Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
What poisoning my giant city of hundreds of thousands of
people due to industrial negligence. Robert Evans host Behind the Bastards,
the podcast where we tell you everything you don't know
about the very worst people in all of history. Uh.
My guest today is the inimitable, the inevitable, the inimicable.
(00:25):
Jamie Loftus is inevitable, just a natural part of life.
Hi am, I am. I allowed to tell the listeners
that I didn't know what we were talking about today
until I think, I think you just revealed it. I
did a little bit. If you know much about this
(00:46):
particular disaster. No, no, not your call that disaster. Well,
I'm I'm glad that you first of Jamie Loftus, co
host of the Bechtel Cast. Yeah, the the actress and
and creative visionary behind a one woman show that's going
(01:10):
to be in Scotland soon. Boss whom is girl? Yeah,
August Baby, come out, Scotland Heads, Scotland heads, check her out. Um. Yeah,
it's actually I'm I'm really glad that you guessed Chair Nobyle. Um,
because I think a lot of people, having heard that intro,
would have guest Chair Noble and Judging by the state
of my Twitter mentions a month or so ago. I
(01:33):
think about everybody I know was watching chair Noble. One
it's because Jared's Jared was it Jared Harris? Um, it's
because he's uh, sexy daddy, and people love sexy daddy's
on TV. I know everybody loves a sexy dad. Sometimes
I adopt children just to be sexier. Yeah, don't take
(01:54):
care of them, don't raise them, just adopt him. Well,
that sounds extremely negligent, and um, honestly, off, I love it. Yeah, yeah,
so yeah, I haven't seen the chair Nobile TV show yet.
I am going to watch it. I just haven't have
time to get into it. Um. And a lot of
people have begged me to do an episode on cher Nobile,
and I expect I will one of these days because
(02:15):
it's it's a really terrible disaster. There were a lot
of bastards, you know, behind it. Uh. But I think
most people who watched the series but didn't do much
outside reading on Chernobyl would be surprised to learn that
the the immediate death toll from the disaster was quite
a lot lower than I think. TV dramatizations might lead
you to believe. UM, the explosion killed two people directly. UM.
(02:38):
Another twenty nine died in the hospital in a few
days following the disaster. UM. And that's it as far
as a direct death toll from like the actual meltdown itself,
actually kind of no big deal. Well I wouldn't say that, um,
but it is, it is. It is, like the long
term health consequences are a little bit harder to pin down.
Can I put you on record as Chernobyl n b D. Yeah,
(03:00):
Chernobyl n b D in fact maybe good, maybe maybe great? Okay, yeah,
uh no. As of like two thousand eleven, there have
been a total of twenty eight deaths due to acute
radiation syndrome and another fifteen fatal cases of child thyroid cancer. UM. Now,
because radiation lasts a very long time, the eventual death
(03:21):
toll from Chernobyl decades from now will probably number into
the thousands. Uh. In two thousand sixteen, the World Health
Organization estimated the eventual death toll of Chernobyl at around
four thousand people. UM. It's pretty serious disaster, very bad, Yeah,
terrible tragedy. But today we're going to talk about a disaster.
The dwarfs chare Nobyl, a calamity many times deadlier than
(03:44):
the worst nuclear disaster in human history, with longer lasting
catastrophic impacts on the people who live around it. Today
we are talking about the worst industrial disaster in the
history of our species. Today we're talking about Bopaul India.
You've heard of bow Paul, I have not. Oh good,
I'm glad to hear this new disaster to mester m everybody.
(04:10):
We all are. That's a disaster capitalism, baby, Oh, I
love it. Oh, I would get I would pay thirty
dollars for a T shirt that says disaster capitalism and
you think too hard about how it was made? Sophie,
Can we get the T shirt? People on that? What
do you? What do you? What do you do that
to my dream? Sophie. But I'll do it and then
(04:32):
I'll put it in the bechtelcast store. We'll sell it
with another show. Yeah, just cash that check on somebody
else's account. So, uh. The question I want everybody to
ask themselves sort of at the end of this episode
and kind of be thinking about as we go through
this story. Um, because this is something that I think
about a lot, is why does every Western school kid
(04:53):
learn the name Chernobyl, but nobody knows. Are very few
people in the West have heard of bow paul Um.
So let's keep that keep that one in your head
as we go through this. Bopaul is a city the
capital of the Indian state of Madya Pradesh. Uh It's
known as the City of Lakes and is famed for
being one of the greenest cities in all of India.
(05:14):
It's a little bit like India's Portland, um, you might say,
at least geographically um. In the early nineteen eighties, it
was home to more than a million people. Now in
the middle of the last century, India was hit with
a major food crisis due to an exploding population and
farmland that had still not really recovered from the damage
done to it by centuries of British misrule. So India
(05:34):
launched the Green Revolution in the early nineteen sixties with
the goal of using science and technology to reform their
agricultural practices and increase their crop yields. In the late sixties,
the government started reaching out to foreign companies, offering them
incentives to bring jobs to India, and one of the
companies they approached was a Union Carbide, an American chemical
giant with a name that like sounds like they're going
(05:57):
to do to say that sounds like bad writing anytime.
That's it's like, can someone just tell the people naming
these companies? I guess now that like now things aren't
quite as on the nose sinister now. It's just like
every evil company ends with an L y. Yeah yeah, yeah,
(06:17):
like murder Le murder Lee is only slightly less subtle
than Union Carbide. Union Carbide. Yeah. That that also sounds
like a really good name for cartoon villain Union Carbide. Yeah,
oh yeah, yeah. We meet him early in the movie
and he's like, my name's Union and you're like, oh,
that sounds good. And he's like Union carbide and you're like, oh,
(06:38):
ship ship kill us, just like all carbides do exactly.
M hm. Now, Union Carbide one of their big, big
They made a lot of different chemicals, but one of
their big money makers was a pesticide called seven and
it's spelled se v I N Are you kidding me? Yeah,
that's such a sinister name for a pesticide, isn't it.
(07:01):
I mean, I don't, I don't like, but it's just
it's really gaudy. Yeah, yeah, seven, Like why, I don't
know why. That's maybe because of the movie Seven with
Brad Pitt, but it just sounds so yeah like met
Ball evil, like really can't be evil anyways, Yeah, yeah,
(07:23):
can't be exaggerated evil. A pesticide called seven, a pesticide
called seven now seven was popular in Latin American popular
in Asia. Um and so since it was so popular
in Asia, from like a balance sheet standpoint, having a
manufacturing plant in India made a lot of sense for
Union Carbide. So the company worked out in an arrangement
(07:44):
with the Indian government where the Indian government would hold
a twenty two percent steak in the Union Carbide subsidiary
company that was formed to manage the plant, Union Carbide
India Limited. There was a great excitement around the deal
at first, and Union Carbide began to market their products
using the slogan science helps build a new India, which
is again so fucking sinister, Like god, yeah, it's just
(08:08):
when people are so villainous they don't even care if
they come off that way. That is they were, they
were inadvertently foreshadowing. This just sounds like have you seen
have you seen Paddington? To Robert no way of not
Paddington to about this. It's basically a rehashing of this.
