Modern Era · South Asia · Disaster

1984

Bhopal Gas Disaster

December 3, 1984

A pesticide plant owned by Union Carbide leaked methyl isocyanate gas over the sleeping city of Bhopal in central India. By morning, thousands were dead, their lungs seared by the invisible cloud. Over the following decades, the death toll climbed past fifteen thousand. Bhopal became the world's worst industrial disaster and a byword for corporate negligence.