Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 18 (2005) 274–282

www.elsevier.com/locate/jlp

Literary and economic impact of the Bhopal gas tragedy

Sanjeev Sarafa,*, Mukund Karanjikarb
a
IoMosaic Corporation, 93 Stiles Road, #204, Salem, NH 03079, USA
b
Chemical Engineering Department, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36830, USA

Abstract
The 1984 Bhopal disaster is widely regarded as a watershed event in the field of process-safety and has been largely responsible for a
paradigm shift in the outlook of both industry and the public towards risk management within the processing industries. The Bhopal disaster
has led to increased regulations and awareness for process-safety related activities across the globe. This paper reports the effect of the
infamous Bhopal incident on the research community and examines the performance of manufacturing industries following the disaster.
For this paper, databases of scientific publications were used to investigate research trends in the safety area following the 1984 Bhopal
disaster. Our analysis focuses on prominent safety-related research fields that have emerged following the gas tragedy as well as economic
indicators of the processing industries. The study reveals that the process industry has consistently progressed over the years, in spite of added
regulations and a worsened public image following the Bhopal disaster, and promises to be a stable economy in the future.
q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Bhopal; Process-safety; Risk communication; Industrial disaster; Risk perception

1. Introduction
Chemical, petrochemical, and pharmaceutical industries
across the world have contributed towards the development
of science and technology and are an inseparable part of
today’s civilization. However, these manufacturing
industries have been historically infamous as sites of
hazardous chemicals and sources of pollution. The Bhopal
gas tragedy caused an additional negative shift in the
chemical industries already shaky public image. The Bhopal
incident triggered interest from industry, academia, and
legislatures, and is widely acknowledged as one of the
defining events in the history of process-safety. We were
interested in investigating the impact of this disaster on the
research and manufacturing communities.
This paper reports on the impact of the Bhopal chemical
accident on the scientific and research community in terms
of researched topics, literature published, and observed
trends. We surveyed available scientific literature in detail,
and provide statistics on publications along with a proposed
explanation for the observed societal impact of accidents.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: C1 603 893 7009; fax: C1 603 893 7885.
E-mail address: saraf@iomosaic.com (S. Saraf).
0950-4230/$ - see front matter q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jlp.2005.06.023
The paper also reports the effect of the Bhopal disaster
on the economic indicators in the manufacturing units.
Twenty years after the tragedy, it is worthwhile examining
the attributes that made this disaster one of the worst
publicized tragedies in the history.
2. Literature pertinent to Bhopal
We surveyed books, journals, symposia, and national
meeting publications for literature based on the Bhopal
tragedy, and the following sections discuss in detail the
results of our literature investigation.
3. Books
Between 1984 and 2004, thirty-five books based on the
Bhopal gas tragedy have been published. These books are
summarized in Table 1. A glance at this list reveals that this
tragedy has evoked interest from a variety of people all over
the world-environmentalists, regulators, government
officials, academicians, and fictional authors. Most of
these books focus on policy issues, regulations, risk
communication, and risk management. Books based on
the Bhopal tragedy are still being published, twenty years
after the sad event, acknowledging its tremendous impact.
 S. Saraf, M. Karanjikar / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 18 (2005) 274–282 275

Table 1
Books based on the Bhopal gas tragedy (1984–2004)