It sounds like, no, it's uh, this is more Caitlin
(08:30):
Tonto's department. But in Paddington to Hugh, Hugh Grant plays
this over the top villain who sounds like you would
have a pesticide called seven and say and say like quick,
like a quippy villain. Yeah. Yeah, Also an incredible dance number.
Well that's good. That's good, Hugh Grant, you say yes, yes.
And the career defining role. Yeah, that's that's good because
(08:55):
his career needed some definition after that garbage he put
out in the nineties. I see, I can. I can
rarely tell the difference between uh, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant.
And that's my feminism as I understand it. Uh, if
water rolls off of its back, it's Colin Firth. If
(09:16):
you throw it in water and it floats, Okay, that's
very helpful, thank you. So water bottle to test whether
or not it's Colin Firth or Hugh Grant. So. Construction
of the Union Carbide plant started in nineteen sixty nine. Now,
(09:37):
the plant's purpose would be to manufacture carborrell which was
the active ingredient in the popular pesticide seven, and another
chemical called alid carb for a pesticide named Timmock. Both
bug poisons required large amounts of a regular poison to manufacture.
The key ingredient was something called methyl isocyanate, which is
an inspeakably deadly gas at like room temperatures uh m
(10:00):
I see, as we will refer to it in most
of this episode. Is colorless and heavier than air. It
functions similarly to fos gene gas, the deadliest poison gas
of the First World War, and appropriately enough, phosgene gas
is one of the byproducts of producing m I C.
So they're making bug poison out of this unspeakably deadly
uh poison gas critical ingredient. I am very curious about
(10:24):
what their graphic design game is because this all sounds
so sinister, and I'm wondering if it matches. You know.
There there are some ads I've seen. One of them
was like a Latin American ad, and it's got like
a smiling um like in the background, like a smiling
Mexican farmer, and all white clothes with a bushel of
fruits and vegetables. In his arm, and then in the
foreground you've got the seven pesticide, which has been like
(10:47):
anthropomorphized as a tiny person beating the ship out of bugs.
Oh my god, it's great. Okay, well, okay, didn't didn't disappoint. Yeah. Now, Initially,
all the methyl ice so cianate used in the Bopaul
plant was manufactured in the good old us of A.
The site where the plant was constructed had only been
(11:07):
zoned for light industry and commercial use, not for manufacturing
tons and tons of poisonous chemical gas, as it was
surrounded both by bodies of water and densely populated slums.
But by the late nineteen seventies, financial pressure from competition
led Union Carbide to decide they should start manufacturing m
I C in Bopaul. They called the process of refitting
their plant to manufacture the raw materials and the final
(11:30):
product backward integration. Now, Union Carbide instituted rigorous safety procedures
in order to keep the plant and the citizens of
Bopaul safe. There were two sirens allowed continuous one to
warn members of the public and a quieter one to
announce problems to the factory workers. Within the plant itself,
there were also a number of safety measures within the plant.
(11:51):
A refrigeration unit to chill the m I C, thus
condensing it into a liquid and rendering it much safer.
Event gas scrubber to remove dangerous substances from the ands,
industrial exhaust in a flare tower in order to burn
off excess deadly gases. But the most important safety feature
of the Union Carbide plant was a well trained workforce.
All plant operators were required to have a college degree
(12:13):
in either a related scientific field or in engineering. They
received six months of training to ensure that they had
a working understanding of not just their own specific jobs,
but the jobs of everyone else on their shift. This
is critical in plants working with chemicals is dangerous as
m I see. Workers obviously need to understand the whole
plant so they could spot potential problems or mistakes before
a disaster occurs. Great. That sounds above board, leaps and
(12:36):
bounds over there, enos very much better than the people
are qualified to be doing their jobs. I like this.
I actually I was looking up some of the advertising
for this as well, and I found did you see
the advertising campaign? That's just a gigantic white hand pouring
a vial of chemicals onto. I swear to God, it's
(13:00):
a gigantic white man's hand pouring chemicals onto India and
build a new India, India. Union Carbide a hand in
things to come. Gigantic. I mean, she's a hand in
things to come. Come on, people, it's just it's it's
it's hideous. I mean, if you're if you're listening to
(13:24):
this podcast and a Hollywood producer, there's your intro for
the mini series based on Bopaul India. Just animate all
of these horrifying ads and slogans. It's like, you know,
there's there's another one with the huge white man's hand
pouring chemicals onto a factory in India. What do you
supposed to mean? Oh, more jobs through science Hollywood, Netflix,
(13:47):
you're just leaving money on the table if you don't
produce this the Yeah, please check out the very menacing
white man's hand advertising for Union Carbide. It is it
is of fying. Wow, there's there's at least ten of them.
He's holding a he's holding strawberries and wine, he's holding
(14:07):
dirt in one, pouring chemicals in a lot uh one
in his hands on fire, Oh cool, fingers of flame.
That pierce solid rock. What the fund is wrong with
these people? Why would you why? This one is wild
fingers a flame that pierced solid rock. Yes, through a
(14:27):
dramatic new process known as jet piercing. Holes can now
be burned straight through solid rock. The harder the rock,
the more efficient the operation. A special combination of oxygen,
fuel and water does the job, and does it just
the fraction of the time of the old drill attack.
So there's a yeah, there's a flaming hand just punching
(14:49):
through rock. Cool. Cool, Okay, Well these all sound like
great ads that were dreamed up by coked up people
who had like a gut level intuition that their company
was going to do something horrible. And what year are
we in right now? For We're in like the nineteen
seventies at this point, Like things get up and running.
(15:10):
We're full on in Like this is a Don Draper joint.
Yeah yeah, firehand punching through rock, got it? Yeah? Yeah.
So you know, I just walked through all of the
kind of the safety features of the ba POL plant
and on paper that's how everything worked. But you know,
as I talked about earlier, increasing financial pressures led Union
carbide to start cutting costs, and the easiest place to
(15:31):
cut was basic safety procedures. In nineteen seventy six, the
two trade unions that represented the plants workers sent out
letters of complaint to their managers and the Indian Ministry
of Labor, talking about unsafe levels of pollution within the plant.
They received no response. The nineteen eighties started, and Union
Carbides financial woes continued, conditions that the factory began to
(15:54):
degrade further as wages were cut and standards for workers
started dropping. Union Carbides stopped require all of their employees
to have degrees. Six months of training turned into eight weeks.
In nineteen eighty one, things had gotten bad enough that
fos gene gas spewed out of a badly maintained holding
tank and into the face of a worker. He ripped
off his mask in a panic and died horrifically three
(16:16):
days later. His managers yeah terrible. His managers, of course,
management of the plant blamed him because he'd removed his
mask after getting sprayed in the face with poison. UH.
