Detailed description on Bhopal Gas Tragedy, British Petroleum Oil Spill, Ozone Layer, The Bottom Line

1. The Bhopal Gas Tragedy
The Bhopal disaster, also referred to as the Bhopal gas tragedy, was a gas leak incident in India,
considered the world's worst industrial disaster. It occurred on the night of 2–3 December 1984 at the
Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Over 500,000 people
were exposed to methyl isocyanate gas and other chemicals. The toxic substance made its way in and
around the shanty towns located near the plant. Estimates vary on the death toll. The official immediate
death toll was 2,259. The government of Madhya Pradesh confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths related to
the gas release. Others estimate 8,000 died within two weeks and another 8,000 or more have since
died from gas-related diseases. A government affidavit in 2006 stated the leak caused 558,125 injuries
including 38,478 temporary partial injuries and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling
injuries.
Effects on human health
 Respiratory Disorders – Irritation to the lungs, causing coughing and/or shortness of breathing.
Higher exposure caused build up of fluids (pulmonary edema). Caused Asthama.
 Cancer Hazard – Caused mutation (genetic changes). It caused cancer.
 Reproductive Hazard – Association between exposure to Methyl Isocyanate and miscarriages. It
may damage the growing foetus. May also affect fertility in men and women.
 Traces of many toxins were found in the Brest Milk of mothers and were inturn transmitted to
the recepient babies.
UCIL was the Indian subsidiary of Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), with Indian Government controlled
banks and the Indian public holding a 49.1 percent stake. In 1994, the Supreme Court of India allowed
UCC to sell its 50.9 percent interest in UCIL to Eveready Industries India Limited (EIIL), which
subsequently merged with McLeod Russel (India) Ltd. Eveready Industries India, Limited, ended clean-up
on the site in 1998, when it terminated its 99-year lease and turned over control of the site to the state
government of Madhya Pradesh. Dow Chemical Company purchased UCC in 2001, seventeen years after
the disaster.
Civil and criminal cases are pending in the District Court of Bhopal, India, involving UCC and Warren
Anderson, UCC CEO at the time of the disaster. In June 2010, seven ex-employees, including the former
UCIL chairman, were convicted in Bhopal of causing death by negligence and sentenced to two years
imprisonment and a fine of about $2,000 each, the maximum punishment allowed by Indian law. An
eighth former employee was also convicted, but died before the judgement was passed.

2. British Petroleum Oil Spill
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred to as the BP oil spill, the BP oil disaster, the Gulf of Mexico
oilspill, and the Macondo blowout) began on 20 April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated
Macondo Prospect. It claimed eleven lives and is considered the largest accidental marine oil spill in the
history of the petroleum industry, an estimated 8% to 31% larger in volume than the previously largest,
the Ixtoc I oil spill. Following the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, a sea-floor oil
gusher flowed for 87 days, until it was capped on 15 July 2010. The US Government estimated the total
discharge at 4.9 million barrels (210 million US gal; 780,000 m3). After several failed efforts to contain
the flow, the well was declared sealed on 19 September 2010. Some reports indicate the well site
continues to leak.
A massive response ensued to protect beaches, wetlands and estuaries from the spreading oil utilizing
skimmer ships, floating booms, controlled burns and 1.84 million US gallons (7,000 m3) of Corexit oil
dispersant. Due to the months-long spill, along with adverse effects from the response and cleanup
activities, extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats, fishing and tourism industries, and human
health problems have continued through 2014. In 2013 it was reported that dolphins and other marine
life continued to die in record numbers with infant dolphins dying at six times the normal rate. In
October 2013, Al Jazeera reported that the gulf ecosystem was "in crisis", citing a decline in seafood
catches, as well as deformities and lesions found in fish. In Louisiana, 4.6 million pounds of oily material
was removed from the beaches in 2013, over double the amount collected in 2012. Oil cleanup crews
worked four days a week on 55 miles of Louisiana shoreline throughout 2013.
In November 2012, BP and the United States Department of Justice settled federal criminal charges with
BP pleading guilty to 11 counts. BP also agreed to four years of government monitoring of its safety
practices and ethics, and the Environmental Protection Agency announced that BP would be temporarily
banned from new contracts with the US government. BP and the Department of Justice agreed to a
record-setting $4.525 billion in fines and other payments but further legal proceedings not expected to
conclude until 2014 are ongoing to determine payouts and fines under the Clean Water Act and the
Natural Resources Damage Assessment. As of February 2013, criminal and civil settlements and
payments to a trust fund had cost the company $42.2 billion.

3. Ozone Layer Depletion
The ozone layer sits in the stratosphere approximately 25km above the Earth. It is made up of ozone
gases that act like a blanket to stop too much UV radiation from the sun entering the atmosphere.
As UV radiation hits the Ozone layer the ozone gas absorbs the radiation and turns it into oxygen.
The Ozone layer prevents the harmful UV radiation entering the Earth, which is vital because too
much of these UV rays can cause cancer, cataracts and DNA damage. Small amounts of ozone are
constantly being made by the action of sunlight on oxygen. At the same time, ozone is being broken
down by natural and unnatural processes that lead to ozone depletion. If this process is greater than
the production of ozone then the ozone layer becomes thinner and less effective.
Causes of Ozone Depletion
Ozone depletion occurs when the natural balance between production and destruction of
stratospheric ozone is tipped in favour of destruction.
The destruction of the Ozone layer is caused due to 1 main factor which is:
 The release of chemicals which contain chlorine and bromine such as chlorofluorocarbons
(CFC’s) into the atmosphere by human activity.
 CFC’s are released into the atmosphere through the use of aerosols and cooling systems in
fridges. The CFC’s released into the atmosphere do not break down and therefore remain
stable within the atmosphere for between 20 and 120 years.
 The chlorine contained within these CFC’s break down the ozone gases in the ozone layer
which further increases Ozone depletion.
 Emissions of CFC’s have accounted for roughly 80% of total stratospheric ozone depletion.
Effects of Ozone Depletion
 An increase in UV radiation has been linked to an increase in skin cancer which effects fair
skinned individuals who are at a greater risk than darker skinned people.
 Scientists have proven that 1% depletion in ozone causes a 5% increase in cases of skin cancer,
the depletion rate has been 6% since 1970 and therefore the number of cancer cases has
increased rapidly.
 UV radiation has also increased the number of cases of cataracts, which affects people’s vision.
 Immunity to diseases has also been effected due to the increase in UV radiation entering the
atmosphere. The depletion of ozone and increase in UV rays can also lead to DNA damage,
which can be catastrophic.
Solutions to Ozone depletion
The ozone hole is here to stay for about 50 years before the ozone levels will start to return to their
normal levels.