Title Author Year

1. The Bhopal saga Ingrid Ekgerman 2004
2. Bhopal: chemical plant accident Nichol Bryan 2003
3. Bhopal David Smith 2003
4. 21st Century complete guide to the U.S. chemical U.S. Govt. 2003
safety and hazard investigation board: major chemical
accidents (Bhopal), statistics
5. Five past midnight in Bhopal: the epic story of the Jav Dominique/Moro Lapierre 2002
world’s deadliest industrial disaster
6. Bhopal (great disasters, reforms and ramifications) John Riddle 2002
7. Advocacy after Bhopal: environmentalism, disaster, Kim Forutun 2001
new global orders
8. Worst case scenario: Bhopal in the south Charles Lopinto, Lidia Lopinto, Lidia Llamas 2001
9. The Bhopal legacy toxic contaminants at the former Greenpeace research laboratories, dept. of biological 1999
Union Carbide factory site, Bhopal, India: 15 years sciences, university of Exeter
after the Bhopal accident
10. Corporate environmental strategy: the avalanche of Bruce W. Piasecki 1995
change since Bhopal
11. Learning from disaster: risk management after Bhopal Sheila Jasanoff 1994
(law in social context)
12. Bhopal: the inside story-carbide workers speak out on T. R. Chouhan 1994
the world’s worst industrial disaster
13. The uncertain promise of law: lessons from Bhopal Jamie Cassels 1993
14. The Bhopal tragedy-one year after Appen Report 1991
15 Bhopal chemical leak (world disasters series) Arthur diamond 1990
16. Corporate Killing: Bhopals will happen Tara Jones 1990
17. Bhopal tragedy: language, logic, and politics in the William Bogard 1989
production of a hazard
18. Bhopal syndrome Sierra Club 1988
19. Bhopal: the lessons of a tragedy Sanjoy Hazarika 1988
20. A killing wind: inside union carbide and the Bhopal Dan Kurzman 1987
catastrophe
21. Insuring and managing hazardous risks: from seveso to Paul R. Kleindorfer, Howard C. Kunreuther 1987
Bhopal and beyond
22. Bhopal: anatomy of crisis (business in global Paul Shrivastava 1987
environment)
23. Environmental pollution and Bhopal killings B. N. Bonerjee 1987
24. Shared vulnerability: the media and American per- Lee Wilkins 1987
ceptions of the Bhopal disaster
25. Managing industrial crises: lessons of Bhopal Paul Shrivastava 1987
26. Bhopal disaster: an eye witness account Lalit Shastri 1986
27. Bhopal gas tragedy: accident or experiment Brojendra N. Banerjee 1986
28. Dateline Bhopal: a newsman’s diary of the gas disaster Anees Chishti 1986
29. The Bhopal tragedy: what really happened and what it Ward Morehouse, M. Arun Subramaniam 1986
means for American workers and communities at risk
30. Behind the Poison cloud: union carbide’s Bhopal Larry Everest 1986
massacre
31. Bhopal aftermath review: assessment of the Canadian Environment Canada, environment protection service 1986
situation
32. Cloud over Bhopal Alfred de Grazia 1985
33. Bhopal: Its Setting, Responsibility and Challenge Sidney C. Sufrin 1985
34. Bhopal, Industrial Genocide?: A Unique Compilation ARENA Press 1985
of Documents from Indian Publications
35. A bibliographical guide to disaster planning, manage- Vance Bibliographies 1985
ment, insurance, and the case of Bhopal, India

4. Scientific journals and symposia Abstract Service (CAS) database-Scifinder Scholar

It is expected that an industrial incident of the scale of
Bhopal would trigger research in various fields. However, in
this paper, we have focused our attention on the engineering
and science community. We have utilized Chemical
(http://www.cas.org./SCIFINDER/SCHOLAR/), to survey
publications in the science and engineering fields. The
science database (CAPlus) of Scifinder searches more than
9,000 journals and covers all areas of basic sciences and
engineering. In addition, it has an enhanced coverage for
276 S. Saraf, M. Karanjikar / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 18 (2005) 274–282

Safety Publication 5 yr. avg.

3000

2500
Publications related to process-safety

2000

1500

2777
2685
2399
2372
2026
1974
1000

1887
1802
1529
1274
1256
1080
500

943
937
838
695
652
558
558
540
508
501
487
432

418
412
396
385
309
156
174

0
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
Year of publication

Fig. 1. Total number of safety publications (1973–2003).

1,500 journals since 1994, patents, conference proceedings, incident grabbed the attention of researchers and resulted in
books, dissertations, and technical reports. Therefore, we increased funding for their work, leading to an increase in
believe that our survey is comprehensive, and fairly process-safety literature.
representative of publications in the past couple of decades.
The following sections discuss overall trends and various
4.2. Research categories
research categories that emerged as a result of the Bhopal
incident.
The total number of research publications believed to be
inspired by Bhopal were obtained by using various search
4.1. Overall trend criteria, such as,