The union pointed out that the faulty valve had been
responsible for the accident, and that the plant had not
provided the worker with proper protective gear, so the mask
would not have done much if he'd left it on
his face. Plant management ignored this, of course, they does
(16:40):
it sounds very inconvenient. Sounds very inconvenient for them. In
January of nineteen eighty two, there was another false gene leak.
Twenty four workers were hospitalized, but at least this time
nobody died. Workers began to agitate for better safety precautions.
In February of nineteen eighty two, and M I C
leak injured another eighteen workers. In August of the same year,
(17:00):
a chemical engineer suffered burns to thirty of his body
from another m I C leak. Leaks continued to happen
every month or so, injuring workers at a steady pace. Now,
if you were a responsible corporation, you might say, boy,
the monthly poison gas leaks might be a sign that
something is awry with our factory, and perhaps major changes
(17:21):
should be made. But what if you were the type
of company whose mascot is a gigantic Caucasian hand, what
would you what would you do if that were that
were more your vibe? Well, uh, I think you would
continue cutting costs uh and I think this is we're
getting to one of the most fucked up crazy things
(17:42):
of this whole story. So Union Carbide, to their credit,
did make some concessions for the health and well being
of their Indian employees. It provided them with twice yearly
medical exams from the plant doctor, which sounds sounds great.
They did some year in tests that sounds like some
bare minimum stuff that never happens. It was. It was
a little less than bare minimum because while they were
(18:02):
given blood and urine tests, workers were never actually given
the results of their exams. UH. Union Carbide India management
put out brochures advising employees that they could develop a
resistance to poison by drinking six or seven glasses of
milk per day and eating a lot of fish and eggs.
What milk? What is the logic behind that? Is it?
(18:23):
It's just like I'm like a mommy thing like shut
up and drink your milk and there's no way and
you'll never die. By this, Union Carbide knows that the
plant's not going to be there forever. They've got a
couple of years more and they're gonna gradually kind of
like pull all the assets out of it and shut
it down, and they the unions are agitating for expensive
work to make the plant safe and stop killing workers
(18:46):
and stuff. So this was sort of a delaying tactic.
We're not going to give them any money or better
medical care. Tell them to drink milk again, so over
the top villainous. Yeah, it's really fucked up, Like you
can pick you're someone in a gigantic like money thrown thing, like,
just tell them to drink milk. I don't care, and
(19:06):
drink milk. It's amazing. Did they provide the milk? Why
would you do that? No, of course not hate it. Yeah,
it's awful. And at the same time, by the time
we're through with this, you'll barely remember that because of
how fucked up everything else is like this fucking story.
By the end of two most of the original m
(19:28):
I C operators had resigned workers from other union carbide
plants without the proper training and experience to work with
such a dangerous chemical, were brought in to manage the plant.
They received fourteen days of training. That's clearly enough, jeez.
Due to fears of industrial espionage, these new workers did
not have access to manuals that told them how to
(19:48):
do their job. Only the manager could access the manual,
which was of course printed in English, a language not
spoken by the majority of the workers. Cool. Cool, I mean,
I mean it seems fair to I love a good
tale of oppressing the poor, especially when it's being done
by evil, wet American like milk. Oppressing the poor does
(20:11):
a body good. That'll be funny to the three or
four people who remember that old milk industry campaign. I do,
I do remember it. Yeah, I'm still stuck on the
milk thing. I mean, I just it's fucking wild. God,
have someone punched that up. At least have someone punch
up this villainy. It's it's coming in a little stale
(20:32):
for me a little bit. Yeah. At this point, the
union card by plant in Bopaul was already dangerously ill maintained,
as I think we've established, But company management decided there
were still more costs to be cut. They started slashing
worker training even more. According to a U. C. Davis
paper by Ingrid Eckerman on working conditions in the plant quote,
(20:52):
during the training period, technicians were treated as casual workers.
After the training, they were only paid an hourly rate.
A technician who accepted a job at the m I
C plant got a paper about receiving six months of training,
but after five weeks he was asked to stop the
training and to take charge as a full fledged plant operator.
In the matter of promotions, individuals with little experience but
with unquestioning loyalty to the bosses were invariably selected before others.
(21:15):
A demand for extra safety precautions led to warnings that
appointments could be terminated in nineteen eight three. In nineteen
eighty four, there were personnel reductions in order to cut costs.
Workers were encouraged to take early retirement. Three hundred temporary
workers were laid off and another hundred fifty permanent workers
were put in a pool to be assigned to jobs
as needed. The operating shifts were cut from twelve to
(21:36):
six and maintenance shifts from six to two. So they
just cut out two thirds of the maintenance shifts. Like,
we don't need that on this deadly poison, right, we
don't need anyone checking our work. No, they're okay, So
do we know? Like what what am I trying to say?
I like, are are they dodging existing labor laws? Or
(21:56):
are the labor laws in India at this time uh,
sort of allowing this to happen, or is the company
having to sort of like dodge around stuff. Both of
those things are simultaneously true. So they are skirting some
laws and regulations, primarily about safety. Um, and they're able
(22:16):
to get away with it because of their connections in
the Indian government and because of the amount of money
that that this all represents. So both of those things
are true. Um. You know what else is true, Jamie?
What's true? Robert? None of the sponsors of this show
have contributed to an industrial disaster of the ski Can
(22:36):
you be so sure, Robert? This is a terrible ad player.
These advertisers are not guilty of any major disaster that
we're currently aware of. Of course, this is always subject
to change, and it's entirely possible the next ad will
be a Coke Industries ad. And one of the things
Coke Industry has gotten attacked for is that at their
(22:58):
oil refining plants they were doing the same thing that
Bow Paul was doing, where they were giving people screenings
through levels of toxic chemicals in their blood, but not
giving them the results of their blood tests, and so
people died because they got sick. But Coke industries wanted
to ring a little bit of extra productivity out of
them before they went to get treated. Yeah, how fun.
How fun? So if if the AD is for coke industries,
(23:19):
they have in fact contributed to industrial disasters on a
significant scale. But you know, Dick pills, haven't Yeah, Dick pills.
Do you do brain pills? We just turned down brain
We don't do brain pills. I won't do brain pills.
I'm fine with dick pills. I think that's ethical, but
no brain pills. We turned down almost everything, which is
(23:40):
why we're still poor. You know, I I don't. I
don't have much of a conscience. I want so brain pills. Uh,
I think I love Dick pills. Dick pills, I would, yeah,
I don't think we would want an offer for that. Yeah,
we should get I hope that we get some you know,
dick pill offers some really any any genitalia pills were
(24:00):
to talk any any genital related products. Yeah, I want.
I wanted to be like an intersectional, inclusive Uh scary pill.
I mean speaking of the milk industries ads, I wish
there were just a genitalia industry that we could we
could plug for big genital. Yeah, just plug the concept
(24:22):
of genitalia that came straight down from Big Genital. You
can't trust him. Yeah, b g all right, I think
we put enough distance in between my terrible first segue
and in the ads. Now it's time for products. We're back.