4.  Any ozone that we could artificially add would most likely be destroyed and would not help our
problem in the long run.
 A different approach is to destroy the CFC's when they are in the troposphere with high-
powered infrared lasers located on mountainsides.
 Another possible plan is to dump about 50,000 tons of ethane or propane into the Antarctic
stratosphere each spring. The chemicals would transform active ozone-depleting chlorine into
non-ozone depleting hydrochloride.
 However, there are no official plans to try to fix the ozone hole in the Antarctic because we
don't know enough about stratospheric mechanics to do so. By trying to fix the problem we
might make it worse.
Triple Bottom Line
In traditional business accounting, the "bottom line" refers to the sum of revenue minus expenses,
which is either "loss" if negative, or "profit" if positive. The term originated because profit is always
shown as the very "bottom line" on a statement of revenue and expenses. Over the last 50 years,
environmentalists and social justice advocates have struggled to bring a broader definition of
"bottom line" into public consciousness, by introducing full cost accounting. For example, if a
corporation shows a monetary profit, but their metal mine causes thousands of deaths from
pollution, and their copper mine pollutes a river, and the government ends up spending taxpayer
money on health care and river clean-up, how do we perform a full societal cost benefit analysis?
The concept of a triple bottom line (abbreviated as TBL or 3BL) adds two more "bottom lines"; social
and environmental concerns. The three together are often paraphrased as "Profit, People, Planet",
or referred to as "the three pillars"
Bottom Lines
"People" pertains to fair and beneficial business practices toward labour and the community and
region in which a corporation conducts its business. A TBL company conceives a reciprocal social
structure in which the well-being of corporate, labour and other stakeholder interests are
interdependent.
A triple bottom line enterprise seeks to benefit many constituencies, not exploit or endanger any
group of them. The "upstreaming" of a portion of profit from the marketing of finished goods back
to the original producer of raw materials, for example, a farmer in fair trade agricultural practice, is
a common feature. In concrete terms, a TBL business would not use child labour and monitor all
contracted companies for child labour exploitation, would pay fair salaries to its workers, would
maintain a safe work environment and tolerable working hours, and would not otherwise exploit a
community or its labour force. A TBL business also typically seeks to "give back" by contributing to

5. the strength and growth of its community with such things as health care and education.
Quantifying this bottom line is relatively new, problematic and often subjective. The Global
Reporting Initiative (GRI) has developed guidelines to enable corporations and NGOs alike to
comparably report on the social impact of a business.
"Planet" (natural capital) refers to sustainable environmental practices. A TBL company endeavors
to benefit the natural order as much as possible or at the least do no harm and minimise
environmental impact. A TBL endeavour reduces its ecological footprint by, among other things,
carefully managing its consumption of energy and non-renewables and reducing manufacturing
waste as well as rendering waste less toxic before disposing of it in a safe and legal manner. "Cradle
to grave" is uppermost in the thoughts of TBL manufacturing businesses, which typically conduct a
life cycle assessment of products to determine what the true environmental cost is from the growth
and harvesting of raw materials to manufacture to distribution to eventual disposal by the end user.
A triple bottom line company does not produce harmful or destructive products such as weapons,
toxic chemicals or batteries containing dangerous heavy metals, for example.
Currently, the cost of disposing of non-degradable or toxic products is borne financially by
governments and environmentally by the residents near the disposal site and elsewhere. In TBL
thinking, an enterprise which produces and markets a product which will create a waste problem
should not be given a free ride by society. It would be more equitable for the business which
manufactures and sells a problematic product to bear part of the cost of its ultimate disposal.
Ecologically destructive practices, such as overfishing or other endangering depletions of resources
are avoided by TBL companies. Often environmental sustainability is the more profitable course for
a business in the long run. Arguments that it costs more to be environmentally sound are often
specious when the course of the business is analyzed over a period of time. Generally, sustainability
reporting metrics are better quantified and standardized for environmental issues than for social
ones. A number of respected reporting institutes and registries exist including the Global Reporting
Initiative, CERES, Institute 4 Sustainability and others.
"Profit" is the economic value created by the organization after deducting the cost of all inputs,
including the cost of the capital tied up. It therefore differs from traditional accounting definitions of
profit. In the original concept, within a sustainability framework, the "profit" aspect needs to be
seen as the real economic benefit enjoyed by the host society. It is the real economic impact the
organization has on its economic environment. This is often confused to be limited to the internal
profit made by a company or organization (which nevertheless remains an essential starting point
for the computation). Therefore, an original TBL approach cannot be interpreted as simply
traditional corporate accounting profit plus social and environmental impacts unless the "profits" of
other entities are included as a social benefit.