Tuesday, 13 May 2003
NEW YORK, N.Y.
To New York today to talk about working more closely with church groups on combining efforts to move markets and move policy. The Health Care Without Harm campaign, for example, found that the first bans on the sale of mercury fever thermometers in Minnesota and Michigan helped convince Wal-Mart, Albertson's, and the other big retail chains to take mercury fever thermometers off their shelves. Those market changes in turn encouraged other cities and states to ban the sale of mercury-containing products.
But I drive my son and two friends to school first. My riders sleep and I listen to the morning news. Car bombs in Saudi Arabia intermixed with appeals for new members for public radio. NPR could make a lot more money if, after you made your pledge, you got access to a version of Morning Edition without any more cutesy appeals. I arrive late at the airport and jog to the gate in my heels, feeling ridiculous. But I make the plane in time.
I love flying into New York. You come out of the clouds and there is the harbor, the boats, the bridges, the Statue of Liberty. Then the feeling in the pit of your stomach when you see the space where the World Trade Center is supposed to be.
Yesterday, after ending my diary entry, I went off to a rally in support of the survivors of the Bhopal chemical disaster. Two women survivors, Rasheeda Bee and Champa Devi Shukla, along with activist Satinath Sarangi, were ending their 12-day fast for justice in Bhopal at a noontime event at the Gandhi statue across from the Indian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Almost 20 years ago, 40 tons of lethal gases from a pesticide factory owned by Union Carbide poisoned the community of Bhopal, India. More than 8,000 people died in the three days following the disaster. About 150,000 people, including children born to parents who were injured by the gas, suffer serious health effects from the Union Carbide poisoning, and 380 more gas-affected people die every year.
In 1989, Union Carbide negotiated a secret settlement with the government of India for $470 million, about one-sixth of the amount originally claimed for disaster-related damages. Most of the Bhopal survivors got between $300 and $500 for the death of relatives or to pay for lifelong injuries. Union Carbide did not clean up the site before Dow Chemical acquired the company in 2001.
Dow buying Union Carbide never sounded like a great deal to me. I mean, who would want to buy a company responsible for the suffering of so many people? The answer is Dow Chemical. Dow's purchase of Union Carbide has to be premised on the bet that Dow can continue to put chemicals into the environment and into people's bodies without factoring in the costs for the harm their products have done or will do.
My body burden testing showed that Dow has its Dursban in me. That puts me in the list of Dow subjects along with the people of Vietnam and Vietnam veterans hurt by Dow's Agent Orange, and the residents of Dow's hometown of Midland, Mich., whose land has been contaminated with dioxin. By externalizing the costs of contamination, Dow and the other chemical companies lower the price of their products. The real costs show up elsewhere -- in the medical bills of Vietnam veterans with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and the clinic fees for treating cataracts and menstrual disorders in the people of Bhopal.
Would Union Carbide have built the Bhopal factory the way it was built if they had factored in the full potential costs of an accident? Would they have ignored the many warnings that the plant was unsafe? Would Dow's price for Agent Orange have been too high for the Pentagon if it had factored in the future medical bills for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and birth defects?
These days, economic freedom is being defined as freedom from the regulatory burden of health, safety, and environmental rules. But we can change that definition. With freedom comes responsibility, right? In a free society, honest people can't stay honest for long if crime goes unpunished. And corporations that want to produce safer products can't compete fairly when other companies are allowed to pollute the environment and contaminate people's bodies.
So when Bhopal survivors demand that Dow provide safe drinking water and pay for health monitoring in India, they're helping all of us. Making Dow accountable today moves us toward safer products tomorrow. You can join the worldwide relay hunger strike for justice in Bhopal by going to bhopal.net.
Comments
View as Flat