Respond to Discussion Question

 Shockwaves were sent through the world when in 1984 an unprecedented industrial disaster occurred in Bhopal, India. Labeled the Union Carbide Industrial disaster, it proved fatal in the span of one night as the methyl isocyanate used to produce pesticides were accidentally released into the surrounding area, killing thousands of people and severely affecting over 150,000 individuals’ long-term health (Engel & Martin, 2006, p. 475). The immense devastation in such a short period brought attention to the dangers of unsupervised industrial work and called out the lack of safety measurements during the production of toxic chemical substances. While the India of the eighties was considered to be a developing nation, this did not prevent the United States from observing the effects of the catastrophe on the country and marshaling legislation and government resources to counteract similar future incidents. One of the results of the Union Carbide Industrial disaster was the enactment of a policy reform to the original Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) of 1980, which fostered accountability among companies who create toxic waste in the environment and deals severe penalties to abandoned obligations for cleanup (Cooper, 1999, p. 1450-1451). The resulting policy reform was the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) of 1986, that used “local government first responders and members of the public in assessing the degree of threat posed to their community by the existence of hazardous and toxic substances” (Burton, 2008, p. 14) created by industries and companies within localities or states.