(24:43):
We're talking about directions. Uh, but we don't need to
keep talking about directions. No. That's the beautiful thing about
a conversation about directions. It can end it at any time.
It can end at any time, much like an direction
unless you have Dick bills. Oh my own a little
loved that one. Good. I I did that one for
(25:03):
all of the uncles and also Bob Dole, who was
a big listener of this podcast, huge fan of the Yeah,
he's got merch. Yeah, thank you, Bobby. All right, let's
let's get back into the into the tail here so uh.
Chemical accidents continue to pace throughout the early eighties. In
October of nineteen eighty two, an operator was burned and
(25:25):
two workers exposed to gases during an m I C leak.
In four there were numerous additional leaks of m I C,
chlorine gas, fosgene gas, and other deadly poisons, often multiple
poisons would leak out at the same time, which is
you know, I love I love synergy, and the synergy
of deadly poisons is you know, all synergy. I love
(25:47):
chef salad of death and despair. Okay, make deadly poisons
work together again. That's kind my election slogan. Yeah, there's
so many, I mean, yeah, any any story about like
factory worker um abuse and neglect. It's just it's just
(26:07):
the fucking worst. Yeah, it's a fucking nightmare. And this
is the worst of those stories in the history of
the human race. So yeah, And of course, as always,
it's like because it's like, I don't know, I never
I never learned about this, because even though I must
have learned about like the Triangle factory fire nine million times,
(26:27):
I've heard about Chernobyl a million times. Um so much
as a race from American education or maybe I'm just stupid,
but I think, no, no, no, this one, this one
is not in the textbooks that we tend to get. Yeah. Yeah,
I'm sure if you get like Ocean training, they talk
about this motherfucker. But I intend to do By the way,
oh good good, we need that for podcasting. There's a
(26:49):
room full of poison behind you, So it's just poisonous
takes thoughts um all that? No, I mean there's literal
poison as in the room behind you. Where because why
we can't go out on the balcony. And that's why
we can't go out on the balcony. It's full of poison.
I forgot. Yeah, I always want to go. Wait, don't
(27:12):
tell me that I gained so much joy from the
poison room. Wait, where is the poison room in relation?
It's it's it's just just there. Why is that a
poison room? Anyway? Speaking of poison rooms, let's get back
to Bow Paul, India. So as we already talked about
the first group to blow the whistle about the dangers
of the Beau Paul Union carbide plant, where the plant
(27:34):
workers themselves, as I already said, they were organized into
two competing trade unions, which is an unusual state of
affairs that existed primarily because it made life easier for
the plant management. After the leak in nineteen two, one
of the trade unions printed six thousand posters and put
them up all around the city of bow Pall warning
denizens of the dangers at their door. One union leader
(27:55):
went on a hunger strike at the entrance of the factory.
According to Eckerman's paper quote, the result was that all
political and trade union meetings inside the factory were banned.
One you see staff member burnt the principal union's tent
in the ensuing scuffle. Several people were injured. The two
trade union leaders were laid off. Meetings and processions were
held throughout the city, as the plant staff regarded the
(28:17):
plant as one of the safest ships in the modern
industrial fleet. The demonstrations were considered to be a campaign
by agitators wanting higher salaries and shorter working hours, not agitators.
Not agitators wanting more money and a better quality of life. Yeah,
and I guess again, so are what is the state
of unions in India at this point? I mean better
(28:42):
than the state of unions in the US and two
thousand nineteen, Oh good, Well, I mean that's saying practically nothing.
But you know what, the world's got what three years left? Anyways,
year and a half. I was thinking that in two years,
I was like, I was thinking about, like, at this point,
why would you follow your dreams? You know, like you
might as well just like write it out I follow
(29:04):
my short term dreams of like having enough intoxicans. That's
the only way, right, Like you just had to like, uh,
if you if you don't have many kids, just live
fast because you can't. Like, don't go back to school now, Yeah,
don't go back to school. Yeah, don't. Don't read a
book instead of going to school, invest in some really
(29:24):
good bolt cutters, one of those like five pairs that
won't conduct electricity, so you can snap through like the
gates of a rich person's house, even if it's like
mind or electrified or something like that. You guys have
the scariest advice in the entire world. I'm just saying,
a better investment than school at this point is increasing
your ability to do take vengeance. Every other conversation we
(29:46):
have like you should buy a weapon. I mean, bolt
cutters aren't inherently a weapon. They have a lot of
you to bring a weapon on a bus to Phoenix.
I was like, I'm not going to do that. Phoenix
is a dangerous city. I find it to be dangerous.
It's filled with Arizonans, the deadliest people in America other
than Floridians and Texans and Oklahoma's. Yeah, they were fast
(30:09):
and Louisianans. They're a very high concentration of Hooters in
Phoenix as well, because I went I went to a
Hooters and then across the street there was Scottish Hooters,
but it went by like some other names scooters, scooters.
Oh you mean like the tilted kilt. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
there's a bunch of those in the Southwest. Yeah. We
had a lot in Texas to wild yep. So with
(30:33):
the union's hobbled, Union Carbide management was free to lay
off even more experienced workers and cut even more costs
in how their plant was managed. One example, the best
industry practices for storing methyl isocyanate m i C was
to store it in fifty two gallon drums and have
like a lot of small drums rather than one gigantic
storage bat. This was considered safer because it reduced the
(30:55):
amount that could get out during an individual leak. But
Union Carbide was like, all those fifty two gallon drums
are gonna cost a shipload of money and it's going
to take more time. Let's just put it in one
gigantic container, even though that's way less safe and is
explicitly what every expert on the chemical says, no, don't
fucking do that. We're let's just do it anyway because
(31:16):
it will save us some bucks. So uh. Union carbides
own technical manual for m I C warned that this
was literally the most dangerous way to store the substance.
While small drums of the gas do not require refrigeration,
it is absolutely necessary for safe bulk storage. Unfortunately, the
refrigeration unit designed to do this was, according to her
later report by the Indian government's chief scientists, small and ineffective.
(31:40):
In late night, it was turned off entirely after plant
managers talked with their bosses at the American headquarters of
Union Carbide and determined it was unnecessary. The refrigeration unit
was determined to be unnecessary because shutting it off would
save money on electricity and allow them to reroute the
free onto other parts of the plant and save even
more money. Connecting this refrigeration unit added whole pennies to
(32:02):
the shareholder value of Union Carbides. This is like the
equivalent of just like lighting Titanic lifeboats on fire, Yeah,
just cause need more room. It's like lighting those lifeboats
on fire as you like do shots with the captain
to convince him to get as close to that iceberg
as he can. Say. Yeah, like it's like you want
(32:24):
to throw a beer, adding taking body shots off the
cap ridiculous. So Union Carbides manual for m I C
did not include any guidance as to what employees might
do in the event of a massive leak. Fairly little
was known about the chemical, so the manual simply suggested
dumping it into a spare storage tank. It noted there
(32:45):
may be other situations not covered above. The situation will
determine the appropriate action. We will learn more and more
as we gain actual experience, which is a great thing
to hear in the manual for a deadly chemical producing
By the time, my god, love it of it, this
is there's no and and I'm imagining there's no like
(33:06):
formal regulatory body that would say oversee something like this.