A surge in process-safety research is evident from a. Bhopal, industrial disasters, industrial mistakes, human
Fig. 1, which shows the total publications in science and errors, large scale accidents, process-safety (Searched
engineering journals that mention ‘process-safety’ as a under research topic)
keyword published in the time period 1973–2003. The
60
No. of Publications using Bhopal as

significant change in the slope of the line after 1986–87

is self-explanatory. There were 4,178 publications in the 51
50
decade 1973–83 and this number more than doubled to
9,331 in the post-Bhopal decade (1984–1994). The 40 36
Keyword

Bhopal disaster was largely responsible for attracting 29 30

30 28
attention of researchers in the field of safety. The number 24 24
22
of process-safety publications continued to grow and 20 17 19
15 16 16
between 1995–2003 about 19,451 safety-related papers 12 13
11
were published. 10 9 8 9
5
Similar literature survey using ‘Bhopal’ as a keyword
0
indicates that maximum number of papers with this keyword
19 4
19 5
19 6
19 7
19 8
19 9
19 0
19 1
19 2
19 3
19 4
19 5
19 6
19 7
19 8
99

20 0
20 1
20 2
03
8
8
8
8
8
8
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
9

0
0
0
19

20

appeared in the year 1987, about three years after the event
Year of Publication
(Fig. 2). Most of the publications related to Bhopal began to
appear around 1986–87. One can surmise that the Bhopal Fig. 2. Publications with Bhopal as a keyword.
 S. Saraf, M. Karanjikar / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 18 (2005) 274–282
b. Methyl Isocyanate or MIC (Searched under compound of
interest, structure and CAS number (Afeefy, Liebman, &
Stein, 2001) 624-83-9)
The references obtained with the above search terms
were screened with the help of features offered by SciFinder
Scholar such as filtering based on other search terms, time
and type of a reference, author name, and company name.
The publications were then manually inspected to eliminate
the ones not pertinent to this paper. For example, research
publications found under the heading of ‘MIC’ not related to
the Bhopal event, were mainly related to synthesis,
combinatorial study, occurrences, crystal structure, and
spectral properties. Patents that showed up during the search
were not considered for this study.
All the publications were thoroughly scrutinized to
ensure that the ones remaining were stimulated exclusively
by the Bhopal event. Such publications can be broadly
categorized into clinical, environmental and ecological, risk
analysis, and general/reviews (Table 2). Five representative
references in each category are listed in the reference
section to avoid citing of the list of 712 references.
4.2.1. (i) Clinical studies (Karol, Taskar, Gangal, Rubanoff,
& Kamat, 1987; Varma, 1987; Dodd, Frank, Fowler, Troup,
& Milton, 1987; Varma, Ferguson, &Alarie, 1987;
Goswami, 1986)
These publications are primarily related to toxicology
studies in human beings and animals. The total number of
publications was found to be 438. All of these publications
focus on Methyl Iso-cyanate (MIC), the deadly gas involved
in the Bhopal tragedy. The animal studies include the
response of various body parts when exposed to MIC.
A large number of publications in this area resulted from
in-depth studies of Bhopal victims.
4.2.2. (ii) Environmental and ecological research (Prasad
& Pandey, 1985; Khan, Iqbal, Chaghtai, Saify & Husain,
1986; Mohammad, Prasad, & Shukla, 1986; Saify & Bhat,
1985; Baghel Singh, & Aleem, 1996)
Researchers in the field of environment and ecology were
also influenced by the Bhopal tragedy. However, the
spectrum of issues in environmental studies is not as
broad as clinical topics. The various issues discussed by
Table 2
Categorization of publications related to or motivated by the Bhopal
incident
Sr. no. Category Number of publications
(1984–2003)
1. Clinical 438
2. Environmental and 54
ecological
3. Risk analysis 130
4. General/reviews 90
277
researchers are effects on vegetation, water quality aspects
in and around Bhopal, land fertility, plant systemic studies,
effects of MIC on aquatic life, and other ecological studies.
The total number of publications between 1984 and 2003
are found to be 54.
4.2.3. (iii) Risk analysis studies (Slater, 1986; Miyake
& Bowonder, 1987; Greenly, 1986; Hofelich Prine,
& Scheffler, 1997; Lohman, 1999)
These publications include modeling and simulation
studies on vapor cloud dispersion, various analytical and
monitoring techniques developed as a result of the Bhopal
incident, transport and diffusion empirical models,
compatibility of MIC with various chemicals, kinetic
studies of MIC reactions, physico-chemical property studies
of MIC and related chemicals, and thermodynamic studies
of MIC. The total number of publications found between
1984 and 2003 is 130.
4.2.4. (iv) General/reviews (Frendl, 1987; Varma, 1987;
Tu, 1985; Bucher, 1987; Bucher, 1987)
This category represents publications related to the
Bhopal incident that could not be classified under any of
the above-mentioned categories. These publications are of a
general nature and do not represent a specific issue. Most of
the publications in this category deal with policy issues and
appear in scientific journals as reviews of various topics. A
total of 90 publications were found between 1984 and 2003.
4.3. Discussion of findings
4.3.1. Proposed rationalization of the societal impact
of chemical accidents
Historically, certain chemical incidents have received
more attention than others. There are a variety of reasons
that make an event historic, and we believe that following
the Bhopal tragedy people more fully comprehended the
consequences of a toxic substance release. The phenomenon
behind the observed trends following the incident can be
