India clears toxic waste 40 years after Bhopal gas disaster

Communities have for decades blamed a high level of sicknesses on contamination of the groundwater in the wake of the highly toxic gas leak from the Union Carbide factory in December 1984.

Some 3,500 people were killed in the immediate aftermath of the chemical leak on the night of December 2, 1984, and up to 25,000 are estimated to have died overall.

Around a dozen trucks began carrying the 337 tonnes of waste -- sealed inside containers and with a police escort--- in a slow convoy to the disposal site some 225 kilometres (140 miles) away at Pithampur late Wednesday night, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

"The convoy has been fortified with the highest security protocol ever witnessed in the movement of industrial waste in the country," said state gas relief and rehabilitation department director Swatantra Kumar Singh, the Times of India reported.

Singh said that the waste will "undergo scientific disposal" through incineration.

In 1984, 27 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC), used in the production of pesticides, swept through the city of over two million people after one of the tanks storing the deadly chemical shattered its concrete casing.

The order to clear the waste was made in December -- after the 40th anniversary of the disaster -- by the high court in Madhya Pradesh state, which set a one-month deadline.

"Are you waiting for another tragedy?" Chief Justice Suresh Kumar Kait asked the authorities, in an order critical of the "inertia" by cleanup authorities, according to the Times of India and Indian Express newspapers.

Testing of groundwater near the site in the past revealed cancer- and birth defect-causing chemicals 50 times higher than what is accepted as safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Communities blame a range of health problems -- including cerebral palsy, hearing and speech impairments and other disabilities -- on the accident and the contamination of the groundwater.