Are they even pretending to have any sort of regular
like regulation. They're definitely pretending. Okay, well, I'm like at
least show some some effort. Oh yeah, they fake it
a little bit, not a whole lot, because again, like
it's India and rules are a lot less strict there. Uh,
(33:29):
but they do fake it to an extent. Um and
I want to note because like I've spent a decent
amount of time in India and I really love the country. Um.
And there's a lot of very valid criticism about how
loose a lot of the rules about worker health and
safety are and have been going back decades. Totally fair
to hit them on that. There were also and are
also a lot of people in the country who carry
(33:50):
a lot about reforming that. And in the case of
the ticking time bomb that was the Bopaul Union carbide plant,
there was a heroic journalist in addition to those like
a union workers who tried to blow the whistle. Uh. Now,
this journalists name was Raj Kumar Kaswani and he wrote
for a local Hindu weekly paper called the Septak Report.
And in late night two he started receiving tips about
(34:12):
the poor maintenance and constant leaks inside the Union carbide facility.
Rush Kumar began to investigate and became convinced that an
apocalyptic danger awaited the city of beau Pal. In September
and October, he ran a series of articles with the
most heartbreaking headlines imaginable. The first article was titled save
Please Save this City. The second article was titled Beau
(34:34):
Paul on the Mouth of a Volcano, and the third
was titled if you don't understand, you will be wiped
out rash. Yeah, like that's you really can be more directed.
A title no Buried leads with this guy. Yeah, he's
setting the tone. I mean, I'm glad that he did,
(34:55):
because especially it sounds like the union workers are already
out here saying this is happen. And then it's just
like if the company and the culture and the local
government care, you're going to die. Like seriously, not kidding,
We're all about to fucking die. Please read, please, love
(35:18):
God do something. Uh. As we all know from the
last couple of years, especially nobody listened to roj Kumars. Uh. Yeah.
By nine four m I C production at the Beau
Paul plant was down to about a quarter of its height.
Cost cutting features had reduced maintenance shifts to roughly a
(35:39):
quarter of their necessary frequency and robbed the plant of
most of its highly trained staff. Mr Parik, a former
project manager at the plant, reported the whole industrial culture
of union carbide at Bow Paul went down the drain.
The plant was losing money. Top management decided that saving
money was more important than safety. Maintenance practices became poor
and things generally got sloppy. The plant didn't seem to
(35:59):
have a few sure, and a lot of skilled people
became depressed and left as a result. And this was
the situation on December two when things started to go
badly wrong at the plant. And how many people are
working at this plant? Oh, not that many people. There's
only six folks on staff. Yeah. The first sign of
(36:20):
this was in pressure readings from the gas tanks that
registered at five times the normal levels sum one day.
The senior operator on duty said he did not consider
this a problem. Another worker who saw the same readings
half an hour later, had the same reaction. He later
recalled to the New York Times there was a continual
problem with instruments. Instruments often didn't work, so they didn't
(36:41):
they didn't see like it was showing elevated levels of gases,
but it kind of always did because all of the
instruments were garbage, so they just didn't think of it
as a problem. Now, it might have helped in this
case if the Bopaul plant had enjoyed a complex computer
monitoring system to check for things like gasses and This
is where I and out the Union Carbide operated a second,
(37:02):
almost identical chemical plant producing m I C in West Virginia.
It was also known as the sister plant to the
one in Bopaul, and that plant did in fact have
a sophisticated computer monitoring system to quickly warn staff members
about leaks. Meanwhile, in India, Union Carbide preferred to rely
on workers to notice leaks when their eyes started a
water from all the poison in the air. Oh my god, yeah,
(37:27):
I laughter about what's coming is like the like like
the anxious reaction that comes because of the horrors. But
like I wonder which country the company cared about. More
impossible to say, no, need to bring race into this, Jamie, Yeah, no, no, no,
I'm sorry. That was a reach and I and I
(37:48):
can't apologize enough. At am December, two workers in the
methyl isocyanate structure on FET from the control room noticed
that their eyes had started to water. One operator US
named Singh spotted a liquid drip and a yellowish white gas.
He went to the control room at PM and told
his boss that they had another M I C leak.
(38:09):
His boss and Mr Quareshi told him that he would
look into it after having his tea. Uh, this is
literally Titanic, Robert not to not to, but it's like
Iceberg right ahead, and he's like, okay, let me just
finish my beer first. This is going to make Titanic
look like a ski do crash. Well, Titanic in retrospect,
(38:32):
like a lot of rich people died, and we can't
you know, we can't fault We can't fault the ocean
for claiming the rich. No, no, I'm I'm alright with
that actually, but sorry, not not not to say that yet. Anyway,
no one looked into the league until after am, once
management had finished with their tea. And while we can
and should mock management for waiting until after tea to
(38:54):
check in a poison gas leak, I should note here
that it's likely none of them would have known what
to do if they had checked earlier. The positions of
second and third shift maintenance supervisor had been eliminated several
days before the disaster, so there was actually no one
on duty whose job it was to fix this stuff.
In fact, on the night of December second, there was
not a single trained engineer at the Union Carbide plant
(39:16):
in Bo Paul, so the people whose job it was
to maintain the plant did not know how to maintain it.
They knew nothing about M I C or fostergene, the
two deadly gases stored by the ton and enormous cylinders.
The supervisor was initially convinced that no leak was possible
because they'd stopped production for the night. The New York
Times spoke to several of these workers. Quote. M. K. Jane,
(39:37):
an operator on duty on the night of the accident,
said that he did not understand large parts of the plant.
His three months of instrument training and two weeks of
theoretical work taught him to operate only one of several
methyl isocyanate systems. He said. If there was a problem
in another M I C system, I don't know how
to deal with it, said Mr Jane, a high school graduate.
Raman Khan, the operator who washed the improperly sealed pipe
(39:58):
a few hours before the accident, said, I was trained
for one particular area and one particular job. I don't
know about other jobs. During training, they just said, these
are the valves you were supposed to turn, This is
the system in which you work. Here are the instruments
and what they indicate that's it. Okay, Yeah, so the whole,
the whole training was done away with. Yeah, basically. So
(40:22):
in order to talk about how the disaster started and
what happened next, I'm going to quote from a National
Institute of Health article on what happened because it kind
of describes it mechanically. Quote. The vent gas scrubber, a
safety device designed to neutralize toxic discharged from the m
I C system, had been turned off three weeks prior.