rationalized on the basis of human perception of risk.
Although we have made tremendous technological
advances, quantifying risk still remains a stiff challenge.
Communicating risk is as difficult as quantifying risk. We
therefore rely on risk perceptions, and our sense of degree of
hazard from an activity or an object is often based on media,
past personal experiences, social thinking, and not
necessarily on a rational review of a situation. Thus risk is
a perception and signifies different things to different
people. The response of a community to an accident is a
complex function of a variety of factors. The following
paragraph proposes a theory, based on past literature
(Slovic, 1987; Slovic Lichtenstein, & Fischoff, 1984;
Slovic, Fischhoff, &Lichtenstein, 1984; Morgan, Fischhoff,
Bostrom, & Bostrom, 2001; Zeckhauser & Viscusi, 1990;
Tversky & Kahneman, 1974; Papazoglou et al., 2003;
278 S. Saraf, M. Karanjikar / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 18 (2005) 274–282
Risk
Prone
Risk
Averse
Societal
impact
Risk
Neutral
Number of fatalities, N
Fig. 3. Societal impact of an accident as a function of fatalities.
Smallman & Smith, 2003), for the observed societal
reaction and societal impact of accidents.
It can be argued that the societal cost of an accident can
be represented by a generalized model based on number of
fatalities (N), such that:
Societal costf N a
A schematic of such a model is depicted in Fig. 3.
Although there are no official categories, the authors believe
that there are three different classes of accidents based on
the number of fatalities. Each class of accident invokes a
certain response from the community. These categories are
discussed below.
(i) aZ1; The societal cost increases linearly with every
additional life lost. For example, automobile
accidents, with every death having an equal societal
impact, would fall into this category. We can
therefore argue that the society is risk neutral.
(ii) aO1; In this category of accidents, the value of
every additional life lost has a greater societal
impact than earlier. The society generally weighs a
multiple fatality accident involving 10 people
more than 10 accidents involving one person.
Communities react strongly to threats from nuclear
or chemical plants due to their potential to cause
multiple casualties. Thus we can propose that there
is a tendency for ‘risk aversion’ amongst the public.
(iii) a!1; It is intuitive that accidents causing 20,000 or
30,000 fatalities would have similar societal impact
and therefore a!1 represents a society more prone
to risk with higher fatalities.
The number of fatalities in the Bhopal gas tragedy makes
it a yardstick for transition from risk averse to risk prone
society. The accident received media attention world wide
contributing to the negative opinion of masses about
the chemical industry. The tragedy resulted in realizing
the fears amongst the public that were believed from
running chemical plants. The ‘rogue-child’ image of the
chemical industry was replaced by that of a ‘killer-
machine’. A worker in a plant voluntarily accepts the
associated risks but the community cannot be expected to
tolerate risk arising from chemical processing. Bhopal lifted
this burden of risk from a factory worker and placed it on the
entire society and therefore we see that most of the literature
focuses on societal impact of chemical industry. The Bhopal
incident resulted in a more risk averse society to newer
technologies, especially in the processing industries. For a
layman, judging a risk is often a function of catastrophic
potential. For example, working in a nuclear plant is
considered riskier than driving on the road, whereas
statistics show that more people are killed every year in
automobile crashes than in nuclear plant accidents.
Following the gas tragedy, common people were convinced
that a chemical plant would result in mass casualties in the
vicinity of the manufacturing facility.
The higher the perceived risk by the people, the more the
demand to reduce such a risk, and consequently more people
want to see stricter regulations to reduce the risk. As a result,
we see piqued interest from government, regulatory bodies,
and policy makers to ensure technological advances without
catastrophic losses. As new policies were deliberated
technocrats were convinced that the hazards in a plant are
controllable, and that the frequency of accidents can be
reduced. However, to evaluate the risk-benefits of chemical
industry post-Bhopal required safety personnel to
realistically quantify various hazards due to chemicals,
and we therefore notice an increase in consequence
modeling tools. It can also be argued that government
initiatives to develop tools of risk assessment resulted in
funding in these areas which led to an increase in research
papers in this field.
4.4. Trends in chemical manufacturing
Historically petrochemical industries prospered in the
1960s and 1970s. We wanted to investigate the effect of the
Bhopal incident on the manufacturing sector in general. We
have used two indicators, industrial production (IP) index
and stock prices, to track the progress of chemical industry
before and after the Bhopal incident. We believe that the
economic indicators used in this paper may not be
comprehensive, but are definitely indicative of the trend in
the chemical industry.
4.4.1. Industrial production (IP) index
The industrial production (IP) index measures the
real output of the manufacturing, mining, electric and
gas utilities, and is compiled by the United States
Federal Reserve Board (The US Federal Reserve
Board). The data are categorized based on various
industry groups such as chemical, computer and
 S. Saraf, M. Karanjikar / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 18 (2005) 274–282 279

