have noticed something was wrong and called for help to try and fix or contain the MIC leak. Another measure they could have done if the workers were aware of the problem, is that they could have called the government they were working for, and could have said the emergency was urgent, and that all the residents nearby sleeping in their homes had to get up, grab what could, and evacuate while they try to continue the situation.
References
[1]
[2]
Broughton, E. The Bhopal disaster and its aftermath: a review. Environ Health 4, 6 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1186/1476-069X-4-6
[3]
https://pels.texas.gov/lic_basic.htm
[4]
P. A. Vesilind and A. S. Gunn, “The Engineering Profession,” in Hold Paramount: The Engineer's responsibility to society, Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2016, pp. 11–26.
[5] csir-report-on-scientific-studies-december-1985.pdf (wordpress.com) ; Report on scientific studies on the factors related to Bhopal toxic gas leakage.
[6] lpb240_digimag.pdf (icheme.org) ; Loss Prevention Bulletin- Improving process safety by sharing experience-Remembering Bhopal – 30 years on