(40:43):
Apparently a faulty valve had allowed one ton of water
for cleaning internal pipes to mix with forty tons of
m I C. A thirty ton refrigeration unit that normally
served as a safety component to cool the m I
C storage tank had been drained of its coolant for
use in another part of the plant. Pressure and heat
from the vigorous exothermic reaction in the tank contain you
to build The gas flare. Safety system was out of
action and had been for three months. At around one
(41:05):
am December third, loud rumbling reverberated around the plant as
a safety valve gave way, sending a plume of m
I C gas into the early morning air. Jesus Christ
now it didn't kill the workers at the plant. This
is not like Chernobyl. It's much worse because the gas,
which was heavier than air, floated down to the slums
(41:27):
surrounding the chemical plant and into the lungs of thousands
upon thousands of sleeping citizens. The wind blew the poisonous
gas as far and wide, covering an area of almost
forty square kilometers. Hundreds choked to death in their sleep
as their lungs literally liquefied and drowned them. Thousands more awoke, eyes, burning,
mouth's frothing, driven nearly mad by a choking terror. Few
(41:48):
of us can imagine. Nearly four thousand people died on
the first night, as many people as the World Health
Organization estimates will die in total from the Chernobyl disaster
over the next several decades. Jesus Christ. Yeah, kind of frustrating.
We don't learn about this one. It's yeah, extremely telling
that we don't learn about this one. That's oh my god,
(42:10):
four so four thousand and and the poison acts in
a matter of hours. Yeah, jee Now, since m I
C is twice as heavy as air, children were poisoned
first and had the most trouble escaping the deadly gases,
and as bad as the leak was, it should have
been easy from most of the victims to escape. A
wet cloth over the mouth would have acted as a
(42:31):
crude gas mask long enough for virtually everyone affected to
climb to higher ground and get above the gas. But
no one in Bopal knew these facts because Union Carbide
had not bothered to spend the money to inform the
citizens about what they might need to do if the
giant poisoned gas plant in their city ever exploded. And
that wouldn't have even cost anything like barely anything to print. Yeah,
(42:53):
you'd had to print some stuff, and yeah, you just
have to I guess yeah, by one a couple of
ads in a newspaper. So coral doctors were at first
not even aware of what chemical people had been poisoned with,
because Union Carbide had not bothered to have a little
sit down with any of them either. According to an
India Today report on the disaster, quote, the public siren
(43:15):
was put on around one am, but only for a
few minutes, and after that the muted siren took over.
This was per Carbide procedure, which was evolved to avoid
alarming the public around the factory over tiny leaks. But
in the present case, it was gross negligence that the
continuous siren was put off. Although it was already known
by then that M I C was escaping in huge quantities,
it was not until two am, one hour later, that
(43:36):
the public siren was sounded again on full blast to
alert the already terrified, injured, and dying in the city.
So that's cool. That just seems aggressive at that point, like, yeah,
people know something's up. Yeah, because they're dying by the hunter.
Everyone they know just died. You don't need to turn
on the siren now, asshole. So um, this is time
(44:02):
for an AD plug. This is a really dark time
for an AD plug. Maybe our darkest AD pivot of
all time. I mean, this is just like devastating. This
is so yeah, it's so crushing. Yeah, well, I mean
I just I don't know. Every day I learned about
(44:23):
something new that was just completely omitted from my education,
so I could learn misinformation about the founding fathers. And
it makes me angry, but you know, but you know
what really comforts me in these moments of anger, Products
and services. Products and services. We're back on the fucking train. Baby.
(44:44):
All right, now some ads, we're back. We're back, and
things are not I think things are not going well.
Things are not going great. The alarms have been sounded
(45:04):
after four thousand people have died. Yeah, just you know,
four thousand people or so. Yeah. So in order to
like kind of put together or provide a picture of
exactly what was going on and what it was like
to be at ground zero for this, I'm going to
quote from an India Today report quote. The siren was
(45:25):
heard by Sayed Khan as he ran away, leaving his
family coughing and sputtering. By the time he returned in
the morning, his father, mother, and two brothers were dead.
Only a sister survived. Sasa Khan of Jayaprakesh Nagar, who
had fled in blind panic, leaving his wife and four
daughters to the vapors, returned to find all but two
girls dead. Chiv Narrang, a machine operator at the straw
products factory, lost a three month old boy, but seven
(45:47):
of his twelve neighbors, all of whom shared a four
room l shaped hut, died. Among the dead were Nathu
ram Ka, the owner of the hut, his wife and
two children, Kuswa died because he couldn't leave his wife's side.
She had just delivered their second child a few hours earlier.
Oh my god. Stories like that are repeated across the
city of bow Pall to thousands upon thousands of people
(46:08):
and families. Now, the bo Pall accident was the first
time that doctors saw the effective M I C gas
on human beings on at any kind of scale. Those
who died the first day had lungs that were as
much as three times their normal weight. The autopsy team
suffered gas poisoning as they cut open bodies that were
essentially filled with chemical weaponry. An exact death toll for
(46:28):
the immediate wake of the bow Pall disaster will never
be known. Estimates rage as high as ten to fifteen
thousand in the first few days, with another fifteen to
twenty thousand premature deaths over the next twenty years. So
at this point we're looking at thirty to forty thousand
dead conservatively right now. Again, sometimes the death toll of
(46:49):
chernobyl and uh just I mean uh morbid question from me,
um the four thousand people who die immediately? Does that
have to do? Would like range with the closeness to
the or or is there any like indication of why
certain people survived and others didn't? Or these are the
(47:09):
people who you know, mostly they're asleep. They live very
close to where the leak happens, so the gas hits
them first, and they just choked to death on their lungs.
And a lot of people, yeah, got hit and got hurt,
but like got away, many of whom were still hurt
enough that they died within a few days. Um. Others
just suffered injuries that would kill them five, ten, fifteen
years later. Um. Yeah. In the immediate wake of the disaster,
(47:33):
Union Carbides set to work trying to avoid any blame
for this calamity their incompetence and mismanagement had brought into
the world. It first tried to shift the blame by
blaming Union Carbide India, claiming that the plant had been
built and was operated wholly by the subsidiary corporation. They
also floated theories that an unknown seek extremist group had
attacked the plant had caused the disaster. Then they blamed
angry employees, essentially trying to shift the blame to the
(47:55):
union workers who tried to warn them about the plants
issues back in nineteen. They tried to explain an unknown
seek extreme misgray, like, just blame the sieks. Yeah, let's
just yeah, pretty frustrating, blame the union. So the first
lawsuit against Union Carbide landed on December seventh, less than
(48:18):
a week after the disaster. It was filed by an
American attorney in the US Court. The first great piece
of journalism on the disaster was published in January by
The New York Times, based on dozens of interviews with
plant workers, Union Carbide representatives, and members of the Indian government.
They were the first paper to report on much of
what I talked about today, the cost cutting, elimination of
trained personnel, shut down of basic safety equipment, and failure
(48:40):
to warn the community. Quote when you questioned in recent
days about the shortcomings disclosed in the inquiry by The Times,
a spokesman at the Union Carbide corporate headquarters in Danbury
characterized any suggestion of the accidents causes a speculation and
emphasized that Union Carbide would not contribute to that speculation. Cool. Cool, all.
(49:00):
The spokesman went on to state responsibility for plant maintenance,
hiring and training of employees, establishing levels of training and
determining proper staffing levels rest with the plant management. M mmmmm,
m oh, it's it's actually India's fault. It's actually India's fault.