110

100
Industrial production index for chemicals

90

80

70

60

50

40
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
Year

Fig. 4. IP index for chemicals.

electronic products, textile mills, and various other key IP index in 1985 is evident from the graph. The
industries. We have plotted a graph of seasonally chemical category consists of various sub-categories and
adjusted IP, based on production-worker hours, for the for comparison we have plotted the IP indices for a few
chemical category in Fig. 4. The sharp drop in chemical of the sub-categories-organic chemicals, alkalis and

Chemicals Organic Alkalis and Chlorines Agrochem Pharma. & Med Soaps, Cleaners, toiletries

200

180

160

140

120
IP index

100

80

60

40

20

0
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005

Year

Fig. 5. IP indices for a few chemical sub-categories.

280 S. Saraf, M. Karanjikar / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 18 (2005) 274–282

Dow DuPont Exxon GE PPG Eastman Chemical Air Products Rohm and Hass Praxair

70

60
Average Stock Price (U.S. Dollars)

50

40

30

20

10

0
1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004
Year

Fig. 6. Stock prices for a few U.S. chemical industries (1980–2004).

BASF BAYER RALLIS SHAW WALLACE SYNGENTA

400

350

300
Average Annual Stock Price (INR)

250

200

150

100

50

0
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004
Year

Fig. 7. Stock prices for a few Indian chemical industries (1984–2004).

 S. Saraf, M. Karanjikar / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 18 (2005) 274–282 281

Table 3 industry has grown consistently and promises to be a stable

List of the US and Indian chemical industries economy. Following the 1984 Bhopal accident, the society
US Chemical industries Indian chemical industries has become more aware of the potential hazards arising
Name Stock symbol Name Stock symbol from chemical processing and communicating that risk to
the masses remains a tough challenge.
1. Dow DOW BASF BASF.BO
2. DuPont DD Bayer India ltd BAYE.BO
3. Exxon XOM Monsanto MNSN.BO
4. General GE Rallis RALL.BO
electric References
5. PPG PPG Shaw wallace SHAW.BO
6. Eastman EMN Syngenta SYNG.BO
http://www.cas.org./SCIFINDER/SCHOLAR/ (SciFinder Scholar is a
chemical
product of Chemical Abstract Service (CAS), a division of American
7. Praxair PX
Chemical Society (ACS)).
8. Air APD
Afeefy, H. Y., Liebman, J. F., & Stein, S. E. (2001). In P. J. Linstrom, & W.
products
G. Mallard (Eds.), Neutral Thermochemical Data in NIST Chemistry
9. Rohm and ROH
WebBook, NIST Standard Reference Database Number 69. Gaithers-
HASS
burg MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology (http:
Note: (i) The selection of US companies was based on list of top 25 //webbook.nist.gov/).
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