Big Picture Talk: Bhopal 40 years on - What have we learned?

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• Professor Fiona Macleod
• Tuesday 06 May 2025, 14:30-15:15
• Lecture Theatre 1, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, West Cambridge Site.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact ejm94.

Our departmental seminar series, Bigger Picture Talks, runs throughout the academic year, inviting thought-leaders from across the world driving significant advances in our impact areas of energy, health and sustainability to share and discuss their work with us.

This talk will hear from alumni Professor Fiona Macleod, Professor of Process Safety at the University of Sheffield, who will talk about safety in the chemical engineering industry, using the worst disaster in history as a lens for why safety matters.

On the night of 2 and 3 December 1984 a toxic gas release from the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India caused thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of life-changing injuries. Forty years later, the rusting factory equipment still towers above buried hazardous waste in the abandoned factory. I visited the site of the former Union Carbide site in Bhopal India to try to understand what went so horribly wrong.

1. What caused the worst accident in the history of the chemical industry? 2. Why was the accident never properly investigated? 3. What can we learn about process safety from revisiting the accident? 4. Why has no clean-up been undertaken in 40 years?

This talk is part of the Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• CamBridgeSens
• Cambridge Energy Seminars
• Cambridge talks
• Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology
• Featured lists
• Lecture Theatre 1, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, West Cambridge Site
• ME Seminar
• NanoDTC Energy Materials Talks
• School of Technology
• Trust & Technology Initiative - interesting events
• history

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