Let's let's code now. The time spoke with VP GO
(49:23):
call the ce CEO of the Union Carbide India to
try and parse out just how independent the so called
subsidiary really was during his interview. They noted quote at
perhaps a dozen points during a two hour interview, he
read his answers into a tape recorder, saying he would
inform the parent corporations Danbury headquarters of what he had said.
He also made notes of some of his comments and
(49:44):
said he would send him to Danbury for approval by
Union Carbide lawyers. That doesn't sound totally independent investing. I know,
it sounds totally above board. It sounds like standard practice.
And yeah, it seems seems God it's legit and cool.
Cannot talk about it. No, it's just so fucked up.
(50:04):
This will not be our dark Yeah, rip roaring funnest episode.
The things that you tell us, Robert, it's upset. Yeah,
it's not great. And then we're just supposed to go
home after that, you know, go home maybe you get
some bolt cutters, and then they only advice you have
(50:26):
for coping is to buy bolt cutters. Everybody could use
a pair of bolt cutters. That's all I'm saying. That's
all I and Werner Herzog. Now. The New York Times
further notes that Union Carbide had several direct representatives on
the board of Union Carbide India, including an e v
P of the American company. Mr. Gokal confirmed that the
(50:48):
Union Carbide Board of directors reviewed reports regularly from operations
in their Indian subsidiary and made numerous safety decisions, such
as the decision to shut down the refrigerator to save
power and free on Yeah. In March of nineteen eighty five,
the Indian government passed the Gas Leak Disaster Act, making
the Indian government the only representative of victims in and
outside of India. Eventually, the government reached a settlement with
(51:10):
Union Carbide. The company took moral responsibility and paid four
hundred and seventy million dollars to the Indian government. Now,
this was instantly controversial. For one thing, it was based
on the idea that only three thousand people had died
and a hundred and two thousand people had been permanently disabled.
The real figure in both cases was, of course, several
times that high. The n I H notes quote upon
(51:34):
announcing the settlement, shares of U c C rose two
dollars per share, or seven percent in value. Had compensation
in Bopaul been paid at the same rate that the
Asbestos as victims were being awarded in U S courts
by defendants, including U c C, which Mind Asbestos from
nineteen sixty three to nineteen eighty five, the liability would
have been greater than the ten billion the company was
worth and insured for in nineteen eighty four. By the
(51:55):
end of October two thousand three, according to the Beau
Paul Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Department, compensation had been
awarded to five thousand, eight hundred people for injuries received
in fifteen thousand, three d and ten survivors. Of those killed.
The average amount to families of the dead was two dollars.
That doesn't even cover like funeral costs. But sure, and
(52:20):
when and when things like that happened, especially, you're just
like this is just like PR for them. It's not
you know, it's just PR. Yeah, it's just just FTPR
expense of Like, no, I think it's taken care of. Yeah,
the fact that Union Carbi did not care about what
had happened became even clearer UH in the immediate wake
or in the weeks following the disaster. See when you
(52:42):
killed ten thousand or so people in the space of
a handful of days, it tends to be bad for business.
The BUPA plant had already been slated for decommissioning. They
were slowly winding down production and removing equipment, but there
were still thousands upon thousands of tons of toxic waste
and equally toxic pesticide ingredients to be dealt with. Prior
to this disaster, Union Carbide had dumped its waist into
twenty one unlined pits on the site. Now, this is
(53:05):
fucked up by modern standards, but it should be said
this was the standard practice in the US back then too.
So unlike what their failure to install a computer monitoring system.
We can't put that one down to Union Carbide valuing
Indian lives less than American ones. However, industry wid industry
wide stupidity yea UH. In nineteen seventy seven, though the
(53:26):
company built three proper solar of operation ponds and started
piping waste directly in. These ponds had a liner, but
it was thin and it broke immediately, which allowed the
waste to seep into the ground and eventually into the groundwater.
Farmers complained that the runoff was killing their cows and
their crops, and then when the disaster hit, Union Carbide
abandoned the factory and all of the poison inside it.
There are literally pictures of giant sacks of toxic chemicals
(53:48):
that they left lying out, unguarded and exposed to the elements.
Many of those sacks are still lying around the factory
to this day. The tanks and vats filled with deadly
poison weren't emptied until nineteen eighty nine. Sixty of the
tons of the worst waste was finally locked up in
two thousand five. The vast majority. Yeah so my head,
(54:11):
my heart, okay, yeah, uh so after this happens is
the area in fact people aren't allowed to live there
or people living Oh of course not no, no, nothing,
That everything was just as bad, and that people were
moving in. Yeah. The next sort of these huge bags
of toxic waste, almost nothing was cleaned up the factory remained.
(54:33):
The poison seeped into the groundwater, and as you might expect,
leaving all this poison around in the middle of a
densely populated city has had some long term negative consequences. Yeah, shockingly,
I know. That's that one really threw me for a
loop to In two thousand eighteen, Atlantic writer A poor
Va Manda Villi wrote a great article about this called
(54:53):
the World's worst industrial disaster is Still Unfolding. She traveled
to on a negar, a neighborhood directly across from the
old chemical a plant. I'd like to read you the
introduction from her article, as it does a superb job
of humanizing the long term impact of all this poison.
Please do From the wooden bed outside her two room house,
money Be, the grand dam of Anna Nagar, has a
wide lens on the devastation. Money Be's bed is less
(55:15):
than two feet from a massive pit that you sec
filled with toxic sludge, close enough to witness the damage
the Ganda Pani dirty water has wrought. Right next door
is fifteen year old Faiza, who didn't speak for the
first five years of her life and still has heart palpitations,
dizzy spells, and headaches. The young woman who grew up
two doors down Taba suum now has a toddler who
doesn't eat much or speak or cry and has seizures.
(55:37):
Down the street is Obie, a spindley legged thirteen year
old with black pustules all over his body, so painful
and grotesque that he rarely leaves the house. Across the
street from him is twelve year old Tasib, who was
intellectually disabled. And then there's Najma the street sweet young
woman who lost her mother to tongue cancer and now
sits in front of her house all day, smiling and
occasionally shouting out guttural gibberous to passer by. And then
(55:58):
there is the house where one has fused bones in
her legs and another has a hole in her heart.
And are they still? Are they still? They're living? They're
still living in the area Yep yep slum and its
slums that are around there. This is not where either.
It's a big city. There's a lot of nice parts
of Beau Paul. The slums where poor people can afford
to live, many of them are directly around and surrounding
(56:19):
the plant right, And the plant is still operational. Or
is it just there? It's just there, It's nobody's cleaned
it up there and toxic waste like a fucking like
like an abandoned amusement park that's killing people. Yep, that
sounds like a horror movie. I would an abandoned amusement
park that's killing people. Yeah, I didn't see that movie.
(56:41):
It's like a state in King book. Yeah, absolutely, Okay.
