Analyzing the Disaster at Bhopal
There are many factors that contributed to The Disaster at Bhopal. I will first list as many of these factors as possible and then use ethical theories that I have learned to break down and analyze the incident. By doing this I hope to gain a better perspective on why corporate executives and leadership in general make the decisions that cause or allow to cause problems such as this one.
The factors I have found in my research that were a cause to the disaster are the decision to use more hazardous materials instead of less harmful ones, using large chemical storage tanks instead of smaller steel drums and moved to a more safe location, the possibility of material in the pipelines that began to corrode, the obvious lack of maintenance on the plant after it stopped producing pesticides in the 1980s, safety systems that failed due to the poor maintenance and lack of sufficient regulations, the decision to switch off safety systems including the MIC tank refrigeration system and the most obvious and detrimental of them was the decision to place the plant in a highly populated area.
The first ethical theory that I will use to analyze this disaster is utilitarianism. Someone made the decision to place the plant in a populated area. I believe that the idea of prosperity for the company and the local economy by creating new jobs out-weighed the possibility of negative outcomes in the minds of the people who made the decision to place the plant in this particular area. Secondly, duty and rights ethics should have been applied in the command to maintain a safe working environment, the proper inspection and maintenance of the entire plants safety, operational and storage systems, the storing of the chemical in large tanks istead of smaller containers which would have minimized the amount of chemicals dispersed into the atmosphere, and the indecision to move the chemicals to a more safe location. Aparantly the plants rights...