The current data suggests that forty four communities in India
at least have had their groundwater corrupted by toxic levels
of solvents from the old Union Carbide Factory or plant.
Canadian researchers are in the process of conducting a long
term study and mortality, birth defects, fertility can to are
another ailments caused by the old plant. The study, which
(57:02):
has involved upwards of a hundred thousand people to day,
suggests that folks who were exposed to the gas or
to the water near the plant have ten times the
rate of cancer compared to other groups. So on a
long term basis, the kids who grow up in the
slums around the plant and drink the water have the
same cancer risk as people who were actually gassed on
the night of the disaster. Dal Chemical Company bought Union
Carbide in two thousand one. They merged with DuPont in
(57:25):
two thousand seventeen. To that does sound safe, sounds like
everything's going to be fine today. Dow claims that the
responsibility for cleaning up the mess Union Carbide left behind
lies with Union Carbide India, which is now called ever
Ready Industries India. Ever Ready, for their part, blames Union
Carbide and their owner Dal Chemical. Dow also regularly suggests
that the state of Madhya Pradesh should be responsible for
(57:47):
cleaning up the site. The state claims they can't afford
to do that and has convinced the federal government to
name Dow in a curative petition demanding one point two
billion as restitution for the original inadequate settlement. On their website,
DOUST touts the old Union Carbide line that a disgruntled
employee caused the accident. They steadfastly refused to admit any responsibility.
Quote that acquired shares of Union Carbide in two thousand one,
(58:10):
seven years after U c I I became ever Ready
Industries India Limited. Union Carbide had no assets in India
at the time of the transaction with Dow down ever
owned or operated the U c I L plant. Site activists,
on the other hand, argue that when dowbot Union Carbide,
they assumed all of the company's liabilities as well as
his assets. It's unlikely that any satisfactory resolution to the
(58:30):
case will be reached as long as Dow slash DuPont
continues to have enough money for all of the lawyers.
A recent Greenpeace report estimated it would cost thirty million
dollars to clean up the remaining waste at the old
Union Carbide plant over a period of four years. Last year,
Dow DuPont made eight five billion dollars in profits. Cool, well,
I mean once if thousand involved, it seems to be
(58:52):
like an outstanding thing. I'm wanting to watch a NASCAR race.
All of a sudden, I'm like, really DuPont, Oh my god, yeah,
big names, big names. Yeah, good good NASCAR suit that
DuPont company. Oh yeah, good lord. Well good to know that,
you know, a hundred years later, you know, Union Carbide alive,
alive and well unlike all of their casualties. Well like
(59:16):
thirty years later. Well no, sorry, I was looking at
the company was founded in Yeah, they've been around a minute. Yeah, yeah,
and I was wondering too. This is again he had
another morbid exercise. But uh, if you google Union carbide,
I'm like, how much money do they spend trying to
(59:36):
push those results out of the first Google page? And
they managed to get the bill pall disaster is not
mentioned at all until uh six results down. Cool. Yeah,
so if you're wondering, are they still evil? Yes, well
that's great. Well how you feeling a out this all, Jamie?
(01:00:01):
I feel absolutely, I honestly feel sick to my stomach. Uh,
this is I mean, I want to do more reading
about this um and the fact that yeah, just that
I can't believe that there's I mean not to you know,
it's kind of false equivalence, but like, why have I
seen so many documentaries about the Triangle Factory fire and
(01:00:25):
nothing about like it's just it's upsetting. I mean, Triangle
shirtwaist is an important one to understand for like the
history of the labor movement in the US, But I
think Bo Paul is just as critical because it talks
about what's still going on to this day. You know,
the you can tie like that horrible garment factory fire
(01:00:45):
in Bangladesh that killed all those people some of the
same kinds of things going on in terms of like
cost cutting, and just like they don't care as much
about those people, so less is done to protect them. Um,
that's just kind of what happens. Well, I feel absolutely sick.
How do you feel? Uh, you know, I'm gonna I'm
(01:01:06):
gonna pour some more coffee in a little bit. I
should have we I don't know if we've mentioned this
on Mike Get You've been wearing a fuzzy bathrobe this
whole time? Yeah there, Robert, do you remember that time
you told me about one of the most horrifying things
I've ever heard about in my one human life whilst
wearing a fuzzy bathrobe? I mean I read about it
(01:01:26):
whilst wearing a fuzzy bathrobe. I'm glad that you're comfortable.
I we we we live in a system in which
nightmares are allowed to occur on a daily basis because
it's cheaper than trying to prevent them, and in a
system that's sociopathic. There are two logical responses products and services,
(01:01:49):
Well those are those are logical for other reasons. But
the two logical responses are make yourself comfortable and buy
bolt cutters. I'm actually gonna do it. Someday. There's gonna
I'm gonna. Okay, well, yeah, no, I I feel I
feel terrible, but I love your robe, and I'm going
(01:02:10):
to get some cutters. You can get, you know, decent
ones for cheap. It's just the really nice ones won't
trigger the alarms or set off the electronics and stuff.
So like if you're depending on you know, how the
collapse happens. Yeah, I'm just saying, are they small? They are?
They like pocket size? I can't say I've ever used any.
(01:02:30):
You can get ones that are small enough to fit
in a small backpack that aren't huge. Yeah. Yeah, they
have a variety of sizes of bolt cutter's fun. Yeah,
I might rhinestone handle. I might. I want to. I
want to kind of shrim mine up and personalize it.
The revolution should involved rhinestone bolt cutters. I feel strongly
about that. I I think that, Yeah, that would be
(01:02:53):
a real, real iconic thing to do. Mhmm yeah. So uh,
everyone listening at home, revolt in your own ways definitely
consider it a pair of bolt cutters and a fuzzy bathrobe.
Um god' sorry about this one. Gang. This was this
was a this was extremely heavy. Yeah, it's a lot. Yes,
(01:03:14):
you want to plug your plugables, Jamie. I mean it
feels just wrong at this point, but yeah, but everything does.
But yeah, I guess we we only have two years
to live, so I may as well. Um. Sure, you
can listen to the Bechdel Cast with Caitlin and Durante
and my podcast about the portrayal of women in movies
every Thursday. Uh, you can go see my show Boss
(01:03:36):
Home is Girl in Scotland and in London all summer long.
And all that info is on my website Jamie loftus
is Innocent dot com and Jamie want his help on Twitter.
That's all beautiful. Well, I'm Robert Evans. You can find
me on Twitter at I right okay, sometimes tweeting about
(01:03:58):
bolt cutters. You can find this podcast on the internet,
along with all of its sources at behind the Bastards
dot com. You can find us on the Graham and
the tweets at at Bastards pot. You can buy t shirts, cups,
um gloves that you can use to along with your
new bolt cutters at Publis dot com. Um. Uh, we
(01:04:20):
don't have branded bolt cutters there yet, but I'll talk
with Sophie about that. We'll see what we can do.
M she's not, she's brilliant to the beautiful, beautiful, Well
until next week, stay angry and buy bolt cutters. I
love about